Ghastly Beyond Belief

THE BLURB OVERBLOWN

Sometimes the claims made by blurb writers for their books are so grandiose as to result in the Blurb Overblown.

When Man bites Dog it's news. When the greatest writer of the new science fiction brings out a new book it's history. Aldiss is back with the biggest SF book of 1975. You may have to wait until 2001 to read a better Aldiss but don't count on it.

brian aldiss, The Eighty Minute Hour, (Leisure Books)

(Actually, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001 ...)

The most famous science fantasy novel of all time ... A searing indictment of Western civilization. A staggering, shocking, revealing look at the fundamental urges in our way of life.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, Stranger In A Strange land, (NEL)

The freshest, funniest work of fiction about America since the drafting of the US Constitution.

THOM KEYES, The Battle of Disneyland, (Star)

This and only this is the genuine novel of our times. Accept no substitutes.

JOHN SLADEK, The Muller Fokker Effect

Kilgore Trout, 'One of the most beloved and respected human beings in history.' So said Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions. Snaggle-toothed. whitehaired, long and tangled, a product of the imagination ... a'man whose exploits have been the focal point of one of our greatest contemporary writers, Kurt Vonnegut. For the first time without lurid covers ...

KILGORE TROUT, Venus on the Half Shell, (Star)

The most dazzlingly prophetic novel ever written in America. The all-time great which ranks with Brave New World and 1984.

PHILIP WYLIE/EDWIN BALMER, When Worlds Collide, (Paperback Library)

THE BLURB BARBARIAN

In writing blurbs for sword and sorcery novels, blurb writers try to appeal to another basic human interest: violence. The urge to hack one's way through the underground clutching a broadsword ...

The biggest and best of the barbarian horde is Robert E. Howard's Conan. He gets his fair share of the action in his blurbs.

Conan the Wanderer (Sphere)-The Mighty Barbarian from beyond time carves his way through four fantastic stories.

Conan the Warrior (Sphere)-Conan wades through rivers of blood and overcomes foes both natural and supernatural

and in Conan the Usurper (Sphere)-He battles murderous demons and incredible monsters as he cuts his bloody swath through the Hyborian Age.

('Crom!' swore Conan..'l've cut my bloody swath!')

Kad'i, the young warrior, axed a path through a hundred adversaries.

LIN CARTER, Quest of Kadii, (Belmont)

The mighty barbarian hacked his way through a thousand adventures.

GARDNER F. Fox, Kothar of the Magic Sword, (Belmont)

(I wonder if the same person wrote both blurbs.)
Some Barbarian blurbs are a little more specific than the all-purpose ones above:

To rescue a banished princess, Vantro the Barbarian turns his mighty powers against the sinister Fanes!

GEOFFREY N. WALLMAN, Death Trek

Sometimes you even get something rather more interesting:

Thunderbolts flashed from his fingertips and the Universe trembled with the sound of his satanic laughter.

DAVE VAN ARNHAM, Wizard of Storms, (Belmont)

(Would that the book were a fraction as interesting.)

THE BLURB BIZARRE

That science fiction stories are often slightly different from the mainstream is something that blurb writers tend to take advantage of; it gives them a break from the monotony of writing for love sagas and epics.

Home is the hunter, home from the hull.

BRIAN ALDISS, Nonstop, (Pan)

ISAAC ASIMOV, Foundation, (Panther)

In the fifties it read:

A million worlds made up their society - now the threat of thirty thousand years of anarchy loomed large.

And in the sixties, it was fashionably reduced to:

The galaxy was crumbling into thirty thousand years of anarchy.

Science fiction at its most thrilling! Giant metal-hungry Bats in spaceships invade the Earth. Called in to investigate, Neal Vaughan, the hero of this story, finds himself involved in some strange and terrific adventures including a journey to the moon!

SYDNEY J. BOUNDS, !'he Moon Raiders

(Who says science fiction isn't the literature of ideas?)

'READ AND DESTROY' is 'stamped' on the cover.

RAY BRADBURY, Fahrenheit 451, (Corgi)

Weird, wild, stunning - will make your pulse rev up and your brain stand on end!

JOHN BRUNNER, Time-jump, (Dell)

They were little green men with a difference ... and what a difference! They were green. They were little. They were bald as billiard balls. And they were EVERYWHERE!

FREDRIC BROWN, Martians Go Home

TERROR! CONFLICT! OPPRESSION! and a Galaxy in CHAINS!

H. K. BULMER, Empire of Chaos, (Panther)

FEAR! DOUBT! INSANITY! as Earth faces invasion from outer space.

H. J. CAMPBELL, Another Space - Another Time, (Panther)

FOR HIS SECRET PLAN ... these LIVING, bodiless, BRAINS.

J. CAMPBELL, Brain Ultimate, (Panther)

(Their capitals, not mine.)

