"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

-- Catcher in the Rye

Favorite. First. Line. Ever.

I know three of them, and have a guess about the fourth.

How about this one? I'm going to cheat and give the whole paragraph because it's that good.

"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 neatly, 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."

"Book one: Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."

Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

"Book two: Ryan was nearly killed twice in half an hour. He left the taxi a few blocks short of his destination."

Patriot Games (Tom Clancy)

"Book three: "Lot ninety-seven," the auctioneer announced. "A boy.""

Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert A. Heinlein (one of my all time favorites!!!)

"Book four: The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail."

Hmmmm...don't have a copy, but I believe it is "The Old Man and the Sea" by "Papa" Hemmingway?

"Book five: His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a boy who had never seen Trantor before. That is, not in real life."

Another excellent choice! Another favorite! "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov.

"Book six: Lessa woke, cold. Cold with more than the chill of the ever-lastingtly clammy stone walls."

Anne McCaffrey, the first "Dragon" book (Dragonflight, I believe--or Dragonquest, man it's been a couple of decades since I read those two!)

O.K., here we go:

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

"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."

Oohh!!! I just re-read that recently. Excellent! I also bought the original film version, which is scads better than the pathetic remake.

"The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old."

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

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

"When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen."

"We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans"

Shell -

The second one you list has got to be one of my all-time favorites, too.

A really great opening captures something essential of the theme of the book. The ones in this thread do that:

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." We establish right off that Scarlett is charming and deceptive.

Lessa woke, cold. Cold with more than the chill of the ever-lastingtly clammy stone walls. Any surprise to learn that Lessa is a cold-hearted, tough-as-nails bitch?

We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans. The soldiers of All Quiet on the Western Front are all consumed with achieving food and sleep. Their existence has shrunk to that.

"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife..."

"Howard Roark laughed..."

("...Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark.")

"Who is John Galt?..."

"In this book is attempted for the first time the venture of predeterming history, of following the still untravelled stages in the destiny of a Culture, and specifically of the only Culture of our time and on our planet which is actually in the phase of fulfillment -- the West-European-American..."

"When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains..."

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth..."

"Hear me all ye hallowed beings, both high and low, of Heimdall's children: thou wilt, Valfather, that I well set forth the fates of the world which as first I recall..."

"Sing, Goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feating of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus..."

"Adoration of Ra when ariseth he in adoration eastern of heaven. Behold Osiris, the scribe of the holy offerings of the Gods all, Ani! Saith he, homage to thee who hast come as Khepera, Khepera as creator of the Gods..."

"In the first days, in the very first days,
In the first nights, in the very first nights,
In the first years, in the very first years,
In the first days when everything needed was brought into being,
In the first days when everything needed was properly nourished,
When bread was baked in the shrines of the land,
And bread was tasted in the homes of the land,
When heaven had moved away from the earth,
And earth had separated from heaven,,
And the name of man was fixed;
When the Sky God, An, had carried off the heavens,
And the Air God, Enlil, had carried off the earth,
When the Queen of the Great Below, Ereshkigal, was given the underworld for Her domain..."

Truthfully, they're all Google-able, but here's the ones I knew that haven't been mentioned-

Book four- I think this is "Jaws", by Peter Benchley
Book eight- Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut
Book Nine- A Christmas Carol (we watch this on video every Christmas- the Muppet version, which really is very good) Charles Dickens.

My favorite opening line, from Anna Karenina- " Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in it own way."

My favorite ending line- "O God- please give him back! I shall keep asking You." A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.

Oh, and not to be picky, but the first line from Foundation is actually a quote from the Encyclopedia Galactica.

Dani is the only one to get the opening lines from "Jaws" correctly.

But all the rest of you have done so well, I can't even keep track of the points.

Although Shell's managed to hook me with one:

"The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old."

Man. I want to read that book. What is it? :-)

"It was a dark and stormy night." (I forget the book, but the author was Bulwar-Lytton, for whom a bad writing contest is named.)

"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."

Great post!

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

and, less well known

"The Trottas were a young dynasty. Their progenitor had been knighted after the Battle of Solferino. He was a Slovene. Sipolje--the German name for his native village--became his title of nobility. Fate had elected him for a special deed. But he then made sure that later times lost all memory of him."

