Well. It seems some of my fellow science-fiction writers have proven the proverb, "When you fool a fool, you strike a blow for intelligence."

Go here for the article of which I speak.

It seems that the "traditional publishing company" (and I use the term with some trepidation) recently posted an attack on science-fiction on its website that "writers who erroneously believe that SciFi, because it is set in a distant future, does not require believable storylines, or that Fantasy, because it is set in conditions that have never existed, does not need believable every-day characters."

Well needless to say this must have irked some of my comrades in arms, because they set out to tar and feather these people. They got together and each wrote a chapter of a book called "Atlanta Nights" and deliberately made it as bad as they could manage. I can just imagine. Horrible inconsistencies. Stilted dialogue. Awkward and run-on sentences. Not even a smidge of originality in plot, structure, character. Oh, it must have been sublime.

Then they submitted it to this publisher who had made the remarks.

They accepted it.

Of course once the trick was revealed they un-accepted it real quick, but I hope somebody got a picture of the egg dripping down their collective face.

It's sort of the literary equivalent of mooning somebody from an overpass. Ah the sweet sounds of squealing tires and crunching metal. Oh, that's gotta hurt!

I am laughing my head off. If I could I'd take all these writers to dinner. What style and panache!

For one brief moment, there is justice.