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Fantastic first sentences you'd LIKE to find in a book...
Now that's odd, Tipton thought, placing an exploratory hand on his stomach, one just doesn't get a good case of the collywobbles these days.
Only now did Darren realize it was too late to blame the whole stinking mess on the zeitgeist.
"I thought bacon was the best thing ever tasted...?"No one want to play?
"Wixel Lingua shot himself in the head only to find that, instead of ending his turmoil, he had merely transported it."
"For the members of the International Earth Expedition to Mianis Three, it took a while for it to sink in that the indigenous sentient species considered this to be an alien invasion."
"Steve had always heard that you shouldn't order the tuna salad sandwich at the Just In Time Diner, and he was about to find out exactly why."
Until that night, no one would have ever guessed that the wizard Abradaxis, besides being a thousand-year-old legend, was also an all-star shortstop.
;D Nice ones.Swenson's rust-free Aerosliders came in just as many textures and colors as the company had customers; which is to say, none.
"'A plague on both your houses,' the old woman screeched, and it was apparent that she was being literal, when mutant bacteria spewed from her mouth all over Jeptha Daniel Laneau and Petra Garcia Maria de la Geneos."
A wizard had once said that hobbits were 'remarkably tough'; and Fungo the troll had to agree, as he chewed on a hobbit's leg that really could have done with another fifteen minutes' cooking.
How about: "Rest assured, dear reader, that this is not 'Book 1' in a long, long series, but stands firm and alone on its own two feet!"You've probably guessed I'm not a fan of book series.
Gorf had always thought doing magic was easier than it looked, until the day he accidentally froze the ocean.
R. wrote: ""'A plague on both your houses,' the old woman screeched, and it was apparent that she was being literal, when mutant bacteria spewed from her mouth all over Jeptha Daniel Laneau and Petra Garcia M..."Better yet if the bacteria landed on their houses and totally ignored the two people.
Steph wrote: "How about: "Rest assured, dear reader, that this is not 'Book 1' in a long, long series, but stands firm and alone on its own two feet!"You've probably guessed I'm not a fan of book series."
Hear, hear! Sign me up to read that one!
We thought willem was quite the jokester, ironically humorous and sarcastic to a fault-until we found his torso in the river.
'My days as a sexbot are over,' she hissed at the man who lay choking beneath her stiletto heel, the man who had treated her like the least of his possessions, 'but yours' - she waved the syringe of nanite-infused saline in front of his bulging eyes - 'are just beginning!'
Francis wrote: "'My days as a sexbot are over,' she hissed at the man who lay choking beneath her stiletto heel, the man who had treated her like the least of his possessions, 'but yours' - she waved the syringe o..."Sweet!
Francis wrote: "'My days as a sexbot are over,' she hissed at the man who lay choking beneath her stiletto heel, the man who had treated her like the least of his possessions, 'but yours' - she waved the syringe of nanite-infused saline in front of his bulging eyes - 'are just beginning!'..."I'd definitely carry on reading. I think you may have a hit, there!
The gathered knights and squires gave a collective gasp as the sword began to slip free of the stone with my initial tug, but their gasps turned to sudden cries as a hand of granite and malachite shot out of the stone to wrap its hoary fingers around the blade.
He tried to listen through his hyperbeer muddled senses to the tentacle falls of the Verlox in pursuit as he stumbled through the alley promising himself next time to recharge his blaster batteries before hitting on a tough-looking Verloxian's girlfriend or, since he was unsure of their genders, boyfriend.
Depression weighed him like a sodden down parka, keeping him warm but miserable. He still thought his twin the liveliest woman he knew, and she'd been dead fifteen years.
We live our lives in willful delusion, associating each with these transient sheaths of muscle and skin, jelly-filled eyeballs, styled and scented hair—warm flesh wrapped in disguising clothing, primped and decorated for display—but in the end we are none of these; we are bones, skeletons all.--Happy Halloween
My opponent set the menacing looking calipers on the table beside the departed, and, templing his fingers and furrowing his brow in a nearly convincing counterfeit of intellect, he intoned, "science is never wrong."
Alicja wrote: "He tried to listen through his hyperbeer muddled senses to the tentacle falls of the Verlox in pursuit as he stumbled through the alley promising himself next time to recharge his blaster batteries..."Liked that one, Alicja!
Ok, I'll give it a try:
"As much as it may strain your credibility, your patience, your very sense of reality, you must not stop reading this because it is the only way we have found to communicate; and although you have actually written this thirteen years in the future, it has bearing on events less than two days from now, or at least what you call 'now'."
