Best Opening Lines of Books Ever

Chad Huskins is the EVVY Award-winning author of Zero Star and The Sol Ascendancy.

I got inspired recently to write up a list of the opening lines in novels that have stuck out to me be the most.  So here they are, in no particular order, with an explanation of why these are so great.

1.  "Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet." - Robert E. Howard, The Phoenix on the Sword (the first Conan story)

This one is famous among fans of the "sword and sorcery" genre.  It sets the stage perfectly for the story that is about to unravel, a story told by Howard's brutal imagery, his wondrous worlds, and his driving narrative that revealed barbarism as something potentially redemptive in Man, and not something to be shunned or hated.  Howard had a strong belief in the masculine, in the iron will to forge one's own path, as Conan does.  This opening line basically says, "Here comes a badass, and you'd do well to get out of his way."

2.  "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."  - Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice

From the masculine, we go to the feminine...and the witty.  Like any good opening line should do, Austen's presents a general premise without trying to divulge plot-plot-plot all at once.  Some people miss the humor in the opening line, thinking Austen is dead serious.  Far from it.  She means it in the sense that people have accepted that a single man who is rich must be searching for a wife, particularly in the world she's established.  The people in her story (and of the Age she lived in) care for nothing more than to have their daughters married well off, hopefully to the advantage of the rest of the family--i.e., her husband is rich and can help pay everyone's bills.

3.  "Call me Ishmael.  Some years ago--never mind how long, precisely..."  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Though I don't have the room to thoroughly go through Melville's entire opening, it all stems from this line, which immediately establishes a familiarity between the reader and the narrator.  And yet there is also great ambiguity right off the bat, for Melville basically says "Just call me by my first name," doesn't bother with a last name, and then just says "this happened a while back, but it doesn't matter just how long ago."  Familiarity coupled with ambiguity...kind of like an old friend you've not seen in a while, returning to tell you about a thing that changed him forever while he was gone.  The reader is invited in.  We've been invited to the pub, where a lonely man named Ishmael sits, perhaps alone, with ale in hand, to tell us a story.  Let's have a seat with him, and hear what he has to say...

4.  "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."  - George Orwell, 1984

This one is haunting because...well, we the readers happen to know that that's NOT how clocks work.  This begins the story of a world that has gone terribly, terribly wrong.  In this book, which famously created the terms "Big Brother" and "double-think," we find ourselves in a world where lies are truth, truth are lies, the government controls the narrative strictly, the freedom of the press has been dismantled, and Big Brother is always watching.  If it is not the original dystopian future novel, then it is, without a doubt, the reigning champion by which all others are judged.  And from the opening line, we already know that something is wrong...

5.  "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."  - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Dickens decided to put the reader into the mood of his setting, but, like he says at the end, the "time" he's referring to is EXACTLY like whatever era the reader happens to be in when they're reading it.  He suggests that nothing ever changes, in that all times can be described as the worst, or the best, and that people will often describe whatever era they're living in as both.  It depends on where you are in life, what privileges or station you have.  These things determine how good or bad you view the current era.  And, as he says, the "noisiest authorities" seem intent to only be able to make their arguments for their current period being the "best" or "worst" by using comparisons.

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

This line cuts right to it.  It says "Here's your story."  Of course, there's still plenty of mystery.  We don't know who either of these men are, or why one is chasing the other, but we're immediately fascinated.  An old adage among writers is to "Start your story in the middle."  Kind of like how the first Star Wars movie begins with us seeing the Rebel starship already being chased by the Imperial ship.  We're learning who Darth Vader is while the story is on the move, almost like we came in the middle of a TV series and missed the whole first half.  It's an excellent way to get readers invested right away, and have them salivating for the details that explain why these characters are doing what they're doing.  Much better than describing them at length at the beginning, and then getting us to the chase around Chapter 4.  Stephen King himself has expressed that he believes this opening line is his most solid work.

7.  "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."  - H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulu

H.P. Lovecraft is considered by most people to be the greatest horror writer of all time, and he never even wrote about an ax murderer, or described the sight entrails overly long.  No, Lovecraft made a career by inventing a new style of writing--he would describe all the things that the "monster" DIDN'T look like, or would be so vague in his description, and yet all the while summoning imagery, that he encourage the reader to think up something even more dreadful on their own, something that defied all known geometry, physics, and biology.  The true horror for Lovecraft was the idea that some things might be forever beyond the ken of Man, and what might happen if a human being witnessed, with their own eyes, the things that they were never meant to see?  That's what this opening line is all about.  Lovecraft would consider it a "mercy" if the human mind could simply go on not understanding all the horrors it had seen...especially after the narrator of this story reveals to you the truth terrors he has witnessed.  He wants to forget.  More than anything, he wants to be oblivious again.  Ignorance is bliss...

