Blurbs
First published 12/16/1999

Hey, I like literature and everything, but that doesn't mean I'm going to read it. When I'm looking at a paperback I expect to be grabbed by the blurb on the back cover, and quotes from 90-year-old literature professors about how this is an exciting new translation don't really do it for me.

That's why I suggest publishers lie a little, to try and stimulate sales. Here's what the blurbs describing these classics should say:

Ulysses: Four-time Bova award winning sci-fi novelist James Joyce takes us to strange new worlds in his latest epic. The starship Ulysses was supposed to be mankind's life boat away from a dying Earth but when its onboard computer developed "streaming consciousness" it seemed to have different plans! Now, Captain Richard Dublin finds himself trapped onboard, hurtling towards the edge of the galaxy! Can he penetrate the Ulysses' defenses and turn the ship around in time to save himself and the earth?!? "James Joyce is the greatest living science fiction author today." - Sci-Fi Weekly.

War and Peace: From the screenwriters of the hit TV show comes this first exciting Law & Order novel! Former District Attorney Ben Stone has gone into private practice, and taking on a case involving a murder on an airforce base seems like a routine assignment. But twists and turns abound, and his investigations with streetwise private eye Mike Logan soon lead all the way back to New York and District Attorney Jack McCoy! (Watch for these upcoming Law & Order novels: Crime and Punishment, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice.)

Charge of the Light Brigade: When brilliant scientist Doctor Jonathan Bright and his team stepped into the prototype photon chamber they expected to perform a routine experiment. Instead, accidental exposure to mysterious "ultra-photons" left them changed -- masters of light, from the infrared to the ultraviolet. They had become the Light Brigade! But can even their amazing photon powers be enough to thwart the strange invaders from a black hole who plan to plunge earth into permanent darkness?!?

Slaughterhouse Five: Jake Chestly is a green beret falsely convicted of murder. Cherise Profunde is a black widow who lures husbands to their deaths with her irresistible sensuality. Roy "The Brick" Waszinski is a professional wrestler on the run from gamblers. And the Mearson twins are a pair of sociopaths with genius IQs who kill for the intellectual challenge. When eccentric billionaire Jackson Serge brings together this brilliant group of maladjusted loners he creates more than just a team... he creates the Slaughterhouse Five!

H.A.M.L.E.T.: The Herrier-deployed Attack Military Laser Equipment Team is always ready to defend America's shores against tin-plated despots and madmen, but when a splinter group of ex-K.G.B. agents seizes Elsinore Airbase and its cache of biological weapons the team faces their greatest challenge! Can they nullify the terrorists before General Fortinbras is forced to call in a nuclear strike? And what is the secret agenda of secret-ops agents Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? "Bill Shakespeare captures the realities of special-forces operations more authentically than anyone else writing today." -Oliver North.

Like the column? Buy the book! 100 Years of Subatomic Humor now on sale!