Only one man could save the world and he was dead. Again.

PHILIP K. DICK, Now Wait For Last Year, (Granada, Manor)

... Now Captain Kirk and his friends face their greatest challenge - to repair the fabric of the Universe before Time is lost forever.

DIANE DUANE, Wounded Sky, (Pocket)

(Pass the, puncture repair kit, Scotty.)

Forget the Kid Stuff.

DAN GOULOYE, The Last Leap

Would you believe it? Only an intergalactic guerilla force of pigs could destroy the monsters of the Ghost Plateau!

HARRY HARRISON, The Man From P.I.G., (Avon)

(A blurb none the less weird for being perfectly accurate.)

The Space probe returned to Earth carrying a cargo of writhing death!

HARRY HARRISON, Plague From Space

('Anything to declare?' 'Just a cargo of writhing death.')

HARRY HARRISON, Skyfall, (Corgi)

On the front cover:

A novel of almost unbearable suspense.

While the back cover reads, in case anyone failed to get the point:

'In the almost unbearable suspense genre.'

MARTIN AMIS

A 'yarn' for science fiction enthusiasts.

GEORGE HAY, Flight of the 'Hesper'

To thwart the deadly menace of Impulsatia, they probed the endless voids of hyper-space.

JOHN ROBERT HAYNES, Scream from Outer Space

He Was A Destroyer From Another Planet, Bent On The Destruction of the World.

J. HUNTER HOLLY, Encounter

(Good to see someone doing their job ...)

Linc Hostler was sitting in a packed stadium when the Flying Eyes appeared and cast their hypnotic power over half the crowd. Thousands of people suddenly began marching zombie-like into the woods where they vanished into a black pit.

J. HUNTER HOLLY, The Flying Eyes

(One solution to violence on the terraces.)

An alien from another world. A visitor from space. An intruder from the cosmos. So how do you imagine him? Five heads, seven arms, a death-ray gun in every hand? Eight feet tall, handsome as hell, dressed in gold with an enigmatic smile? Well you'd be wrong. It looks like a chair. An armchair. A comfortable old purple armchair. But it can still scare the daylights out of you. Who knows what it will do?

ELGAR HOSKY, The Purple Armchair, (Mayflower)

(For a start it can clash with the wallpaper ...)

In this book, John D. Macdonald turns from suspense to a story of ~~fanta~~...

This book is about a ~~mysteri~~...

This is a novel of wild ~~adventu~~...

If Thorne Smith and Mickey Spillane had collaborated on ...

It's a story. By one of America's greatest story-tellers.

Read it.

JOHN D. MACDONALD, The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything, (Gold Metal)

This novel was written inside a capsule travelling through space to a dimension we should hope never to know!

FRANK BELKNAP LONG, The Horror from the Hills!!!!!!

JOHN LYMINGTON, Froomb!

It simply carries this message:

Fluids running out of my brakes.

(?)

Missing: Believed ... eaten?

EMIL PETAJA, The Nets of Space, (5 Star)

ONE NEUROTIC AMOEBA casually placed can alter the entire course of world history. Robert Sheckley says it's like that tiny pebble that sends ripples to the edge of the lake. And since Sheckley figures absolutely anything can happen the possible futures he envisions romp buoyantly all the way from wretched to raucus. If you balk and boggle at some of his predictions think of it this way: THE FUTURE WON'T JUST HAPPEN. IT WILL SNEAK UP ON YOU a little at a time.

ROBERT SHECKLEY, Store of Infinity, (Bantam)

They were furry things over seven feet tall and they came down to earth with a diabolical plan!

RUSS WINTERBOTHAM, The Men From Arcturus

THE BLURB PROFESSIONAL

He was a conscript astronaut; a galley-slave of space ...

JOHN E. MULLER, Perilous Galaxy, (Badger)

THE BLURB PRACTICAL

Take a piece of bent copper wire and conquer the universe.

ERIC FRANK RUSSELL, Next Of Kin, (Mayflower)

To create a new Metropolis press the right button ... and run!

LOUIS TRIMBLE, The City Machine

THE BLURB PHILOSOPHICAL

Death is the only answer to war.

LEO P. KELLEY, Odyssey to Earthdeath

THE BLURB SARTORIAL

Across the galaxy to universes populated by the tailed, the scaled, and the properly tentacled.

KEITH LAUMER AND ROSEL GEORGE BROWN, Earth-blood, (Coronet)

Terror in Needlepoint.

JOHN KEIR CROSS, The Other Passenger, (Ballantine)

THE BLURB DOOMSDAY

They alone, of all humanity, escaped destruction in the cosmic catastrophe that swept all life from the globe when the untried thorium bomb exploded prematurely.

