Frank Herbert (author of DUNE) told mathematician/inventor and friend Rick Bennett that he reminded him of his character Jorj X. McKie in the short story THE TACTFUL SABOTEUR. Bennett, inventor of the Hagoth voice stress analyzer, made the front page of every November 9, 1976, Sunday newspaper for his analysis of the Ford/Carter presidential debates. Bennett's appearances on NBC's TODAY and TOMORROW WITH TOM SNYDER, ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA, THE McNEIL-LEHRER REPORT and the MIKE DOUGLAS shows impressed the DUNE author, who supported Rick's selling his Washington State company and running for congress in 1978. Herbert got Bennett 47% of the vote, which wasn't enough to take him to DC. Bennett became "manager of special projects" for Data General. His first job was to pass tax-limitation in Massachusetts, where he hired the famous Tony Schwartz. Schwartz's DAISY ad ran only once on one television network but destroyed Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. Schwartz taught Bennett guerrilla warfare, and Massachusetts tax-limitation passed with 60% of the vote. Rick Bennett moved to Silicon Valley and mentored by Tony Schwartz, started his guerrilla warfare career. His one-man ad agency took Larry Ellison's Oracle Corporation from $15 million in sales to over $1 billion in less than six years. And he did all of Marc Bennioff's Salesforce.com pre-IPO advertising. On the day of his IPO in June of 2004, Benioff wrote Bennett, "We couldn't have done this without you."Since 2000, Bennett has published two novels: DESTROYING ANGEL and DADDY'S LITTLE FELONS. Four of his award-winning short stories appear in an anthology, CRESTING THE SUN. This new novel, THE LAST WILL & TESTAMENT OF HARLEY AND HIS DOG, possibly stands alone as the most unique alien invasion sci-fi novel ever penned. How many alien-invasion books have the invaders getting creamed before they fire a shot. Readers are invited to share their agreement with this assertion by emailing rick@rickbennett.com.
