What are your favorite opening lines to a sci/fi novel?

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Here y'all go, punctuation and all.

"I know a place where there is no smog and no parking problem and no population explosion. . . no Cold War and no H-Bombs and no television commercials. . . no Summit Conferences, no Foreign Aid, no hidden taxes-no income tax."

Have you walked the Road?

[Treven]

"It was a dark and stormy night". No wait, that was what Snoopy typed out.

[igorsk]

"The man who was not Terrence O'Grady had come quietly."

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Have you walked the Road?

I keep hearing mixed reviews/reactions to The Road.....haven't read it, but maybe the mixed reaction is a reason to do so.

[mazzeltjes]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Here y'all go, punctuation and all.

"I know a place where there is no smog and no parking problem and no population explosion. . . no Cold War and no H-Bombs and no television commercials. . . no Summit Conferences, no Foreign Aid, no hidden taxes-no income tax."

RAH



One of my favorites.


At noon, when Dr. Charles Ransom moored his houseboat in the entrance to the river, he saw Quilter, the idiot-son of the old woman who lived in the ramshackle barge outside the yacht basin, standing on a spur of exposed rock on the opposite bank and smiling at the dead birds floating in the water below his feet. The reflection of his swollen head swam like a deformed nimbus among the limp plumage. The caking mudbank was speckled with pieces of paper and driftwood, and to Ransom the dreamfaced figure of Quilter resembled a demented faun strewing himself with leaves as he mourned for the lost spirit of the river.

[curtw]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I keep hearing mixed reviews/reactions to The Road.....haven't read it, but maybe the mixed reaction is a reason to do so.

I'd predict that most folks have the same reaction to The Road that they have to The Old Man and the Sea, because it's pretty much the same story; just a different setting.

[curtw]

I love space opera, so I'm going to have to go with:

They say his father was a comet and his mother a cosmic wind, that he juggles planets as if they were feathers and wrestles with black holes just to work up an appetite. They say he never sleeps, and that his eyes burn brighter than a nova, and that his shout can level mountains.

[jharker]

I'll chip in with a couple:

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here.

And of course,

Two thousand million or so years ago two galaxies were colliding; or, rather, were passing through each other.

[Strether]

Originally Posted by igorsk

"The man who was not Terrence O'Grady had come quietly."

Glad to see someone else on the forum who enjoys that series.

Jim

[BenG]

It's fantasy more than sci-fi but Silverlock by John Myers Myers has a great opening line.
"If I had cared to live, I would have died."

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by curtw

I'd predict that most folks have the same reaction to The Road that they have to The Old Man and the Sea, because it's pretty much the same story; just a different setting.

Interesting.

[AJW]

Sorry if this is a bit longer than what you had in mind, but I think it's a fantastic opener, it's at the start of all Black Library published Warhammer 40,000 novels:

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet Even In his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To Be A man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

[WillAdams]

Steve Perry's ``Matador'' novels all start w/ a variation along the lines of:

``Death came for him by mistake...''

``Death came for him from behind the trees...''

&c.

They're lots of fun and thought-provoking, though he's bailed on writing the novel I want to read about how his society would deal w/ near immortality and society-altering, universe-bending technology.

William

[Slite]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

I don't know that from the opening of the book, seeing as I haven't read it. I do know it (or, rather, it-with-variation) from the opening of one of my first LPs, which still sits in the record collection back at mum's.

Cheers,
Marc

Ah yes.. I still get goosebumps whenever I hear those words recited by Richard Burton.

Jeff Wayne's Musical version of the War of the Worlds is one of the alltime great albums!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Slite

Jeff Wayne's Musical version of the War of the Worlds is one of the alltime great albums!

Sure is, and the live show (which I've seen twice now) is even better!