SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Some books are able to capture you in one sentence. What are some of the best first lines you've ever read?

A Tale of Two Cities is the first to come to mind.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

I'll see if I can think of others :)

Wow, what a question.
There's a quote by Abraham Hicks - " Words don't Teach."
There will be some here who will remember those those lines of words. But for me, each time a book finds a way to me, it's the emotions that hook me first.

As scarring as the book is, A Clockwork Orange's first line has always stayed with me.

That was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.

So much alien to me and so very atmospheric. You instantly know these are bad people, though you don't yet know why you feel that way.

Here's another one that's very intriguing.

He nearly called you again last night. Can you imagine that, after all this time? He can.

From Seven Types of Ambiguity. The whole book is a head game.

Ooh! I feel like this could turn out to be as fun as the Blurb thread. I am now thinking back on all my favorite books and trying to remember their first lines.

To start off with, I loved The Night Circus right away. The first line was:

The circus arrives without warning.

Kristin B. wrote: "Ooh! I feel like this could turn out to be as fun at the Blurb thread. I am now thinking back on all my favorite books and trying to remember their first lines.

To start off with, I loved [book:T..."

YES! I just came here to post the Night Circus. So good!

Sarah Anne wrote: "Here's another one that's very intriguing.

He nearly called you again last night. Can you imagine that, after all this time? He can.

From Seven Types of Ambiguity. The whole book ..."

That is pretty intriguing.

Sarah Anne wrote: "A Tale of Two Cities is the first to come to mind.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of bel..."

I don't remember where I read or head it, but someone was reading this book and said. 'I am halfway through this book and the author still can't make up his mind.'

Having read the book, I thought the line was hilarious.

Another fun one is Android Karenina. The original first line of Anna Karenina is:

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Android Karenina is:

Functioning robots are all alike; every malfunctioning robot malfunctions in its own way."

I just read Anna Karenina last year so I'm not quite ready to reread the whole story but I cannot wait to read this book!

LIFE OF PI (2001), Yann Martel
''My suffering left me sad and gloomy.''


Maybe not Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but a very great first line, for a very good book.

It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1984 George Orwell.

The man in black fled across the dessert and the gunslinger followed.
The gunslinger Stephen King.

I've seen Steelheart bleed.
Steelheart Brandon Sanderson.

Desert not Dessert 😀

Sarah Anne wrote: "Another fun one is Android Karenina. The original first line of Anna Karenina is:

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Android Karenina is:..."

HA!

Those are great, Kev. Dj, I don't think I could come up with many SFF examples. Luckily a good line is a good line :)

I feel like I should go through all of my books because I know there are some good ones.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

Damn this was a good book

Kev wrote: "It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1984 George Orwell.

The man in black fled across the dessert and the gunslinger followed.
The gunslinger Stephen King.

I'v..."

Such classics! Though I really hope "dessert" is used in the Gunslinger parody, which I can't help but believe exists.

All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

A great opening, but a book I still haven't been able to finish.

I may have spent a little while checking out the first lines of some of my favorite books. :)

A good SF example is Fahrenheit 451:

It was a pleasure to burn.

I just read a short story this morning with a great first line. The story is "Eight Bites," and the collection is Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties.

"As they put me to sleep, my mouth fills with the dust of the moon."

Kristin B. wrote: "I may have spent a little while checking out the first lines of some of my favorite books. :)

A good SF example is Fahrenheit 451:

It was a pleasure to burn."

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kristin B. wrote: "I may have spent a little while checking out the first lines of some of my favorite books. :)

A good SF example is Fahrenheit 451:

It was a pleasure to burn."

The Strange thing is I thought I had read the book, but when I was listening to it on CD on my last road trip, I didn't recall any of it. I am going to have to read it soon though.

I didn't like the book The Quantum Thief, but the first line was a grabber:

"As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make small talk."

Bruce wrote: "I didn't like the book The Quantum Thief, but the first line was a grabber:

"As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make small talk.""

That is an excellent first line!

Oh man, these are all great. It almost makes me angry that so many people are so charismatic on paper.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”

Surely they need no introduction. :P

"It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts." - The Name of the Wind

It's actually two lines but it works

"to wound the autumnal city" - Dhalgren and the book ends with "Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland into the hills, I have come to" to cycle back to the first line of the book much like Finnegan's Wake

"Meg, you can't bring a date to a funeral."

This is the opening for Dune, Dock, and a Dead Man, which is the second book in the Ravenwood Cove Cozy Mystery series.

Don't know how good the book is yet, just started it, but that is a good line to start.

The silence in three parts line is such a good opener. You can feel the hush settling on an audience.

DJ, that is pretty great. And objectionable! Meg, don't let anyone tell you how romance works.

