There are a fair number of striking first sentences and paragraphs in SF&F, many of which are mentioned up thread. I thought that I remembered one or two others but generally couldn’t write down the sentence without first finding the book. When I did find the book, I was frequently confronted with prologues and quotations before the start of the narrative, so the selection below is rather arbitrary. I should also assure any reader that my memory of these “memorable” starts was generally very vague indeed and that, possibly unwisely, I have been drawn into trying to classify them.
Firstly, let me start with the two books where I correctly remembered the first sentence.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar is exceptionally easy:
I am afraid.
Of course, it may help if the reader has seen how Barrayar and its politics eat the bodies and souls of its participants in Shards of Honor, so that we know some of what Cordelia fears.
Mary Gentle’s Ash starts chapter 1, after a prologue and some invented quotations, with:
“Gentlemen”, said Ash, “shut your faces!”
The clatter of helmet visors shutting sounded all along the line of horsemen.
Of course, the huge majority of books do not start with threats, death or battles. However, there are quite a few that do and death gets surprisingly frequent mentions. For example, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War starts:
“Tonight we’re going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.”
Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” starts:
Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.
(Confession time – I play chess)
Bruce Bretthauer’s Firestar starts:
It’s not a suicide attack, Corey Andersen thought. It only looks like one.
Death in SF naturally need not involve malice or enemy action. Andy Weir’ The Martian starts:
I’m pretty much f***ed.
f***ed.
Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare.
The author doesn’t actually need to kill anyone. Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon starts:
Coming back from the dead can be rough.
Similarly, Ben Bova’s Winds of Altair starts:
He knew he was going to die.
Jeff Holman lay back on the couch, every nerve in him screaming with tension.
Dennis Taylor’s We are Legion, the first of the Bobiverse novels, uses the idea partly for laughs and starts:
“So … You’ll cut my head off.”
A slightly less pressing threat occurs at the start of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge:
The first indication I had of the mutiny came as we approached the inner limit of the first asteroid belt. Of course I didn’t know what it meant at the time; it was no more than a locked door.
It might be even less threatening to have the death occur far back in time and with victims unknown to the reader. Jack McDevitt’s The Engines of God starts:
Almost overnight, every civilization on this globe had died. It had happened twice: somewhere around 9000 B.C., and again eight thousand years later. On a world filled with curiosities, this fact particularly disturbed Henry’s sleep.
Ideally, the first paragraph not only grabs the reader’s attention but also introduces us to the central character. Thus Heinlein’s Friday starts her narrative:
As I left the Kenya Beanstalk capsule he was right on my heels. He followed me through the door leading to Customs, Health and Immigration. As the door contracted behind him I killed him.
Charles Stross’ Saturn’s Children, which was influenced by Friday, is rather more reflective. The first paragraph starts:
Today is the two hundredth anniversary of the final extinction of my One True Love, as close as I can date it.
If we can extend the scope of the discussion a little, we can note that Stross’ second paragraph starts:
I do not contemplate suicide lightly.
Stross’ Iron Sunrise also starts with death being threatened:
Wednesday ran through the darkened corridors of the station, her heart pounding. Behind her, unseen yet sensed as a constant menacing presence, ran her relentless pursuer – a dog. The killhound wasn’t supposed to be here: neither was she.
Of course, for us boys there are other ways of grabbing our attention. S. Andrew Swann starts his Emperors of the Twilight with:
At four-thirty in the morning on a snowless New Years Eve, Evi Isham was naked on a penthouse balcony overlooking Manhattan.
Similarly, Joel Shepherd starts Crossover with the slightly more restrained:
Sunlight lay across the bare floor of the hotel room, falling rich and golden upon the smooth white sheets of the single bed, and the exposed pale arm of its occupant.
Although both Evi Isham and “April Cassidy” would have been happy to live and let live, sadly both are soon confronted by malevolent individuals demanding a violent response. Said malevolent individuals would, of course, have been wiser to poke a stick into a wasp’s nest.
Leaving battles, violence and death behind, other authors have found completely different ways to be memorable. For example, Vernor Vinge likes to give us an idea of the scale of the story that he is about to present. Thus A Fire upon the Deep starts its prologue with:
How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.
Whilst A Deepness in the Sky begins:
The manhunt extended across more than one hundred light-years and eight centuries.
A different approach is to challenge the reader with a puzzle. Something that demands attention to the following explanation. Greg Egan’s Quarantine begins:
Only the most paranoid clients phone me in my sleep.
