The scales fall from my eyes...

On Sunday, 26 February 2012 at 14:47:53 UTC, Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
> On 26/02/12 11:24, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> On Sunday, February 26, 2012 11:05:33 simendsjo wrote:
>> I know that there's at least one site out there which will generate random
>> research papers for you, but even those are way better than this, because that
>> sort of thing takes real, valid sentences and puts them together in way that
>> its AI thinks will sound good (and the result with the research papers is stuff
>> that sounds good until you start trying to figure out what it actually means)
>
> Someone actually managed to get a paper like this accepted to a conference. :)
>
> http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
>
> -Lars

There's a group of sci-fi authors that took this concept to a whole new level (to demonstrate how awful a publisher was).  The result of their work is nothing short of amazing:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights

An excerpt from that page:

==========
In retaliation, a group of science fiction and fantasy authors under the direction of James D. Macdonald collaborated on a deliberately low-quality work, complete with obvious grammatical errors, nonsensical passages, and a complete lack of a coherent plot. The effort was partly inspired by another collaborative "hoax" work, Naked Came the Stranger, as the working title of Atlanta Nights was Naked Came the Badfic.[6]

The distinctive flaws of Atlanta Nights include nonidentical chapters written by two different authors from the same segment of outline (13 and 15), a missing chapter (21), two chapters that are word-for-word identical to each other (4 and 17), two different chapters with the same chapter number (12 and 12), and a chapter "written" by a computer program that generated random text based on patterns found in the previous chapters (34). Characters change gender and race; they die and reappear without explanation. Spelling and grammar are nonstandard and the formatting is inconsistent. The initials of characters who were named in the book spelled out the phrase "PublishAmerica is a vanity press."[7]

Under Macdonald's direction, the finale revealed that all the previous events of the plot had been a dream, although the book continues for several more chapters.
==========

I've tried to read it, several times.  The first chapter is so horribly perfectly wonderfully bad writing.  I've never made it to chapter 2.

Later,
Brad

"Brad Roberts" <braddr@puremagic.com> wrote in message news:lhsxxvmhqpqmygxockuq@forum.dlang.org...
>
> There's a group of sci-fi authors that took this concept to a whole new level (to demonstrate how awful a publisher was).  The result of their work is nothing short of amazing:
>
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights
>
> An excerpt from that page:
>
> ==========
> In retaliation, a group of science fiction and fantasy authors under the
> direction of James D. Macdonald collaborated on a deliberately low-quality
> work, complete with obvious grammatical errors, nonsensical passages, and
> a complete lack of a coherent plot. The effort was partly inspired by
> another collaborative "hoax" work, Naked Came the Stranger, as the working
> title of Atlanta Nights was Naked Came the Badfic.[6]
>
> The distinctive flaws of Atlanta Nights include nonidentical chapters written by two different authors from the same segment of outline (13 and 15), a missing chapter (21), two chapters that are word-for-word identical to each other (4 and 17), two different chapters with the same chapter number (12 and 12), and a chapter "written" by a computer program that generated random text based on patterns found in the previous chapters (34). Characters change gender and race; they die and reappear without explanation. Spelling and grammar are nonstandard and the formatting is inconsistent. The initials of characters who were named in the book spelled out the phrase "PublishAmerica is a vanity press."[7]
>
> Under Macdonald's direction, the finale revealed that all the previous
> events of the plot had been a dream, although the book continues for
> several more chapters.
> ==========
>
> I've tried to read it, several times.  The first chapter is so horribly perfectly wonderfully bad writing.  I've never made it to chapter 2.
>

Someone (maybe you) mentioned Atlanta Nights here about a year and half ago. Since then, I ordered myself (and my brother) hardcopies of it and it's become one of my all-time favorite...umm..."novels". Right up there with Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy, IMO.

I still haven't gotten all the way through it, but that's more due to lack of time for reading than anything else. I've finished the first 11 chapters, though. Some really great stuff in there (for some definition of "great" ;) ). I think I'm going to have to restart it though because it's been such a long time since I've picked it up.

Has anyone here seen the Futurama episode where Fry has to save everyone from being trapped in books by the evil floating brains by writing his own ending? "Now I am leaving Earth for no good raisin!" It's like that.

It would made a fantastic movie, too. Every time I read it, I can't help wanting to see actors actually delivering the absurd lines with straight faces :) It would make Zucker/Abrahams seem tame.