The Future: The Law of Accelerating Returns

Chad Huskins is the EVVY Award-winning author of sci-fi books such as The Sol Ascendancy.  Check out the first reviews for Zero Star

THE FUTURE
The future has always held an allure for us.  Raymond Kurzweil, a top modern researcher, has said that the entire function of the brain is to predict the future.  If, ten thousand years ago, you were walking alongside a river with spear in hand and saw a lion on the other side, walking in the same direction as you, you would have to imagine what would happen if you continued on your present course (you would intersect and be eaten, therefore, it's best to go in another direction).

So you see, predicting the future is essential to our survival.

We gravitate towards those who say they can take us to a better tomorrow, and campaign slogans such as "Forward Into Tomorrow" or simply "Forward" are obviously meant for us to look ahead.  The advent of science fiction, and its modern proliferation, clearly shows just how much we want to speculate.

In this article, we will be discussing the future, what it holds, and exactly how we can know what it holds.  We will start with the Law of Accelerating Returns, and how it allows us to know (not guess) what's next for us.

The Law of Accelerating Returns
The Law of Accelerating Returns is a term coined by futurist Raymond Kurzweil, a man so knowledgable and accurate with his predictions on technologies of the future that Bill Gates makes sure to read everything the man writes, and listens to every lecture he gives.  The Law of Accelerating Returns goes something like this: the rate at which technology is advancing is growing exponentially, never slows down, is not impacted at all by wars or economic recessions or depressions, and it is so predictable that it allows us to know precisely where we'll be technologically in the future, almost to the year.

Part of it is just doing the math.  It took the human race 400 years for the printing press to reach a mass audience.  It took us 50 years to get the telephone to a mass audience.  It took 7 years for the cell phone to reach a quarter of the population.  Social networks (blogs, wikis, Facebook-style sharing) took only three years.  Kurzweil shows clearly with his research that the rate at which technology grows in power is never--that's right, never--going to slow down, it's never going to plateau (it never has), not as long as human beings exist.  In fact, barring a world-ending asteroid smashing into the Earth, the rate at which technology grows in power and capability is only going to accelerate.

This is one of the reasons that the human genome was mapped so much faster than anyone (even those involved with the research) predicted it could be.  It took researchers seven years to get just 1% of the genome mapped, and they pretty much said, "See?  We told you so.  This is going to take about a hundred years or so to complete."

Meanwhile, Kurzweil was saying, "Nope.  If you're at one percent, then you're almost there."  This confused many, but his notion of Accelerating Returns quickly moved past theory and into the territory of Law when his point was made for him.  You see, if it took seven years to reach 1% of the genome, then the next seven years would yield about 2-3%.  Then, the next seven years would yield another 4-9%, so on and so forth.  (This is what he terms a "doubling".)

And viola, we now have the genome mapped!

This has to do with the compounding of technologies.  Advancements made in, say, information technology, allows for greater communication between biologists, pathologists, virologists, botanists, zoologists, and all the other "ists" of the world.  A single discovery in any of these fields almost immediately bleeds over into other fields of study in surprisingly beneficial ways.

Also, the discovery in one field of study can have multiple applications in various other fields of study: just as an example, advancements in metallurgy allowed for the Watt steam engine to revolutionize travel across waters, which revolutionized trade and travel by speeding it up, which brought goods and services more quickly to places that needed it, which stimulated the economy, which allowed for more funding of other projects, just one of which might be even further developments in metallurgy...

On and on and on it goes, never stopping, never slowing down.  A modern example of this would be how we use present-generation computers to create the next-gen computers, which are always more powerful, with superior computational power.  And, of course, we use those to build the next powerful thing.  (This, by the way, creates an interesting philosophical thought: If computers can essentially conceive of a more powerful computer, albeit with our help, then can we conceive a computer or organic lifeform that's better than us?  The answer appears to be an unqualified yes.  We'll get to that below.)

Back in the 80s, Kurzweil developed a chart that showed how quickly technology was spreading to a mass audience.  He was a little surprised to find that no matter what was going on in the world, no matter how good or bad things were, the level of technology on Earth and the rate at which it was spread across the planet doubled at the same predictable rate as the previous doubling.

