Microblog Memes

“Today he would become a god. His mother had told him so.” -- Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Really, that whole first chapter is incredible. One of those rare books where the first chapter is so compelling that you just have to keep on reading.

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit.

Lord of Light Roger Zelazny

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.

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one halfway over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. 

-- "Titus Groan" by Mervin Peake

It's a mood.

“So… You’ll cut my head off.” I raised an eyebrow at the salescritter. I was baiting him. I knew it, he knew it, I knew he knew it.

We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

Honestly it doesn't do the series justice, but it's still a standout.

The second cataclysm began in my eleventh life, in 1996. I was dying my usual death, slipping away in a warm morphine haze, which she interrupted like an ice cube down my spine.

— the first fifteen lives of Harry August, by Claire North

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.

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 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 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.

A, abbrev., amperes

words to live by

The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.

Blood Rites, book 6 of The Dresden Files

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.”

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." Stephen King

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"

This is my favorite opening line:

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

• Neal Stephenson, Seveneves

The first line of Shirley Jackson's Haunting Of Hill House is a banger, the complete first paragraph is incredible.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone

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 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

I saw my first goblin the same day I saw my first shipwreck.

I was under sail, on my way to war. On my way to fall in love with death, and with a queen.

On my way to lose all of my friends, and two of my brothers.

I would see a great city fall in blood and fire, betrayed by a false god.

Later, I would be commanded to die on a high stone bridge, but I would fail in this.

The rest of the First Lanza of His Majesty’s Corvid Knights would not fail.

This is not a happy story, but it is a true one.

I have no time for lies, or for liars.

• The Daughters War

And yes, Corvid Knights are as badass as you think. Maybe more.