Blurbs
This, on Charles Stross’ blog is too funny not to be copied :
“Over on rec.arts.sf.written they’re discussing cover blurbs of yore. A cover blurb is what happens after you slave your guts out for, oh, half an hour, extruding deathless prose by the kilogram. If you’re lucky, what goes on the cover is tasteful, a minor work of art in its own right, and doesn’t give away the plot. If you’re unlucky a bored (or maybe malicious) marketing hack glances at the first page, then comes up with something like this:
Women are writing SCIENCE-FICTION!
ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!!
Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel.
Such a women is Margarget St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this, SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to ageless, immemorial rites…
FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!! INVENTIVE!!!
I cringe in sympathy with for Margaret St.Clair, whose novel Sign of the Labrys got saddled with this back cover blurb by someone at Bantam in 1963. (Thanks to Per C. Jorgensen for unearthing this brilliantly polished coprolite.)
Anyone got anything comparable to draw to my attention? “