The longest sentence you'll read today - or your money back
I defy anyone to find a longer, weirder sentence than this
I was perusing a sci-fi book discussion forum the other day, because I’m a real cool guy and definitely not a massive, massive nerd.
I was looking for any inspiration for a newsletter, because two sci-fi writers in particular have had a huge effect on the way I write. Douglas Adams, and Kurt Vonnegut.
So it goes.
And as I was reading, I found this. The longest sentence you’re going to read today.
Possibly the longest sentence you’re ever going to read.
Buckle the fuck in, because this is a long one.
My mind extends across this chamber that others call the Throne Room, upwards to the cloth-of-gold baldachin suspended above the Throne, a vast canopy embroidered with the contradictory yet intertwined principles of concordia and discordia that frames the electric-blue aura of my great lord’s light; outwards from the Throne’s massive plinth, carved from the psychoreactive material known on the craftworlds as wraithbone, and inset with psycurium and dark glass panels, tourmaline and aerolithic moldavite; past silent Uzkarel and Caecaltus at their posts, past the gleaming ranks of their Hetaeron companies at attention beyond them; out, like a rushing tide across the lustrous floor of sectile marble and ouslite; across the susurrating banks of stasis generators, archeotech regulators, and psykanic amplifiers that surround and feed the Throne, prophylactic mechanisms brought here in haste and urgently set to work when the folly of Magnus cracked the harmonised serenity of this adytum; past the diligent conclaves of the Adnector Concillium in their cowls and chasubles, standing amid the fat snakes and intestinal loops of power cables, ministering to the operation of these murmuring devices; then further out, along the frightful height and breadth of the cyclopean nave itself, a canyon turned upside down; between the soaring auramite columns rising like the trunks of mature Sequoiadendron giganteum, the Solomonic pillars of twisted bronze, the acanthus-headed colonettes, the gargantuan scissor arches; beneath the shining, ornate electro-flambeaux strung like stalactite pendants from the dizzying ceiling, and between the lumen orbs that float like infant suns; on, past echelons of burnished automata maintaining talismatic psycho-systems; past empty, scarlet-cushioned stalls where once the High Lords of the Council gathered, and the void-manic worthies of the Navis Nobilite awaited audience; past the golden pulpits of the cataleptic astropaths, adrift in algolagnic fugues; around the clattering dream-dynamos and stegosaurian oniero-looms; past the hypnostatic augury kilns breathing steam and dripping myrrh, and the affirmatrix prognometer seaking synthetic plasma, and exhaling the smell of industrially recovered nightmares; past the scriptorums of the noctuaries; past brass reliquaries and vitrodur grails; past mother-of-pearl loggia where bewitched diviners and incanting prognostipractors sift and read the ribbon-tapes of transcribed glossolalia spilled from the chattering indifference engines, searching for morsels of meaning; past prophesires swinging thuribles, and technoseers wheeling scrimshandered feretories; past mendicants in penance at their kneeling desks and anchorites bearing electro-generative monstrances; on, through the sound of melismatic antiphon and canticle welling from the mouthless choirs in chantry niches, screened by lace-pattern iconostases so they cannot catch sight of him and forget the words; past regiments of catachumen observants, seeking expiation and brimming with eucharistic ardour; along the walls of porphery and mica mosaic, frescoes of death’s-head putti and cackling ephebes that conceal hidden figures of alchemy; past engraved genealogies, and past the blazoned armorial hatchments of the twenty Legions, all but eight now shrouded in amaranthine drapes of mourning; past the iron tabernacles of the chimerical brethrendae composing, as rapidly and ceaselessly as they can, via feverish automatic writing, new variations of the material truth in a frantic effort to mediate and divert the impending bow wave of fate; past flocks of scurrying serfs and deferential abhumans, all blindfolded so they can remain present and sane at the same time, all rushing to deliver reports that no longer matter; past Zagreus Kane, the Fabricator-in-exile, with his coterie of adepts, weeping for the decimation of his battle engines, and plotting the deployment of the few that remain; past acres of empty marble floor where one day we will have to place tombs; past the great banners of liberty and victory that hang like waterfalls from the high walls every step of the nave’s six-kilometre length; beneath the vaulted gloom of the ceiling, wrought of Peruvian gold and tromp l’oeil and crystal mined on Enceladus, a ceiling a kilometre high; past the silent, waiting companies of the refulgent Custodes Pylorus who make their motionless vigil at the door, whispering their ever-mantra of by His will alone, to the ceramite and adamantine door itself, the Silver Door, the innermost gate of eternity.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a single sentence. It contains 675 words (many of which exist), 3901 characters excluding spaces, and 49 commas.
Four audiobook narrators died of exhaustion trying to read that sentence. The psychic workload of parsing 29 semicolons in one sentence destroyed their minds.
It will not surprise you to hear that 166 different commentors on the thread where I found this leviathan thought it was a terrible, terrible sentence.
“It’s too long.” (no shit)
“It’s all descriptions of stuff that doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t move the plot.”
“It’s pretentious and masturbatory.”
A decent editor would’ve sliced this beast into something like 50 or so shorter sentences. A good editor would probably’ve deleted the fucker.
A great one though? A great one would’ve left it in. Because among all the dissent, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth, one person explained that this is actually a brilliant sentence.
Because the very next sentence is just two words. The one after that is four.
And out. It’s just a room.
Brought together, these three sentences form a first person perspective from a man who’s about to die, leaving the most glorious room in the palace where he lives. It’s meant to be overwhelming, and long, and pretentious, and masturbatory. It’s the self-indulgence of a condemned man.
Because none of what he’s looking at matters. It’s just a room. And he’s leaving it.
Forever.
I’m not saying you should ever write a 675 word sentence with 49 commas and 29 semicolons. I’d very strongly advise against putting the phrase “stegosaurian oniero-looms” in anything unless you’re selling stegosaurian oniero-looms and need it in there for SEO purposes.
All I’m saying is that if you’re ever analysing a piece of writing, read the sentences that come after before you decide whether it works or not.
This is mint - a hat advert
Three words.
The ad doesn’t work without them. But you don’t need lots of them.
Just three words to get across that key message.
It’s the hat that makes the outfit.