A more intimate approach to the puzzle would have the narrator describing their own puzzlement. Thus Corwin at the start of Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber begins:
It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me.
I attempted to wriggle my toes, succeeded. I was sprawled there in a hospital bed and my legs were done up in plaster casts, but they were still mine.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and opened them three times.
The room grew steady.
Where the hell was I?
Similarly Ed in a Succession of Bad Days by Graydon Saunders begins:
Waking up doesn’t hurt. Opening my eyes doesn’t hurt, breathing doesn’t hurt.
Trying to sit up hurts too much to happen.
Wherever I am, they have sash windows and like plain plaster, but there’s something wrong.
It’s the colours, or the way the clicking sound doesn’t echo, or I don’t know what, but something is wrong. I turn my head a bit, that works, just, slowly, towards the clicking, and there’s someone there knitting.
A simpler approach is to describe a or the major character. C. S. Friedman’s Black Sun Rising starts:
Damien Kilcannon Vryce looked like he was fully capable of handling trouble, for which reason trouble generally gave him a wide berth.
A longer classic version of this described not only the character but also his society in the start of C.J. Cherryh’s Gate of Ivrel:
To be born Kurshin or Andurin was a circumstance that mattered little in terms of pride. It only marked a man as a man, and not a savage, such as lay to the south of Andur-Kursh in Lun; nor tainted with witchery and qujalin blood, such as the folk of Hjemur and northward. Between Andur of the forests and Kursh of the mountains was little cause of rivalry; it was only to say that one was hunter or herder, but both were true men and godly men, and once—in the days of the High Kings of Koris—one nation.
To be born of a particular canton, like Morija or Baien or Aenor—this was a matter that deserved loyalty, a loyalty held in common with all Morijin or Baienen or Aenorin of whatever rank, and there was fierce love of home in the folk of Andur-Kursh.
But within each separate canton there were the clans, and the clans were the true focus of love and pride and loyalty. In most cantons several ruling clans rose and fell in continual cycles of rivalry and strivings for power; and there were the more numerous lesser clans, which were accustomed to obey. Morija was unique in that it had but one ruling clan and all five others were subject. Originally there had been the Yla and Nhi, but the Yla had perished to the last man at Irien a hundred years past, so now there remained only the Nhi.
Vanye was Nhi. This was to say that he was honorable to the point of obsession; he was a splendid and brilliant warrior, skilled with horses. He was however of a quicksilver disposition and had a recklessness that bordered on the suicidal. He was also stubborn and independent, a trait that kept the Nhi clan in a constant ferment of plottings and betrayals. Vanye did not doubt these truths about himself: this was after all the well-known character of the whole Nhi clan. It was expected of all who carried the blood, as each clan had its attributed personality.
Naturally we can often hear a character speaking. Michael Z. Williamson’s Better to Beg Forgiveness, which introduces the Ripple Creek Mercenaries, starts:
“Basically, I’m in it for the money,” Aramis Anderson said. “Who can turn down entire weeks’ worth of pay per day?”
However, the speech should not be taken entirely at face value. Ripple Creek are mercenaries but they are willing to take a few risks to fulfil a contract.
A very distinctive voice is that of 11 year old Candy Smith-Foster from David Palmer’s Emergence:
Nothing to do? Nowhere to go? Time hangs heavy? Bored? Depressed? Also badly scared? Causal factors beyond control?
Unfortunate. Regrettable. Vicious cycle – snake swallowing own tail. Mind dwells on problems; problems fester, assume ever greater importance for mind to dwell on. Etc. Bad enough where problems minor.
Mine aren’t.
Brian Stableford’s Mike Rousseau from Journey to the Centre shows a certain cynicism as he begins his story:
If I had had more of a social conscience, events on Asgard might have developed very differently. In fact – or so I have been assured – the ultimate future of the human race my have been affected (for the worse) by my lack of charity. I find this a very sobering thought, and I’m sure there is a moral in it for us all. This is, however, not my purpose in telling the story – I am not in the business of writing moral fables.
My own favourite amongst such opening monologues is probably Roger Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead starting:
Life is a thing — if you’ll excuse a quick dab of philosophy before you know what kind of picture that I am painting — that reminds me quite a bit of the beaches around Tokyo Bay.
One can find an extended quote via
Isle of the Dead, Eye of Cat
