. . . "Of the countless creations that begin, in word or in spirit, with the phrase ???It was a dark and stormy night,??? very few live up to the standards set by its most famously pulpy invoker, Edward Bulwer-Lytton: undulating sentences that slither endlessly and say nothing, banal imagery rendered in exacting detail, and gleeful terribleness masquerading as thoughtfully descriptive prose." . .