Hehe, loving all of these!One more...
"She narrowed her eyes as her gaze flowed from the scowling Atruscan, through the sweaty Meelo'xx, to the frosty Ballox and his two, literally, ice-cold bodyguards; her hand twitched slightly as she placed the winning cards on the table, she smiled as she ducked out of the Ballox's blaster fire."
Alright, first stab at this one:"Frank had made a career out of telling people beauty was on the inside, but as he scraped Hillary's remains from the inside of the EVAC pod even he had to admit the saying had its limitations."
:-D
Luke wrote: "...Frank had made a career out of telling people beauty was on the inside, but as he scraped Hillary's remains from the inside of the EVAC pod even he had to admit the saying had its limitations..."Yuck.
Steph wrote: "Luke wrote: "...Frank had made a career out of telling people beauty was on the inside, but as he scraped Hillary's remains from the inside of the EVAC pod even he had to admit the saying had its l..."That was my second line! How did you guess? ;-)
Not yuck. I quite liked that one. It reminds me of "beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes all the way through."
I knew this would happen when my husband brought home the Fisher Price Sun Skimmer with real working FTL.
"For the members of the International Earth Expedition to Mianis Three, it took a while for it to sink in that the indigenous sentient species considered this to be an alien invasion." Nice. I might have to steal it. :)
Gorf had always thought doing magic was easier than it looked, until the day he accidentally froze the ocean. I love this one too!
"BANG!"It's for a book I'll write on the origin of the Universe....
Here's an idea. Why don't we take a survey to select one of these first sentences. There are plenty of writers in this group. Anyone who wants to can write a short story starting with the winning first sentence. We set a deadline for submissions and have a group poll to decide the winner.Keith Laumer, Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Harlan Ellison, and Frank Herbert all wrote stories starting with the same introductory situation in an outstanding book called Five Fates.
Sounds good to me :)So we need a deadline for entries (how about next week?), then a longlist, followed perhaps by a shortlist depending on how voting goes.
When I saw you on the train, brushing politely past me between cars as so many strangers must do without thought, it occurred to me about six minutes later, with such a violent shock, that the memory of our brief interaction unsettled me because I knew you to be dead.
Nothing more awkward exists in life than finding out the woman you've been making love to every night has been dead for twenty-two years. Some say the world will end in fire, some say the world will end in ice, but, for those of us who lived, we know the world ended with greed long ago.
I stored my thoughts in steel and glass, in paperwork long shelved and in sodium lit public spaces where I knew they would never find me, who had overthrown them and myself with the same act.
Frank closed, then opened his eyes; blinking, they called it.
"Tinnitus", they called it, but it made a perfect pitch pipe, as long as you sang only in A flat.
Nevermore? The sight of vultures, the smell of lye-scented smoke, the revulsion caused by raven-like nuns made her voice constant in the background noise in his cranium,
The bumper-sticker read, "I listen to the voices in my wife's head".
Kenneth wrote: "I stored my thoughts in steel and glass, in paperwork long shelved and in sodium lit public spaces where I knew they would never find me, who had overthrown them and myself with the same act."Wow.
Art wrote: ""Tinnitus", they called it, but it made a perfect pitch pipe, as long as you sang only in A flat."Don't laugh. My tinnitus probably has a lot to do with my ability to hit the proper notes when I sing, even without accompaniment. It's a subconscious thing.
Cool, Al. Any specific pitch? Mine is a high Ab.
Art wrote: "Cool, Al. Any specific pitch? Mine is a high Ab."Oddly enough, I've never worked it out. Actually, I have a dominant and several minor tones (not a proper chord), which can be a bit confusing at times. If I'm trying to hear a squeak or some other high-pitched noise in the house, I can never be sure if it's real or one of my phantom noises.
I suspect the problem goes back to my youth when I worked my way through college. One of my summer jobs was working on a rock crusher -- without any hearing protection (they offered, but I declined, like a stupid kid).
Here's a related first line:"I have husband's disease; partial hearing loss in the female voice range."
BTW, that's my true story and I'm sticking to it.
The flawless abdomen skin under my hand still vibrated with the residual sting of the sword; that was one death I'd definitely rather not repeat.
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Rise of Empire (other topics)Zoe's Tale (other topics)
Rise of Empire (other topics)
Zoe's Tale (other topics)
Rise of Empire (other topics)
More...
Put your thinking/writing caps on and show us some creativity.
I'll start:
"Twenty tons of anteater fat is a good haul--I'll give you that, mate--but packing it all inside VW Buses is probably not what the General had in mind for his Saturday afternoon, now is it?"