Allison wrote: "The silence in three parts line is such a good opener. You can feel the hush settling on an audience.

DJ, that is pretty great. And objectionable! Meg, don't let anyone tell you how romance works."

LoL. The only upside to the comment is that at least it wasn't a Man saying it. That would have been a killer comment right there.

San Francisco fog smelled good when I stepped off the plan at Hamilton Field early on that gray morning of July 5, 1945, after almost two years of corroding, soul-destroying war. The first thing I did when the crewmen swung open the cabin door was to take a deep gulp of cold, moist air. Only twelve hours before I had left behind the roaring surf of Waikiki Beach and the fragrant green valleys of Hawaii. Beyond this deceptive peace lay the road to Tokyo - the chain of blasted coral islands won from Japan at such bitter cost in young American lives.

Just thought I would throw this one in here. It is, for me at least deeply moving and just goes to show that not just those that write fiction for a living can come up with powerful hooks.

This was written or at least discussed with the person who wrote it for him, by General Holland Smith of the USMC after the end of the Second World War. Smith, nicknamed, Howling Mad, touches something deep in that passage. It is from the book.

Super moving, and I think it illustrates how bananas talented you have to be if you want to get that level of emotive response in one (or maybe two!) sentence(s).

Dj, that would be trite if it were fiction--as non-fiction, it's moving, I agree.

Cheryl wrote: "Dj, that would be trite if it were fiction--as non-fiction, it's moving, I agree."

Maybe that is why most fiction writers avoid such moments in their writing? Haven't really thought of it that way before. Thanks for the eye-opening moment.

Dj wrote: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)"

A pretty bright blue! Sigh. Such a lovely day.

"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." -- Seveneves

""In five years the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman." - Steel Beach

""I once played Romeo and Juliet as a one-man show," I said." - The Golden Globe

"Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man." - The Forever War

"How to describe? How to explain? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails." - A Fire Upon the Deep

"It was the day my grandmother exploded." - The Crow Road

"Our Dragon doesn't eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley." - Uprooted

"The reflection that looked back at her from the mirror wasn't her own." - Jack of Kinrowan

Trike wrote: ""The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." -- Seveneves

""In five years the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman." - Steel Beach

""I once pl..."

Wow.

Wow.

I have to say I'm curious about why penises would become obsolete...

Sarah Anne wrote: "I have to say I'm curious about why penises would become obsolete..."

I'm gonna find out! *adds to TBR*

You can't go wrong with John Varley.

Trike wrote: "You can't go wrong with John Varley."

It looks like I have the first book in that series in my TBR already.

Trike wrote: ""The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." -- Seveneves

""In five years the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman." - Steel Beach

""I once pl..."

Amazing! I can't pick a favorite.

Orca

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to answer your letter, but the gods of Coincidence make bad correspondents of us all; I am not unaware that the passing of a few weeks to you is a long time—as long as the passing of years is to me, and this is long indeed when one is uncertain—so I will plead the excuse that I found your note when I returned from traveling, and will answer your question at once: Yes, I have seen your husband, or the man who used to be your husband, or however you would describe him.

There are many perks to living for twenty-one centuries, and foremost among them is bearing witness to the rare birth of genius. It invariably goes like this: Someone shrugs off the weight of his cultural traditions, ignores the baleful stares of authority, and does something his countrymen think to be completely batshit insane. Of those, Galileo was my personal favorite. Van Gogh comes in second, but he really was batshit insane.
Thank the Goddess I don't look like a guy who met Galileo – or who saw Shakespeare's plays when they first debuted or rode with the hordes of Genghis Khan. When people ask how old I am, I just tell them twenty-one, and if they assume I mean years instead of decades or centuries, then that can't be my fault, can it? I still get carded, in fact, which any senior citizen will tell you is immensely flattering.


Not a line I admit, but a really good opener for a book.

There are a lot of really good lines here. It makes plagiarism very tempting...

Bruce wrote: "There are a lot of really good lines here. It makes plagiarism very tempting..."

Now, this is where historians have it made, they just have to annotated where they got the line and they can steal it. Hell, it is considered good research on occasion.

Dj wrote: "Now, this is where historians have it made, they just have to annotated where they got the line and t..."

I like that!

Oh wow, CB, that's a great one! I admire it for its hook as much as its exemplary grammar.

Allison wrote: "Oh wow, CB, that's a great one! I admire it for its hook as much as its exemplary grammar."

Steven Brust is an excellent writer and I love his Vlad Taltos series especially as the theme/writing style from book to book is so different. And they aren't written in a strict timeline, so you can pick up one and read it w/o reading another one in the group of books about the same person

Martha Wells has a several that I really like.

The Wizard Hunters
"It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court when someone banged on the door."

All Systems Red
"I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellite."