A Dramatic Reading of Jim Theis's THE EYE OF ARGON
85I SHALL TEACH THOSE SLUTS THE MEANING OF HUMILITY!
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The Eye of Argon is a heroic fantasy novella that narrates the adventures of Grignr, a barbarian. It was written in 1970 by Jim Theis and circulated anonymously in science fiction fandom since then. It has been described as "one of the genre's most beloved pieces of appalling prose", the "infamous 'worst fantasy novel ever' published for fans' enjoyment," and "the apotheosis of bad writing", and has subsequently been used as part of a common science fiction convention party game.
The novella was written in 1970 by Jim Theis, a St. Louis, Missouri science fiction fan, at age 16. The work was first published in 1970 in OSFAN No. 10. David Langford described Theis in SFX as "a malaprop genius, a McGonagall of prose with an eerie gift for choosing the wrong word and then misapplying it."
Some time in the 1970s author Thomas N. Scortia obtained a copy, which he mailed to Californian SF writer Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Yarbro wrote in an e-mail from late 2003 to Darrell Schweitzer:
"Tom Scortia sent me the fanzine pages as a kind of shared amusement, since both of us tended to look for poor use of language in stories. Don Simpson and I were still married then, and one of our entertainments was reading aloud to each other. This work was such a mish-mash that we took turns reading it to each other until we could stand no more...
About two weeks after the story arrived, we had a dinner party, mainly for Mystery Writers of America and book dealer friends, and Joe Gores got to talking about some of the really hideous language misuse he had seen in recent anthology submissions and had brought along a few of the most egregious. I mentioned I had something that put his examples in the shade, and brought out 'The Eye of Argon.' It was a huge hit. Tom Whitmore asked if he could make a copy of it, and I loaned it to him, and readings of it started to become a hideous entertainment. I never typed out a copy of it, but I am afraid I did start the ball rolling."
She showed it to other fans, and it met with a tremendous and incredulous reaction. The work was copied and distributed widely around science fiction fandom, often without Theis's name attached. Readings quickly became a common item on science fiction convention programmes. "People sit in a circle and take turns reading from photocopies of the story. The reader's turn is over when he begins to laugh uncontrollably."
The version which currently circulates on the Internet was manually transcribed by Don Simpson from a mimeograph of Theis' original, and bears his note at the bottom:
"No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original printing of The Eye of Argon. It was mimeographed with stencils cut on an elite manual typewriter. Many letters were so faint as to be barely readable, others were overstruck, and some that were to be removed never got painted out with correction fluid. Usually, only one space separated sentences, while paragraphs were separated by a blank line and were indented ten spaces. Many words were grotesquely hyphenated. And there were illustrations — I cannot do them justice in mere words, but they were a match for the text. These are the major losses of this version of The Eye of Argon.
Otherwise, all effort has been made to retain the full and correct text, preserving even mis-spellings and dropped spaces. An excellent proofreader has checked it for errors both omitted and committed. What mismatches remain are mine."