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop ... [s]omehow it was hotter then ... bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.... There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

Book eleven: Heinlein, 'Starship Troopers'.

I got one, three, five and six and nine too, but they've already been mentioned.

"The female of the species vanished on the afternoon of the second Tuesday of February at four minutes and fifty-two seconds past four o'clock, Eastern Standard Time. The event occurred universally at the same instant, without regard to time belts, and was followed by such phenomena as might be expected after happenings of that nature."

Who wouldn't keep reading after an opening like that? I don't know that everyone who read it will remember the opening, but I'll bet anyone here who's read it will know the book and author.

1)I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. No , I am not a pleasant man at all. I believe there is something wrong with my liver. However I don't know a damn thing about my liver; neither do I know whether there is anything really wrong with me.

2)Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

3)When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

4)Diana was late, but what else was new.*

*The last one's unfair because it hasn't been published... yet.

Paul's #3 is of course To Kill a Mockingbird.

Of Dean's, I was able to guess 1, 4, 5 (well, half-credit -- I wasn't sure which of the Foundation books), 6 (also half-credit, for the same reason), 9, and 12.

41.667%. I flunk.

One of my favorite openings is from a short story:

Oct. 2, 1850.

Dear Bones,

   How good it was to step into the cold, draughty hall here at Chapelwaite, every bone in an ache from that abominable coach, in need of instant relief from my disdended bladder -- and to see a letter addressed in your own inimitable scrawl propped on the obscene little cherry-wood table beside the door! Be assured tht I set to deciphering it as soon as the needs of the body were attended to (in a coldly ornate downstairs bathroom where I could see my breath rising before my eyes).

Being dead didn't make Jack Mercy less of a son of a bitch.

The female of the species vanished...

The Earth Abides, George Stewart. Yummy. :)

Dean, it's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King.

I cannot believe no one has mentioned this classic:

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

For a journalist, that is the sound of a brain being opened to a different perspective on "objectivity."
;-)

"The tolling of the bell of the Temple of Gion reminds us of the shortness of life. The very hue of the teak leaves declares that those who are mighty must be brought low; that pride is but for a moment, like an evening dream in springtime; that the strong are destroyed in the end; that we are the dust before the wind."

OK, what's that from?

Paul's list:

1) Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
2)One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3)To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee (kudos to McGehee)
4)Unpublished novel by yours truly.

No less well loved:

5)”It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

6)”As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after a night of fitful dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

7)”Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...”

The last one also has my all time favorite closing lines:

“26 April: Mother is putting my new second hand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome , O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
27 April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now in good stead.”

Everything in between is pretty good too!

"Call me Ishmael."

Paul Fallon -

You're a man after my own heart with those Joycean phrases. The last line of Portrait gives me chills - It's so clear, and so mysterious at the same time. Brilliant.

(1) "Friday afternoon in the universe..."

(2) "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road."

(3) "Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday."

(4) "The stone door slammed. It was Cleaver's trademark: there had never been a door too heavy, complex, or cleverly tracked to prevent him from closing it with a sound like a clap of doom."

(5) "Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last? Two more hours should tell the story. One way or the other. Either I am right and a catastrophe will occur, or it won't and I'm crazy. In either case the outlook is not so good."

(6) "In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant."

"Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances." Favorite first line ever. (Of course the fact that it's a true story helps.)

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.

Those opening lines are not so great in themselves. They're memorable primarily because they are followed by great books.

"Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes."

"At liftoff, Matt Eversmann said a Hail Mary."

"'What's it going to be then, eh?' There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry."

Jerry -

I disagree. At least with the assessment that ALL of these sentences are not great in themselves.

Definitely many great books start with sentences which do not convey the sweeping scope of the entire book - and there are a couple of those examples here - but I am also seeing many plain old GREAT sentences here as well.

The thing about great books is that each separate and individual part of the book is as great as the whole. You remove one sentence, you upset the balance.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

The entire theme of that amazing book is encapsulated in the first sentence.

And Moby Dick's "Call me Ishmael." It's so mysterious - so bizarre - so multi-layered, just like the entire book. In that very first sentence, the narrator is saying, "Don't REALLY trust me - because I am not going to give you my real name ... but you can call me Ishmael."

At least that's what I think he's saying ... We could talk about what that sentence means forever. I love that.

Anyhoo. Just my wee opinion on the matter.

How about this one.

