And the winner is...

...and we're back from MarsCon, where we had the pleasures of having lunch with old friend, Stupefying Stories author, and sometimes Friday Challenge contributor Guy Stewart; of finally getting to meet and have a good long chat with new friends Roy C. Booth and R. Thomas Riley, whose co-authored work will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Stupefying Stories; and the supremely weird experience of showing up for a reading by [NAME WITHHELD], only to find that he'd had to cancel out of attending the con but no one had thought to post the schedule change where any fans could see it. So there I was, in a room full of people eagerly expecting a reading by [NAME WITHHELD], and it just so happened I had the final copy-edited manuscript of his very latest next-to-be-published story right there in my hands...

It was a promotional opportunity not to be missed, and I didn't miss it. I am so shameless, sometimes.

Anyway, it was the usual fun but exhausting experience, and now we're back, and I'm ready to pick the winner in the long-delayed 2/17/12 Friday Challenge: "And now for something completely different...

Looking at the entries received:

Spambot!, The Slow Butcher, Diamonds Are for Ebert, and General Tso's Chicken, all by Anatoly Belilovsky

The Trouble with Zonde Begaan (or Voyage to Atlantis) by Nicholas Whitley

Let's be honest. Anatoly, all your entries are one-liners, and some of them (i.e., "The Slow Butcher") are even older than I am. Nicholas, on the other hand, has fulfilled the requirements for the original challenge and produced an actual outline for a possibly unwritable novel—but nonetheless an actual novel, complete with beginning, middle, and end, complete with gobs of impossible and confusing character and plot development. Therefore, I decree Nicholas Whitley to be the winner of the 2/17/12 Friday Challenge!

Thanks for participating, and now, on to the current challenge, which is already in progress.

Cheers,
~brb