Honor to be Nominated?

It probably isn't, at least when the contest under consideration is the Bulwer-Lytton bad opening sentence contest. The winners here.

The contest, run since 1982, takes its name from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford opened with that apotheosis of hackery, "It was a dark and stormy night."

Bulwer-Lytton also gave us the phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword." And hack novel or not, Paul Clifford was a bestseller in its day, so Bulwer-Lytton probably laughed all the way to the bank.