Ghastly Beyond Belief: Main Page
THE BLURB HORRIFIC
This sort of blurb writing seems to be flourishing on both sides of the Atlantic. The name of the game is to send a shiver of fear down your browsing reader’s spine before he or she has even opened the book.
(In huge red letters) WHERE TERROR STALKED CHARLES BIRKIN INFECTS ONE WITH CREEPING FEARS.
charles birkin, Where Terror Stalked, (Tandem)
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the shower.
robert bloch, Psycho II
In the charnel house of science anything can happen.
stephen gallagher, Chimera, (Sphere)
Fashioned from flesh, baptised in blood … THE CREATURE OF VENGEANCE IS COME!
bill garnet, The Crone (Sphere)
They dared invade the Beast’s realm and saw things no human should ever see. Some of them even came back - seemingly alive.
vic ghidalia and roger elwood, Beware the Beast (Anthology)
Welcome to Starburst… a quiet seaside resort where the people of the future escape to the past, and where only four things are certain … (1) Four people are dead. (2) You are next. (3) The murdered isn’t human. (4) Night is falling.
charles l. grant, A Quiet Night of Fear (Berkley)
Turn on the tap … and die of terror.
john halkin, Slime (Signet)
From the blackest pits of hell, insatiable evil creeps forth to claim men’s minds and souls.
james herbert, The Dark, (signet)
Frenzied mutant super-rats bloodlusting for human flesh.
james herbert, Lair, (Signet)
(The author took 244 pages to say what the blurb writer managed to convey in eight words.)
The soul-freezing shock of unholy savage rites and infinite evil.
james herbert, Spear, (Signet)
They thought the worst was over … and it had only just begun …
thomas ‘d. hunter, Softly Walks the Beast
The people of Wakely are pale and gaunt. They have abnormally long fingernails and prominent teeth - and some of them have hair on the palms of their hands … What is poisoning the lifeblood of Wakely town? What evil force has it in thrall?
shaun hutson, Erebus, (Star)
(Hair on the palms of their hands? No … it can’t be …)
… and death was only the beginning.
harry adam knight, Slimer, (Star)
Every night the children met to play the game. Whether they wanted to or not. ARCADE. They had nothing to lose but their minds.
robert maxxe, Arcade, (Granada)
A mass murder. A disappearance. A cemetery ransacked. It looked like another ordinary day in Los Angeles. Then night came …
robert mccammon, They Thirsy
(Was this book sponsored by the L.A. Tourist Board?)
Icy fangs of night tearing deep into the flesh of the soul! it proclaims on the front cover. And on the back of KURT SINGER’S Horror Omnibus, (Panther):
… Supreme magicians of fear. Stories to make you shudder, shriek and scream. Ghosts ghouls gargoyles gorgons voodoo satanism occult magic uncanny chillling bizarre weird malignant impossible. Look out behind you, IT has arrived.
(A blurb writer is expected to use a thesaurus, but this seems a little excessive.)
A seafood cocktail for the strongest stomachs.
guy n. smith, Night of the Crabs, (NEL)
Its fragrance was ripe with evil blood …
guy n. smith, Satan’s Snowdrop, (Hamlyn)
(Nonsense, of course…)
Death clung to her like a Haute Couture shroud.
guy n. smith, Blood Circuit, (NEL)
(But nonsense in French?)
A journey into terror that demands all of your mind and - SOME OF YOUR BLOOD.
theodore sturgeon, Some of Your Blood, (Ballantine)
THE BLURB MISLEADING
Blurb writers, like all of us, are only human. (At least, I think they are. I hope they are.) And sometimes they make mistakes. Or try to sell a book as something it isn’t. Or appear not to have read the book in question. Hence The Blurb Misleading.
His nightmare journey through space took him to Solaria where robots ruled and earthmen lived in terror.
isaac asimov, The Naked Sun, (Panther)
(The blurb writer might have thumbed through the first chapter …)
Super science and fantastic death launch a rocket to the morgue! Was it murder through the fourth dimension? It’s funny and fantastic, grim and gory, when a gentle-spoken nun and a bunch of whacky super-science writers try to educate and enlighten the puzzled cop.
anthony boucher, Rocket to the Morgue
(It doesn’t actually say it’s SF but it does imply strongly that it’s more than just the detective story it turns out to be. In the same way the following volume of autobiography, about a year in a New York commune, seems to be hedging its bets …)
A Nebula Award-winning author of Nova, Dhalgren and Tales of Neveryon returns to the source of his vision.
samuel r. delany, Heavenly Breakfast, (Bantam)
And on the back:
Samuel R. Delany takes a long look back at the mythic scenes of his youthful adventures. The launching pad for the psychedelic voyages that shaped his phenomenal SF. This is the story of a mind being born, the dawn of a new awareness that set loose the fantastic imagination of "the best science fiction writer in the world" - Galaxy.