" They say she carried her own warmth around with her, like one of those thermoregulating arctic mammals, say, a polar bear, or a baby harp seal (though not a penguin, which is antarctic, anyway, and not a mammal, but a bird), but she wasn't fat or blubbery, which makes it all the more unbelievable why anyone would have wanted to club her to death for her fur coat, which wasn't even white, I'm told, but black."

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, “Save us!”…

…and I’ll look down and whisper, “No.”

1. Gone With The Wind
2. Patriot Games
3. Roots??
4. Moby Dick??
5. One of the Foundation Trilogy
6. Dragonsingers
7. ??
8. Christmas Carol
9.

A woman, dressed in black leather, and holding low and ready in her right fist a bloodied gladius, with a half-full Russian Army duffel bag slung on her left shoulder, appeared ex nihilo.

--Start of "Worldwalker"

Steam rising off wet cobblestones hid Rahvyn's dash up Pinter’s Alley. Crouching in the lee of a tree trunk and hemp cord ladder, he spied up and down the alley for the Halverstad Guard. Two raw recruits and a squire in half plate of this preternaturally lucky patrol were in sight, but none looked his way. Abandoning the thin shroud of the mists, he took a firm grasp on the termite-riddled ladder, and swung lightly onto it. It creaked.

--Start of "The Ruling Rod"

Hopefully, these two are the beginnings of the Tad family fortune.

Tadeusz

*Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.*

We've had quotes from the beginnings of books and the ends of books. Now for one from the middle of a book.

"He was, after all, only an ape, and a dying ape into the bargain."

Wow. Creepy. I was just--I swear--going to put in the first sentence of Rebecca.

This one is great for a detective story"

"Detective Inspector Mike Norman slipped six fingers into his overcoat pocket, five of them clad in a latex glove and attached to his palm, while the sixth was wrapped in a plastic evidence bag and apparently belonged to the kidnapped pianist Ricardo Moore, or, as it now seemed likely, the kidnapped ex-pianist Ricardo Moore."

Mark S,

You beat me to it - The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

For me, its usually in the first paragraphs that I either get hooked, or put the book down for good. Say, two or three paragraphs in, I'll either read the whole thing, or not...

"Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightening which has scored a direct hit on you? That is is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?"

Bob, that's the first line of the Heike Monogatari (Tale of the Heike)

Can anyone identify this one?
"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I don't know."

Apologies for giving repeating Paul's (3) by Camus, The Stranger. Shell's (1) is The Dark Tower, Stephen King. Haven't read past Book 3 of the series, how's the rest of it?

Here's some openings that haven't been mentioned yet...

"I was deep in one of those daydreams which overtake even the shallowest of men, in the midst of the most tumultuous parties"

" 'Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow,' said Mrs. Ramsey."

"I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination."

"Jacqueline Novak is dying."

1. Gone With The Wind.
2. Patriot Games
3. Citizen Of The Galaxy
4. Hm, can't place it.
5. Foundation
6. The first of Anne McCaffrey's "Pern" books.
7. You call that an opening line?
8. Slaughterhouse Five
9. Sounds like "A Christmas Carol."
10. That feels like a Patrick O'Brien novel.
11. Starship Troopers
12. Catcher In The Rye

But none of those are really top-drawer opening lines. Try these instead:

1. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
2. Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.
3. I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.
4. He found the flying mountain by its shadow.
5. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
6. The island of Gont is a land famous for wizards.
7. I have no intention of explaining how the following correspondence fell into my hands.
8. "Who is John Galt?"
9. Snow, tenderly caught by eddying breezes, swirled and spun into and out of bright, lustrous shapes that gleamed against the emerald-blazoned black drape of sky and sparkled there for a moment, hanging, before settling gently to the soft, green-tufted plain with all the sickly sweetness of an over-written sentence.
10. Let me tell you of the place I love, and I will follow with the story of him whose grace taught me to love it.

Anyone who gets more than half of those is an Alpha Geek.

"Mother died today" is Sartre's "L'Etranger." And why has no one yet cited:

"It was a pleasure to burn."

Well, it's not an opening line, but one that I like is the following:

"Give a man a fire and he is warm for a day; set him on fire and he is warm for the rest of his life."

Books closest at hand from my desk currently:

1. "We should start back,' Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. 'The wildlings are dead."

2. "Before the sun burned, before the planets formed, there were chaos and the comets."

