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
Yeah, it’s an oldie.
Fun fact, Boltzmann hung himself while Ehrenfest shot his 15 year old son and then himself.
Fun fact,
You and I go to different parties
This one tops my list, probably followed by the opening to hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy.
Came looking for this, thanks
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)
Never turn people into heroes, it’s an unearned pedesta
My approach is similar, but I limit it to living people. Once they’ve passed it’s unlikely much of anything will come to light in the future that changes one’s perspective
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!
A very loose trilogy. They don’t follow the same characters, not really. The world is the same, as are the themes.
Id recommend the great "johnny mnemonic" short story first. It introduces a character you will see again.
Alright that was really good, thank you for sharing it with me!!
Alright, thanks!
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.
I should really read that book again.
Didn’t enjoy it myself
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1984
The clocks striking 13 times immediately makes something feel off
It reads like poetry to me
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.
I would say, up until the hiatus, it was very much the “Not All Cops Are Bastards” kind of work. Murphy (who was apparently the insert of Butcher’s now ex-wife) is obvious but even her partner mostly is just “guilty” of thinking this weird PI who knows things he shouldn’t and is constantly seen talking with criminals might not be on the up and up. Same with Morgan (? Harry’s magic parole officer) who mostly was just depicted as so focused on justice and the danger of black magic that he didn’t trust the guy who had previously used black magic and who is canonically going to go REAL fucking dark later.
And Michael et al are VERY cop adjacent.
But things really shifted once Harry became a magic cop himself. The “I am opposed to authority but damn if I don’t look good with a badge” kind of story.
Then we had the hiatus and came back to The Battle of Chicago where Butcher spent a full chapter worshiping cops and talking about how they are the literal light in the darkness.
Which is pretty consistent with a lot of copaganda (also military propaganda). The idea that there are bad eggs but by and large they are great and here is this godlike human being that also happens to be a cop. Think “Dirty Harry” or a LOT of Donnie Yen movies.
Contrast that with someone like a Richard Kadrey who makes it an entire plot point that one of the big bads is a cop who is literally protected by police unions and qualified immunity (also there is zero chance that Richard Kadrey doesn’t have hundreds of pages of very explicit Sonic OC fan fiction. And I say that as a compliment).
And on the “weirdo” note: Let’s just say it is a very open secret who Lara Raithe is “inspired by”. Although many women in the publishing and convention organizing community have stories of being compared to her… And everyone tries not to think too hard who Molly (Harry’s best friend’s daughter that he knew almost her entire life who just can’t stop throwing her tight naked body at Harry…) is.
Who inspired Lara ? Tried to look it up but I can’t find anything.
deleted by creator
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
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.”
I especially like that line in Neuromancer because at the time he wrote it, his audience would’ve understood he meant TV snow. Meaning the sky was overcast, giving a gloomy mood. But younger people now will think of that featureless blue that modern TVs use, which indicates a beautiful cloudless day. Totally different mood!
Young people today will be puzzled by the TV scenes in Poltergeist as well. Time and tech marches on…
And, Gibson’s “Neuromancer”
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”absolute classic, came here to post it.
Went into this comment section with Kafkas “Metamorphosis” in mind, I love the opening, the whole story is genius and to this day perfectly describes large parts of German society.
All three quotes are great, how you can captivate a reader just with one sentence, all three do this perfectly.
Here’s an obscure one from See you next Pluterday:
Sam was scratching desperately at the crumbling edge of the abyss. With fear he felt the cramp slowly, but surely, reaching his fingertips. He fell… And…To be quite honest, Sam was not hanging at all above an abyss. And there was no cramp at all in his fingertips. For miles around there wasn’t even a trace of an abyss at whose edge one could scratch in despair. But recently I met with a publisher who confided to me that in judging a manuscript he only glanced at the first sentence. He mustbe on tenterhooks by now.
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
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
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.
His older books ended pretty well IMO. It was only the later books where they sometimes make a major turn near the end and get nuts. I sometimes enjoy the craziness of it, but Seveneves was particularly jarring.
I disagree, cryptonomicon’s ending just comes out of left field with the introduction of a new character at the end of the book.
I honestly couldn’t finish it.
It changed from an excellent comedy at the start, to a spy thriller, to a war action movie and then to some kind of tech-startup biography.
Insane changes in pace. Did I miss a good ending then? I’ve got about 20% left.
I like to believe that his editor told him that enough was enough and that we had to end the damn book. And, if it was not for the editor he would still be writing the book, not not revising it, just making it longer and longer.
Haha he could have just written three to five books instead.
Fair point, I forgot about cryptonomicon’s ending. I guess Stephenson has been pulling this forever.
I want to love his books, he build such interesting worlds and stories, but the ending disappoints almost every time
I absolutely get you. I do enjoy his books, mostly because they tend to center around a really great premise and are entertaining enough that I can not let the bad parts ruin it for me.
That book was a slog. Took forever to get to the inevitable you knew was going to happen, glossed over the worldbuilding, and ended it just as things got interesting.
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.
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
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
I like “The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.” from The Light Fantastic
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.’
There’s good eatin’ on those things!
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.
Can’t believe no one has yet proferred the classic:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Why’d you stop halfway through?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Why’d you stop halfway through?
Poor googling.
Is this sarcasm? I think if it stopped at the first dichotomy, or the second it would be fine. But it goes on for fucking ever.
If that wore you out, probably should stay away from Dickens.
Oh yes. I hate Dickens. Absolutely can’t stand him.
Well I like it.
I am happy for you in that, a little surprised. But good for you!
Kinda the point. It’s supposed to drill into your head how everything in that period was taken to the extremes by taking the prose itself to the extremes.
not all prose has to be prosaic
Pretty good book that doesn’t feel imo as old as it is
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
I just reread that and Project Hail Mary, because I finally read Artemis and needed more Andy Weir. That man tickles exactly the right part of my brain.
Now I’m onto the Bobiverse series and loving it.
Tried The Murderbot Diaries? Can’t put my finger on it, but the series pairs nicely with the Bobiverse.
I haven’t yet, but it’s been suggested to me ever since I read the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, so it’s on my list.
I did that on a slightly different order, yes. But those are other books I’d recommend after reading the Martian.
It’s a bit different, but do you know the short story “The Egg” of Andy Weir?
No! I saw it listed somewhere but I didn’t read it. Is it good?
Very short and available online, so… Take 5 mins and see for yourself:
https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
Kurzgesagt also made a short animation “movie” for it: https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI
That’s beautiful.
