A whole bunch of people have pointed me at articles like this one, which claim that you can improve almost any book by making the second sentence “And then the murders began.”
It’s entirely possible they’re correct. But let’s check, with a sampling of books. As different books come in different tenses and have different voices, I’ve made some minor changes.
“Many people find encryption disturbing and even a little scary. And then the murders begin.” — PGP & GPG
“Welcome to Cisco Routers for the Desperate! And then the murders begin.” — Cisco Routers for the Desperate, 2nd ed
“Network administrators of all backgrounds share one underlying, overwhelming desire. And then the murders begin.” — Network Flow Analysis
“I asked a psychiatric nurse practitioner about paranoia, and was told that ‘paranoia is the feeling that people are after you.’ And then the murders begin.” — Absolute OpenBSD 2nd edition.
“Over the last ten years, OpenSSH has become the standard tool for remote management of Unix-like systems and many network devices. And then the murders began.” — SSH Mastery
“The Domain Name System (DNS) maps hostnames like www.michaelwlucas.com to IP addresses, so computers can find Internet sites without people needing to remember strings like 192.0.2.87 or 2001:db8::ab01. And then the murders began.” — DNSSEC Mastery
“Resolved: controlling user access to a computer’s privileged programs and files is a right pain. And then the murders began.” — Sudo Mastery
“Everyone from big organizations to family photographers worries about preserving their precious data in the event of system failures. And then the murders begin.” — Tarsnap Mastery
“You can arbitrarily replace everything in your computer–except the hard disk. And then the murders begin.” — FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials
“Dear systems administrators: the firewall people don’t want to talk to you either. And then the murders begin.” — Networking for Systems Administrators
“Storage: a hole with no bottom, into which you pour data. And then the murders begin.” — FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems
“Much of our systems administration training focuses on filesystems. And then the murders begin.” — FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS
“The Z File System, or ZFS, is a complicated beast, but it is also the most powerful tool in a sysadmin’s Batman-esque utility belt. And then the murders begin.” — FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS
“Authentication on Unix-like systems is perhaps the closest thing sysadmins have to black magic. And then the murders begin.” — PAM Mastery
“Blood shall rain from the sky, and great shall be the lamentation of the Linux fans. And then, the murders will begin.” — Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Ed
Conclusion: Seems legit.
Tack on “in bed” or “between the sheets” to the end and that works too, just like fortune cookies.
If you can work in bunches of crows with the murders, it’s even better.
But Batman doesn’t murder people!
Not long ago, if you asked what Lisp was for, many people would have answered “for artificial intelligence.” And then the murders began. – On Lisp.