(He’d already written six novels by the time the book begins …)
Stranger in a Strange Land, then Dune, and now the major novel of love and terror at the end of time.
samuel r. delaney, Dhalgren, (Bantam)
(Delaney wrote Dhalgren, all right, but certainly neither of the other "major novels" mentioned.)
He offered to sell them the secret of eternal life. All he asked in return was their souls.
philip k. dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
(Actually a novel about Martian colonists, the drugs they take to make life tolerable, and Palmer Eldritch, whose drugs are stronger than reality.)
Two young children saw a strange object land in the middle of a wheatfield, and decided to hide and watch. Two beings with the appearance of tall blond men emerged from the craft and walked away. What happened when the children decided to hide the space ship is a story not even the aliens could believe.
nancy and francis dorer, Two Came Calling
(Also a story not told in the book.)
Stories by the best-selling SF writer in the world.
harlan ellison, From the Land of Fear, (Belmont)
(Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein have outsold Harlan Ellison by many millions of books, to name just three.)
In the end, only the remarkable scientist-dragons of a rebellious Mars can resolve the conflict within a man who cannot live within the society he knows is killing him.
robert heinlein, Between Planets, (NEL)
(It’s elegant. It’s well written. It’s also on the cover of a book that is entirely devoid of Martian dragons, scientists or otherwise, and inner conflicts are not something that Heinlein is usually known for.)
A rare excursion into time travel.
robert a. heinlein, Assignment in Eternity, (Digit)
(A case of guessing what the book ought to be about from the title, and guessing wrong.)
Robert Heinlein is the acknowledged master of space-age fiction. He is also coming to be recognised as the spokesman to a generation searching for new concepts of honour and courage.
robert a. heinlein, Glory Road, (NEL)
(The blurb doesn’t mention who recognised him.)
By popular demand, the master of supernatural horror is back, with one of his best novels.
h. p. lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, (1970 edition)
(Not only was it his only novel, but he’d been dead for over thirty years.)
For sheer inaccuracy the following takes a lot of beating:
It is sometime in the distant future. (About 2020 AD.) Society as we know it no longer exists (it does so), at least not on the moon where a colony has been established complete with technical advances that have made daily life a near Utopia (there is a small scientific outpost on Earth’s other moon - Diana - under menace from a saboteur). Good health, resources and prosperity belong to all. (No they don’t.) Then, purely by accident, a scientist develops a tree capable of growing treasures on its branches. (An old wildlife artist finds a native tree with "penny-like" leaves.) Greed and a lust for power seize the inhabitants. (No, they don’t.) Momentum builds up until an inter-galactic war is on the verge of erupting. (The saboteur strikes again, and a lot of people on the base are getting worried.) Only one man, the unfortunate inventor can prevent the holocaust. But, it already seems too late. (The lovable old wildlife artist tricks the naughty saboteur into revealing his identity, the saboteur repents and everybody goes back to Earth the best of friends.)
philip shorter, Handful of Silver, (Manor Books)
A remarkable and terrifying novel of how Life Might Be for the Space Travellers of the future.
kirt vonnegut jr, Sirens of Titan, (Dell, 1st edition)
(A rather funny novel about the manipulation of human history; God; luck and free will. It has little to say about how Life Might Be for the Space Travellers of the future.)
A disturbing recreation of the Dracula legend.
chelsea quinn yarbro, Hotel Transylvania
(Actually, a love story in eighteenth-century France, in which one of the protagonists happens to be a vampire.)
Some of you may have read the blurb to this book, and the book itself, and you may be wondering about any discrepancies between the two.
This statement is patently untrue.
The authors have not answered this question. They suggested offering a Mars bar to the first reader who came up with the right answer. After the publishers explained the harsh economic realities of publishing today, the authors were forced to abandon this idea, and will now reveal all.
It was Tony Stark, playboy millionaire industrialist, who, when he donned a suit of armour, was known to Marvel Comics’ readers as Iron Man.
Well, it seemed a long time, anyway.
This is also patently untrue. We couldn’t remember any of them.
The authors