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COMPETITION

Hype tripe

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 1941 you were invited to provide a blurb for a book being hyped by the publisher with the challenge The Book You Dare Not Read!'

Some of your titles were truly nerve-test- ing. `When you pick up this book', warned Jim Yorke's blurb-writer, 'it "reads" your deepest phobias through digitally transmit- ted signals received from your "aura" and then transmits them in fictionalised form to the narrative program.' Peter Norman's warning was even blunter: 'Every 100th copy of this intriguingly post-modern polit- ical thriller packs an unforgettable punch — in the form of a tiny explosive device, primed to detonate at the touch of a fin- gertip.' Adrian Fry's The Antinovel by

Cheviot Syme, on the other hand, induced more drowsiness than alarm — `a series of unreliable, non-gender-specific narrators struggle to tell the story of a series of nov- elists writing novels about novelists.... '

The prizewinners, printed below, get £20 each, and the bonus bottle of Isle of Jura Single Malt Scotch whisky goes to K.G. McBeath.

Women adored him and backed his cause, but his radical views made him powerful enemies who planned his downfall. Deserted, derided, afraid, he faced his last great test — alone. Gorgeous palaces, solemn temples, common- ers and kings rise and fall in this swirling saga of lust, envy, greed, ambition, murder and blind obedience to unearthly powers. Not for the squeamish these nightmare images, acts of bar- barism, unbridled passions and, never far away, the force that launched a thousand scrips and turned proud kings to vegans.

Based on historical events, this oeuvre of majesty tells how a close-knit community sur- vives generations of war, pestilence and famine; how a flashy upstart becomes an organisational genius, mad-rage brings down a queen, a peb- bledasher founds a dynasty, a princess sheds her inhibitions to get ahead, and a visionary sees hell on horseback.

Read The Bible ... if you dare! (K.G. McBeath) If you are found with this book, the chances are that you will be arrested. The publisher has already left the country; the printers are safe in Outer Mongolia; the author, posing as a whisky- blender, is learning colloquial Swahili in County Cork.

To write this sort of book is simply no longer permitted. It infringes the law of libel, the Race Relations Act, the guidelines of the Equal Opportunities Commission and all those careful- ly maintained principles that presently govern our literary intelligentsia, our teenage scene and the editors of our popular press. It is sexist, racist, colonialist, pro-Major and deplorable. It is even devout.

Buy it, and unless you're a braver person than we give you credit for, get rid of it immediately. (Paul Griffin) Baffled by that 'extra' switch on your car dash- board? Does it apply only to up-range models? No, it's a transponder with a mission. Why do traffic lights linger on red? They're studying the drivers — you included. Open your fridge. That's no courtesy light — you're on video. And why do the junk-mails and telesales home in on you? Here's Looking at You reveals all!

Big Brother was comatose compared with the sly-tech vigilantes who patrol our millennium threshold. Trust nothing: not photo-booths, not barcode scanners, not the pulsating dots on your digital watch ...We are all in the public domain now. Privacy is history. Dare you discover these Hidden Invaders, the software sleuths who mark our every move? This book will horrify and amaze. Your life is no longer your own!

(Mike Morrison)

What's your ideal read? Something with a surfeit of sex and shocks? Something that really gets your pulse racing? Then beware — this book could be your ultimate challenge. Is it altogether too exciting? No! Just the opposite! This book is so boring it could slow your pulse to the point of death. Fatalities have occurred. Even single pages, when taken in isolation, have rendered readers comatose. In the USA, one man is hav- ing Stephen King read intensively to him in a desperate effort to restore him to consciousness — he managed just half a page of this deadly book. What's the most boring thing you've ever done? It will become the richest achievement compared with reading this book. And don't think caffeine or uppers can help — others have tried and are not here to be congratulated. Will you join them? Will you read this book — and

live to tell the tale? (Andrew Gibbons) You think you are strong; now and forever. So keep your happy delusions. Put this book down. Now. Don't let it get inside your fears and night- mares. It knows your secret symptoms and puts terrifying names to twinges you scarcely dare mention.

It doesn't hide behind medical terminology: this book uses everyday language from pubs and changing-rooms, tabloids and sitcoms. So you have to understand.

It tells you how much worse it's going to get. Some people want to know how long they've got — but do you? Are you tough enough to take the naked truth? To face your own decline?

More than a medical dictionary, more than an encyclopaedia of disease, more than an almanac of disaster, this is the world's best self-diagnosis manual for those brave enough to take it on the chin. You're probably suffering from every chap- ter already. But do youltally want to know?

(D.A. Prince)

No. 1944: Rollicker

You are invited to provide some rollicking verse (maximum 16 lines) beginning with the lines, 'Prendergast, Blenkinsop, Chol- mondeley and Browne/Once chartered a cab for a night on the town. . ' Entries to `Competition No. 1944' by 1 August.