Nothing affects it, nothing slows it down, nothing stands in its way.  The future is coming, and nobody can stop it.  This is evidenced by the fact that almost always, whenever a new innovation comes along, multiple people have it.  Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz both invented calculus at nearly the exact same time, though they had never met.  We've all heard about the rush to make social network sites on the Internet, Mark Zuckerberg just stuck his flag in it first.  It was the next logical course of action considering the knowledge and technology of the time.  Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan both invented the light bulb separately.  Lists such as these go on and on.

(Here's a short video showing quantum levitation)

How This Works, and What This Means
The Law of Accelerating returns means we can now predict, quite accurately, where we'll be from year to year, from decade to decade, from century to century.  Kurzweil's predictions have been so spot on in the past that today's leading inventors, businessmen, and researchers all follow his every article, his every prediction.

Kurzweil predicted, to the year, when a "world wide web" would reach the people.  He accurately predicted the mapping of the human genome.  He has said that when he first set out to gather this data, his expecation was that no one can predict the future, that it's far too random.  However, he found that if you measure the underlying properties of information technology, such as the power of computers per dollar, instructions-per-second per dollar, and other such factors, it produces a "remarkably smooth exponential trajectory" that one can follow.  Again, a trajectory that never slows down, never wavers in the good times or the bad.  Nothing has an impact on it.

The future...just...keeps...coming!

Information technology has become the main reason behind exponential growth.  After all, knowledge is power, and that power has to be communicated.  For instance, it's very common now for people to diagnose themselves from the Internet (and yes, while this can't always be trusted, it's still helpful), and many times doctors are finding that their patients now know much more about their own rare disease than the doctors themselves because of constant research on the Internet.

We know more, about ourselves and the universe around us, than we ever have before.  We're living longer, and so therefore we can contribute more to the world in one lifetime.  Advances in dental care, for instance, has greatly decreased infection that once came into the body through cavities and gum disease, which in turn has lengthened lifespans considerably.  These advancements came both in technology and understanding--this is important, because it's not just the tech that's advancing, but our understanding of our bodies, what we are, what we're made of, and what we're capable of (predicting the future) that has advanced us.

It has been said that the future of science is born first in science fiction.  This, at least, makes a strong argument for it.  Our need to predict creates fantasy, and we literally make our fantasies come to life now.

I, for one, am a self-published author, a thing not possible just five years ago.  It's an entirely new set of rules for my career path now.  And yours, too.  And it's only going to keeping changing, so you had better learn to keep up.

(An hour-long video where Dr. Michio Kaku discuesses the next 15 years or so)

Predictions
Kurzweil points out that there have already been nanomachines that go into the bloodstream and, in the near future, blood cell-sized devices will be created that can go into the bloodstream and perform therapeutic functions, and will be able to cure diabetes (one scientist actually cured Type 1 diabetes in mice and they're gearing up for human trials soon).  It lets insulin in, and blocks antibodies.  He also says that it could address limitations in your own white blood cells, and could attack cancer problems much sooner because your white blood cells don't attack cancer (they think it's you).  All of this, he says, is coming in the 2020s.

Kurzweil also demonstrates how we are less than 10 doublings away from producing 100% of the world's energy needs through solar energy alone.  There is 10,000 times more sunlight bathing the Earth every day than we would need to give the entire planet 100% of what it needs, and solar panel technologies are doubling every year (just like everything else).

Researchers now believe that by 2040, most cars on the road will be automated.  Just this year, GM's Cadillac division started on concept cars that are partially automated, and Audi and BMW are slated to do the same.  Google, meanwhile, is pushing for legislation in Nevada that would allow self-driving cars on the road, while at the same time manufacturing a group of autonomous Toyota Prius hybrids.

As for AI...well, we already saw the computer "Watson" defeat various intelligent champions on Jeopardy!, which Kurzweil points out is significant because Jeopardy! is a game show filled with word games, puns, and various plays on words.  This is one of the steps necessary to pass the Turing test (a test of a computer's ability to exhibit human-like intelligence), and it's a key one that Watson and other computers have already surpassed.

Right now, "Watson" is comprised of dozens of computer towers, so many that it fills a large storage area.  However, if you know your history, then you know that the first calculators used to fill a warehouse, and now calculators are just one of a thousand apps on your cell phone.


Questions Raised
All of this, of course, raises boatloads of ethical and philosophical questions, not the least of which is what will our role be in society once technology takes on so many roles once filled by humans.  Will there be job loss?  Some futurists say that there will actually be plenty of jobs, only we can't imagine or describe them now, just as you couldn't describe the job of a computer engineer to a factory worker in the 1950s.

Regardless, I'm reminded of a song by Gorillaz.  "The future...is comin' on, is comin' on, is comin' on, is comin' on..."