WILLIAM DEXTER, World In Eclipse

When the first Pagbeast escaped from the triad scientist's laboratory, terror was loosed upon the world. Man faced complete annihilation. He had once again created the means of his own destruction.

J.T. MCINTOSH, The Rule of the Pagbeast, (Crest)

(First the atomic bomb, now the Pagbeast…)

THE BLURB DESCRIPTIVE

The blurb that does away with any need to ever read the book in question.

Was this brain of pulsating cells completely indestructible, this formless horror which threatened the world ...

From the gloom of sinister swamp it devastates the peaceful farming area around Booger's Marsh, enormous, threatening to engulf the whole of doomed mankind ... Science is baffled. Atomic holocaust fails to destroy the alien spawn or check its loathsome spread... One man - and a courageous girl, in the midst of the shrieking terror, stand between the black horror and total annihilation, finding in a quest for knowledge whereby to destroy the hideous slime monster a supreme test for love and endurance ... And from the ashes and ruin gropes this same indomitable man and girl struggling desperately to preserve sanity amid utter chaos, sustained by an idea, a mere spark, fostering it, developing reason until, finally, ingenuity prevails, and love, with courage, conquers fear and solves the demoralising problem ... What it was, its origin, no-one will ever know. For the answer could only be found-in hell ...

VI 1 CTOR NORWOOD, Night of the Black Horror, (Badger)

Alex was a pioneer. Like other pioneers he had problems. He had more problems than most. When things start to go wrong in space they go wrong in a big way. One by one the perils of the void took their toll of his companions. Alex was alone, alone with a vision, a vision of a town, home.

Only thoughts of home kept him alive. He remembered trees, houses, shops, churches, people ... people.

At last he reached earth… or perhaps it wasn’t earth? Things had changed unbelievably. Perhaps he had changed? How long had he been away? How far had he drifted? There was a sinister possibility that this wasn't home at all. If the things that looked like people weren't people, but aliens, what was he to do?

Alex was a realist. He knew what space could do to a man's mind. He was disinclined to trust the evidence of his own senses. A mind that has had more than it can take can produce some very peculiar perceptions...

PEL TORR, The Last Astronaut, (Badger)

The final blurb type is rather rare. In an attempt to find a new way to get a book off the shelves and into the buyer's pockets, Panther created:

THE BLURB NONEXISTENT

The publishers regret to announce that there is no blurb to inform prospective readers about the contents of The Opener of the Way. Unfortunately the person designated to write the blurb was found dead after reading the book, having apparently suffered some mysterious kind of severe shock ...

ROBERT BLOCH, The Opener of the Way, (Panther) 45

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

'It is good to renew one's wonder,' said the philosopher.

'Space travel has again made children of us all.'

RAY BRADBURY, Epigraph to Silver Locusts

(Martian Chronicles)

Authors often take the opportunity of saying something before the book actually starts. However, few have ever played around with the copyright notices ...

ERIC FRANK RUSSELL, Next of Kin

(In a story about imaginary symbiotes, called Eustaces, of which Russell said in his introduction:)

Apart from the typing of it I had nothing whatever to do with the book. It was ghost-written for me by my next of kin. Or perhaps 1 should say it was kin-written for me by my next of ghost.

(ibid.)

Other authors have rewritten -the 'All persons etc. are imaginary' line:

Note: All characters in this novel are fictitious except possibly the Martians.

EDGAR PANGBORN, A Mirror for Observers

All persons, places, and events in this book are real ... No names have been changed to protect the innocent, since God Almighty protects the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine.

KURT VONNEGUT JR, Sirens of Titan

Others write forewords and author's notes.

Pretentious:

Author's note: It is suggested that the reader not attempt to read this book at one sitting. The intellectual content of these stories, taken without break, may cause brain damage. This note is intended most sincerely, and not as hyperbole.

ARTHUR BYRON COVER, The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists

Honest:

Particularly disliking forewords, 1 seldom read them; yet it seems that I scarcely ever write a story that 1 do not inflict a foreword on my long-suffering readers. Occasionally 1 also have to inject a little weather and scenery in my deathless classics, two further examples of literary racketeering that 1 especially deplore in the writings of others. Yet there is something to be said in extenuation of weather and scenery, which, together with adjectives, do much to lighten the burdens of authors and run up their word count.

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, from foreword of Skeleton Men of Jupiter

And embarrassing:

Come with us, 0 readers, to a world where gleaming cities raise silver spires against the stars, sorcerers cast spells from subterranean lairs, baleful spirits stalk crumbing ruins ... and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the broadswords brandished by heroes of preternatural might and valour. In this world men are mighty, women are beautiful, problems are simple, and life is adventurous, and nobody has ever heard of inflation, the petroleum shortage, or atmospheric pollution!

L.SPRAGUE DECAMP, Introduction to Conan The Barbarian

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