3. "To confirm that it was indeed near death, the great vessel broke through into normal space with lingering slowness. The pain of the usually swift translation was prolonged as well, until the thousand, for all their strength, cursed and wept within their minds and became convinced that they would be trapped."

4. "The bells of St. Mark's were ringing changes up on the mountain when Bud skated over to the mod parlor to upgrade his skull gun."

Oh, and my favorite non-opening line from any book, which copy I have signed by both authors:
"Think of it as evolution in action."

"Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, “Save us!”…

…and I’ll look down and whisper, “No.”"

J.A. Eddy that has got to be from "The Watchmen"
(the only "graphic novel" worthy of being called a NOVEL.)

How about BAD openings?

"There are two acts constituting transfer of movable things. The two acts are, however, increased to four on the inside and to a like amount on the outside of the premises. How so?...."

(Talmud)

John Irving's #4 would be "Diamond Age", and it is good except for the last fifteen pages.

And I see another person lauding that horrible thing, the Watchmen. Just to be unfair, I'm going to say "Maus", and then add "Dark Knight Returns", and I think that a lot of Chris Claremont's work on X-men in ordinary comic books exceeds this Watchman thing which is rather like a street pianist outdoing a player at Carnegie Hall with all the best equipment.

Fact, maybe the best comparison to Watchmen is Jim Shooter's Beyonder Saga which had a moronic god running around beating people up with ease, and realizing "Everything is desire" as its bit of profundity.

And Thor for a brief time under Walt Simonson vastly outshone Watchman.

Did I mention that I dislike most everything about Watchman?

Tadeusz

Tadeusz,

I didn't think of "Maus" or the "Dark Knight Returns". You're correct, of course;). I'd also throw in O'Bannon's "The Crow" in that select group.
I just can't compare "Watchmen" to "Secret Wars II" (the Beyonder thing), though. In terms of the art, it's not on the level of "Maus". Few things are, though. The concept and story I enjoyed more than is probably healthy.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

from the best seller of all times, Genesis I.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

from the best seller of all times, Genesis I.

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderlay.

(Think of Hitchcock)

"He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead. He fought for survival with the passion of a beast in a trap. He was delirious and rotting, but occasionally his primitive mind emerged from the burning nightmare of survival into something resembling sanity. Then he lifted his mute face to Eternity and muttered: 'What's a matter, me? Help, you goddamn gods! Help, is all.'"

I disagree on several counts.

First, many of these opening lines stink, and do not make me want to read any further.

Luckily, the "opening line" importance is overrated.

Yes, opening lines are your very first impression. Just like the first thing they see when you walk in for your audition is your face, or your clothes, or your right foot. Yes, it leaves an impression, but you have a few paragraphs, at least, to channel that impression. A weak opening line can make that harder for you, yes, but I think that many of these so-called great opening lines are remembered as such only because the book was great.

For instance: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." That is truly atrocious. This tells you the writer can't really even decide what they are going to write about. It's like saying, "My main character is tall, my main character is short," because WHAT times? What was so dang good about it to be best? or bad enough to be worst? Utterly pretentious crap, is what that opening line says. Fortunately, the book gets a little better than that before the end of the 2nd page.

...and if you disagree with me, then doesn't that prove my point? Because if someone can think an opening is utter nonsense, but someone else thinks it supremely sublime, how can you have any chance of guessing what any specific editor might like?

Thus, an opening lines most important function is just to not make you stop reading before you finish the first paragraph. The main function of the first paragraph should be to draw you in far enough to make you want to finish the first page. The first page should make it impossible for you to not read the 2nd, and so on.

Sure, sometimes you can do all that in the first sentence alone. But that's equivalent to hitting a homerun, and when you swing for homeruns, you strike out more often. Swing for a solid hit that you can move into scoring position, and then the occasional homerun opening line will happen unexpectedly.

"There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

Aki, the fourth book in the Dark Tower series I didn't care for because the bulk of the action was flashback. It was the story of the gunslinger's first love. (*blech*) But the fifth, Wolves of the Calla, was great.

The last two books have been finished and scheduled to be published this year.

Columbus...But he was still an enigma, a bronze figure on horseback, his arm outstretched, pointing westward. Would this figure become real to us? What was this man really like, who had written so passionetly in his journal of his desire to serve Christ and carry His Light to heathen lands.

