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.
Came looking for this, thanks
This one tops my list, probably followed by the opening to hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy.
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
Neil Gaiman makes a reference to that in Neverwhere, using ‘TV tuned to a dead channel’ to describe a cloudless blue sky.
Lovely books, horrible human being, apparently. Such a shame
Never turn people into heroes, it’s an unearned pedestal. People who create works of art are expressing their ideals not their reality.
Separate the art from the artist, and if you do not wish to enrich the artist, then torrent their works
Which is why I only own one Gaiman book, and even that was a gift. Even streaming music made by cunts feels bad nowadays… but I remind myself that there’s thousands others out there… so I just block the cunts and move on. (Black metal especially has quite a bit of nazis, unfortunately)
I need to read that one of these days
It is a great book and the other two in the trilogy are just as good. I’m going through all of Gibson’s works right now. Currently in Agency and loving it.
It’s a trilogy? I didn’t know that. Cool!
I’ve been waiting for the third book in the Jackpot trilogy for what feels like a decade. I hope he finishes it soon.
Just starting his Jackpot trilogy. I watched the series, they canceled it just as it was getting good. Wonder if that has anything to do with the incomplete books.
I believe that the show was cancelling due to a combination of the writers/actors strike and Amazon just having a nagging tendency to cancel expensive shows. The Peripheral does stray from the books a bit, but it was so good. The cancelling of their good shows and their bullshit extra fee to not see ads made me just stop watching Prime Video completely.
The books are excellent though, super excited about the last book (whenever it comes out). They are my favorite books of his since the Sprawl trilogy (aka Neuromancer books).
The characters were great, and the cast worked well, too. Second season people had settled in to their roles and it flowed better. Especially liked Alexandra Billings’ Lowbeer. That androgyny and smiling threat with presence brought to the character was awesome.
I read it ages ago and enjoyed it immensely. Its influence on everything cyberpunk is clear.
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.
The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.
Blood Rites, book 6 of The Dresden Files
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.
Di’caprio, his finger pointing
Redford, when the mountain man nodded
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.
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
Maybe it’s an adaptation of a Hotblack Desiato song.
Disaster Area’s songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
Thanks for the reminder to get back on the waiting list at my library. I’ve been trying on and off for years to read this
I really do recommend it. Just know that the end is basically a separate novella, that is completely different in tone. I would suggest giving it some time at the least before you read the last of it at the least.
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Stephen King
One of the most perfect shortest stories ever written, shame there were no sequels
Personally I think the first three novels are very strong and the fourth a good prequel too. It goes off the rails after that one though, like a crazy chu chu train so to speak.
I like them as standalone King stories, but hated how he tried to marry all his works (and others works…) into his ill-defined ego-centric universe.
I liked the last chapter of the last book as a continuation of the Gunslinger
I didn’t mind the connection between other books all that much, but the self-insertion, Dr. Dooms and Harry Potter snitches were a bit much and almost felt like parody.
don’t forget spiderman!
Talk about a hook! I can think of 5 obvious questions the reader will have from that simple sentence.
I absolutely love the opening of The Martian by Andy Weir
I’m pretty much fucked. That’s my considered opinion. Fucked. Six days into what should be one of the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare. I don’t even know who’ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now. For the record…I didn’t die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I can’t blame them. Maybe there’ll be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say, “Mark Watney is the only human being to have died on Mars.”
I can’t get into his writing. I like his stories, but his prose is always bubbling with this unearned enthusiasm that doesn’t let the reader actually feel what they want to feel about a situation (“this is so cool!” okay, I guess I should feel happy this…). Plus his characters are all essentially interchangeable with maybe one or two tacked on characteristics that desperately scream “look at me, I’m quirky!” You always have the impression that he’s just using his characters as props to accelerate the plot, and once they’re off the page they’re essentially waiting in stasis to be called back into action.
Contrast this style of writing to Ann Leckie’s SciFi writing, where characters are defined largely by their actions and spoken word is a luxury used to deliver cutting statements that give insights into the rich tapestry of culture, where you’re not even aware of their physical characteristics such as gender or number of limbs, because they ultimately do not matter and they let you the reader form your own idea and own opinion of the scene taking place in front of you.
He doesn’t hint at a wider world, he just outright states exactly what’s happening in any given scene, and I guess I just find that somewhat lazy/insulting
Well, not the first line per se, but the first chapter of Snowcrash is easily one of my favorites ever.
If I had to pick an opening like though, it would be:
“In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.”
If it’s not already trivia you know, apparently Tolkien just wrote that line on a piece of paper one day and just built the story around it.
Hopefully it’s not apocryphal.
That’s cool, I hope it’s true 😆 I heard he basically told the story to his kids and formalized it later, but either way that’s a great origin.
Snow Crash really has fallen off the radar. Really ignited my interest in cyberpunk when I read it 30+ years ago.
It’s terrifying how familiar a lot of his world feels nowadays.
Yeah, absolutely. That and Jennifer Government. We’re getting all the shitty dystopian aspects of cyberpunk without all the cool technological advances.
I was going to post Neuromancer too, but everyone posted that.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs, began to take hold.
Fear and loathing in las vegas
I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. First, I visited my wife’s grave. Then, I joined the army.
- John Scalzi, Old Man’s War
Ah damn how did I forget this one?! One of my absolute favorite books!
I ugly laughed a lot when I read it the first time.
“Dirk Moeller didn’t know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out.”
-John Scalzi, The Android’s Dream
I know it gets shit on but I legitimately like, “it was a dark and stormy night.” There’s a reason it became cliche. It’s very evocative.
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
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
There’s good eatin’ on those things!
