Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on his work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.
Best non-fiction opening that sounds like a threat.
Wait, I read this! Can’t remember the name of the book right now though.
Edit: Ok, I remember it from a screenshot in a thread about cheeky textbooks
This one tops my list, probably followed by the opening to hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy.
I think the hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy opener is my favorite, but a close second is Albert Camus’
Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.
it hits differently these days, but: “The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel” -William Gibson, Neuromancer
I need to read that one of these days
I read it ages ago and enjoyed it immensely. Its influence on everything cyberpunk is clear.
Neil Gaiman makes a reference to that in Neverwhere, using ‘TV tuned to a dead channel’ to describe a cloudless blue sky.
Speaking of Iain m banks, the paragraph about an outside context problem is one of my favourite openings he’s done. “An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilizations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop”
Some beautiful turns of phrase throughout. Maybe I should revisit these now that I’m less worried about missing out on something, so I can just browse and skip around.
He was a big fan of the power of the first line. You can really see it in a lot of his books.
His last ever book started with
“The two craft met within the blast-shadow of the planetary fragment called Ablate, a narrow twisted scrue of rock three thousand kilometres long and shaped like the hole in a tornado.”
Or maybe it’s the second para. I haven’t got my copy on me. But I memorised the last bit on the spot.
Yeah I haven’t read that one in a while
This is my favorite opening line:
The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.
- Neal Stephenson, Seveneves
He may know how to start a book but he can’t end one to save his life.
The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.
Blood Rites, book 6 of The Dresden Files
Creepy weirdo that writes copaganda but damned if that sequence doesn’t slap.
Doesn’t Dresden frequently have problems with the cops?
But there’s like 2 good cops, so it must be copaganda.
Out of how many?
Well, the action happens in Chicago. And there’s a special investigations unit that’s not very respected as far as I can remember(it’s a sort of dead end job that nobody wants) that he deals with and there’s a couple of good cops and a couple of bad cops there. For all the rest, the books keep mentioning how he doesn’t trust other cops, how many of them are in the pockets of mobsters and other villains, etc. There’s even corrupt fbi agents as antagonists in the second book.
Which is a very American mindset that is built upon our sense of “freedom”.
The bad guy is a bad cop. Bad cops exist. But the cavalry (in this case, Murphy and her partner and Butters and Michael and so forth) are the good cops. Because, when the chips are down, the real heroic cops come to help.
It is much more prevalent in military fiction because… ACAB is a common phrase for a reason. One of the best examples is the Bradley Cooper A-Team movie (also a really fun movie). On its surface? The villain is a rogue CIA officer (also maybe a rogue general? Been a minute). But throughout the entire movie we have the titular team regularly talk about how much they learned in the military and Rocket Raccoon can’t help but want to bang the hell out of the good military cop who both wants to capture them AND wants to know the truth. And, when the chips are down, she is there to save the day.
Its one of those things you don’t pick up on until you do a lot of reading… or think about why The Military is so willing to allow the use of men and material in filming. If they weren’t okay with the idea of a rogue officer then they would have refused the use of IFVs and so forth. PLENTY of movies end up stuck using stock footage because of that.
But no. It is very much the extension of “a few bad apples don’t ruin the bunch” that is used to handwave evil shit that cops (and the military) does.
Butcher isn’t the only writer who does that shit. But it is one of those things where “So… does he realize he is doing it?” up until the “cops are the light in the darkness” wank fest during The Battle of Chicago (I forgot which book).
It is up to you whether you care or not. I semi-recently rambled about/glazed a movie that I outright consider CCP propaganda that stars “The Tom Cruise of Hong Kong”. And… I will watch basically any Donnie Yen movie because he is just that charismatic and physically magnificent. But I also make it a point to think through WHY specific roles were chosen or specific dialogue was spoken even as I am cheering on him fighting his way out of essentially a favela.
Damn, I really don’t have an original thought in my head
The more we communicate in memes and pop culture references, the closer we get to going full Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
If Zoey Ashe had known she was being stalked by a man who intended to kill her and then slowly eat her bones, she would have worried more about that and less about getting her cat off the roof.
– Jason Pargin, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits
The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.
All too many have forgotten the face of their fathers…
This is my favorite opening hook of all time.
Tells you everything you need to know about what you’re about to read. Uhh, kinda.
I don’t think it’s technically the very first line in the book, but The Way of Kings’ “Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.” still gives me chills.
I love how it slowly changes in emotional tone the further you get in the series but it hits hard enough you remember the line.
Oh yeah that was an excellent opener! Absolutely glues your nose to the book.
Other than the epigraph for the prologue, it is sort of the first line of the book. Because the part about Kalak is the “Prelude to the Stormlight Archive,” and after that the book says “Book One \n The Way of Kings” and then goes on to the prologue.
Yeah and I’ll admit the Kalak bit didn’t pull me in super well, in a way very reminiscent of the plantation scene of mistborn
Ive long found something amusing about Seveneves’s opening line being “The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason”.
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
Every single book (all fifteen of them!) in the WoT series starts the same exact way, and I respect the dedication to consistency.
“This is not the beginning. But it is a beginning”.
Absolutely love these!
My favorite opening lines that I didn’t see yet are:
Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”
“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach in his bed”
Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
And, Gibson’s “Neuromancer”
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men.”
- Red Sister, Mark Lawrence.
Good book if you want something a bit like Harry Potter but aimed at a more mature audience and not funding the stripping away of human rights.
“West of House. You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.”
Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.
The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.
And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.
And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap… And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I have in the eagle. And then the eagle lets go.
Terry Pratchett - Small Gods
There’s good eatin’ on those things!
Which early Prachett book starts with a guru or wizard obtaining enlightenment then asking his apprentice “go on ask me any question I have observed everything and know it all!” the appretice asked him what he wants for breakfast “ah, one of the difficult ones”
Definitely an upper quartile Pratchett.
Thank you,
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘One of the difficult ones.’
I like “The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.” from The Light Fantastic