It got my attention, wanting to know more about the man... and I aced history in school too many years ago,... so loved this book & others about Our Foundings.

Not a great book, but a memorable opening line:

"In five years, the penis will be obsolete", said the salesman.

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem , a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."

Not much to guess about this one, but it's a classic.

"Afterwards, in the dusty little corners where London's secret servants drink together, there was argument about where the Dolphin case history should really begin. "

A little more obscure, I suppose.

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

first line of Neuromancer by William S. Gibson

Peoetic enough to smack you in the face, no?

I keep wanting to say that John Irvings #3 above is from an A.A. Attanasio book, and that his #2 is from "Heart of the Comet", but not too sure.

And I will publicly confess to envy at his having a Niven and Pournelle autographed copy of anything!

Jim,

Maybe I will get a chance for a long glance at "The Crow". Thanks for the reccomendation.

I tend to rather dislike stories whose idea is 'we are pointless; life is pointless.'

But it is interesting, I just ran a game with a villain with a similar power to Dr. Manhattan (even if not nearly his degree of control).

But the hero challenged her notions, at least. Watchmen had Dr. Manhattan pontificating about Fate, and then it ended with that stupid idea, individual humans are so improbable that it restores my faith in life, and now I think I'll go off and create me some.

So Dr. Manhattan is God, and a rather pathetic one at that. See any similiarities between this and Secret Wars II (thanks for the title)?

-Hyper-powerful guy not well motivated as a character, almost a deus ex machina in some ways, reveals dark truths about the universe
-Pathetic god
-Obsessed with some bit of banal philosophy and does not have one of the many intelligent people in the world explain to him a way out of his intellectual trap.

And its interesting. SWII is generally reviled, and The Watchmen is generally lauded. In my view, they both were bad.

Tadeusz

"He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad."

"I am bacteria. I am the lowest form of life. I am a superhero."

Great start, but didn't sustain very well.

#3 is not A.A. Attanasio, but I May drop a hint
#2 is comet-related, but not quite as far out as Heart of The Comet (great book though!)

The book signing by Niven and Pournelle took place at DragonCon, it was actually my second encounter with Niven, the first being a rather embarrassing moment in an elevator where I looked at him, read his name tag, and felt my brain shut down to the point where all I could say was "I really like your work."

I recall with utter clarity the first great shock of my life. A scream came from the cottage next door. I rushed into the room, as familiar as my own home. The Larkin kids, Conor, Liam and Brigid, all hovered about the alcove in which the mattress of bog fir bedded old Kilty. They stood in gape-mouthed awe. I stood next to Conor. “Grandfar is dead” he said.

Trinity Leon Uris

a slight correction in last line:

I recall with utter clarity the first great shock of my life. A scream came from the cottage next door. I rushed into the room, as familiar as my own home. The Larkin kids, Conor, Liam and Brigid, all hovered about the alcove in which the mattress of bog fir bedded old Kilty.

They stood in gape-mouthed awe. I stole up next to Conor. “Grandfar is dead” he said.

Trinity....Leon Uris

The next lines are great:

Their ma, Finola, who was eight months pregnant, knelt with her head pressed against the old man's heart. It was my very first sight of a dead person, He was a waxy, bony specimen lying their with his mouth open showing no teeth at all and his glazed eyes staring up and me staring back until I felt ready to pop out of their sockets.

Trinity...Leon Uris

Another minor correction in last line.

The next lines are great:

Their ma, Finola, who was eight months pregnant, knelt with her head pressed against the old man's heart. It was my very first sight of a dead person, He was a waxy, bony specimen lying their with his mouth open showing no teeth at all and his glazed eyes staring up and me staring back until I felt my own ready to pop out of their sockets.

Trinity...Leon Uris

"It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone..."

"You too will marry a boy I choose," said Mrs. Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger daughter.

--Vikram Seth, "A Suitable Boy"

Wonderful, wonderful book. Probably the longest book I ever read and then hoped I would reread soon (I never have. Yet.)

"It was a dark and stormy night" also opens the wonderful "A Wrinkle In Time." I think that's got to count for something.

"It is a sin to write this...." Anthem - Ayn Rand.

I was thinking of throwing out Bud and his skull gun, but someone beat me to it. So here's something only a little bit more obscure:

"The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself."