[Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Brad Roberts" <braddr at puremagic.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.60.1283405205.858.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On 9/1/2010 6:56 PM, BCS wrote:
>> OTOH try and write a play that no one will watch. I'd be very surprised 
>> if it
>> can be done.
>
> There's a book that was purposely written (by a collaboration of good 
> authors)
> to be as bad as it could be.

There was a videogame (freeware) a few years ago that was deliberately 
designed to serve as an example of all the typical "worst practices" in game 
design. The great thing though, was that a lot of people found it to fall 
into the "so bad it's good" category :)  I wish I could remember what it 
was.

> So, of course, I just had to get a copy.  I
> couldn't make it past the second chapter, if I remember right.  It'd take 
> a
> seriously determined person to actually finish it.  Reading it might well 
> void
> any life insurance policies you might have.
>
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights
>

That sounds awesome :) The history and reasons behind it are really 
interesting, and I got a kick out of these parts of what Wikipedia said 
about it:

------------------------
...obvious grammatical errors, nonsensical passages, and a complete lack of 
a coherent plot....

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.
------------------------

That had to have been a really fun book to write.