Hotel Royale

From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference

Hotel Royale was a novel written by Todd Matthews some time in the early 21st century. A copy of the novel was carried by Colonel Stephen G. Richey of NASA on board his ship the Charybdis in 2037.

It proved to be an unfortunate choice, as the novel was filled with clichéd characters and bad writing. When Richey's ship crashed on the planet Theta VIII in 2044, an unknown alien force created a physical representation of the novel, including the hotel and all its characters, in an artificial environment meant to provide a simulation of normal life for Richey.

Unknowingly, though, the aliens had sentenced Richey to a sort of Hell, dooming him to live the remainder of his life in the world of the novel with its poorly written characters and no real human interaction.

The opening line of the novel was "It was a dark and stormy night." Jean-Luc Picard was less than enthusiastic about its literary merits. (TNG: "The Royale")

The first time this first sentence was used was in Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's novel, Paul Clifford (1830), and it has been referred to since as the worst first sentence ever written.