Hello Good People (and Bad),
Today I am going to give the first lines of six of my favorite scifi/fantasy books. Your task, should you choose it, is to name the book the line comes from and the author. No fair using the internet to search book lines!
So here are they are, in no particular order:
(1) At Cold Corner in midwinter, the women of the Snow Clan were waging a cold war against the men.
(2) The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.
(3) In their ruddy jackets of leather that reached to their knees the men of Erl appeared before their lord, the stately white-haired man in his long red room.
(4) Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.
(5) It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white.
(6) The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Good luck!
I’ve read all six but I only identified 4 (2, 4, 5, 6). I really need to reread Leiber.
You can tell my sci-fi slant, I knew 2,4,6. I’ll have to check the other three out.
hot damn, Tyson! Gold star to you.
Only one I can identify just from the first line is 4) Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein. It has been at least 30 years since I read an Elric Story or Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story, though.
(1) is Snow Women by Fritz Leiber. I LOVE that story! Although my favorite Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story is Stardock.
I don’t know for sure but I’d guess that (5) is one of Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories.
1. Swords and Devilry-Leiber
2. Hyperion- Simmons
3. Kings of Elflands Daughter- Dunsany
4. Stranger in a Strange Land- Heinlein
5. Elric of Melnibone- Moorecock
6. Neuromancer- Gibson