Follow me on Facebook and Twitter: Twitter account ChadHuskinsAuthor

Interview with Hugh Howey, by Chad Huskins

Chad Huskins is the EVVY Award-winning author of the new epic military sci-fi novel Zero Star, available now on Amazon.

If you've spent enough time in the world of self-publishing, it's impossible to miss the story of Hugh Howey.  His Wool series hasn't just skyrocketed him to the top of the game, it's also kind of changed the game.

He is undoubtedly the "Cinderella story" of the self-publishing world.  Here's a fellow that went the non-traditional route.  Rather than listen to the endless sea of rejection letters that await 99% of us, Hugh Howey opted for self-publishing on the Amazon Kindle program, and then watched as the first in his series took off.  Seeing its popularity, he quickly scrambled to write more in the series, and eventually caught the attention of Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian, who optioned the Wool series for film.

Howey has been understandably busy these days, between his duties as family man and writer, but I recently had a chance to pin him down and ask him a few questions, author to author.

HUSKINS:  Hi, Hugh.  Thanks for joining us here at Realm of Ideas.  First, just let me say that I’ve only just started to read your Wool series, and it is fantastic.  I picked up on it in an article for CNN.  It seems like you’ve had a heck of a year.  Can you tell us a little about what it felt like when it first started changing, what was going on in your and your wife’s head when this success started coming around so suddenly?

HOWEY:  It started in October of 2011. Sales began picking up and reviews started trickling in. At every stage of this wild ride, my wife and I have looked at each other in disbelief. Just when you think things have gotten as nutty as they possibly can, something bigger and crazier happens. So, in one sense, it’s seemed sudden, but really it’s been a very long upward journey full of many neat surprises.

HUSKINS:  Wool is a post-apocalyptic series taking place in the subterranean Silos.  Are you attracted to the post-apocalyptic genre, the themes in The Road and The Walking Dead, or did you have a specific story you were trying to tell and felt that only a post-apocalyptic setting could suffice?

HUGH:  The latter. I had a story I wanted to tell, and it only made sense in a wasteland setting. This isn’t the type of story I read or normally write. It’s just the world that the first short story needed to take place in.

HUSKINS:  Describe your writing process.  Myself, I prefer silence.  Do you listen to music, or write in silence?  Do you have a schedule you try to maintain?

HOWEY:  I prefer silence, also. I write best in the morning, so I get up and start immediately and try to go straight to lunch. I usually break around 10:00 in the morning to check email and post on Facebook and Twitter. My goal is to get a good 4-6 hours of writing or revising in each day. It’s just me and a laptop and my dog.

HUSKINS:  You’re pretty much the “Cinderella story” of the self-publishing world.  Can you describe how this happened?  That is, did you merely put the book up on Amazon Kindle and “wait and see,” and then just get lucky, or were you constantly promoting it on Twitter and Facebook, marketing it and so forth?

HOWEY:  I didn’t promote Wool until after it was already taking off on its own. The best thing you can do to give yourself a shot at success is to keep writing and publishing. The sort of sales you get from tireless marketing are the kind that require more marketing to maintain. In order to have a blockbuster, you need readers telling each other about the work, not you telling enough people that you get a sale or two. I know a lot of writers will disagree with me on this, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on marketing until you have five or six novels or a few dozen short stories under your belt. Just write. And don’t expect to make it big, that can be dangerous. Write because you love to, because you have to, not because you want to get rich.

HUSKINS:  When you were first starting with the ideas for Wool and other stories, did you find that your wife, friends and family were supportive of you?  Did anyone think you were crazy for trying your hand at writing and publishing?

HOWEY:  Nobody thought I was crazy. Everyone I encountered had mad respect for me. Writing is a very common aspiration. Very few people stick with it to completion, and so it mostly draws awe from others. It’s similar to the admiration I have for those who stick with a musical instrument or a foreign language until they become proficient. I’ve had nothing but support and encouragement from friends and family. In fact, I started writing primarily to hand my stories to people I knew!

HUSKINS:  I’ve read that you’ve drawn inspiration from some of the “awesome women” in your life.  Besides your wife, what other great women have inspired you?

HOWEY:  My sister and my mother. Both are brilliant women with enormous hearts and mountains of courage. I aspire to be more like them in many ways.

HUSKINS:  You were a yacht captain for a while, and traveled the globe.  Miss it?  Still do it?

HOWEY:  I don’t miss running other people’s yachts. It’s a lot of work and it takes you away from family. My dream now is to get back on a sailboat of my own and take it around the world. I think within a decade that I’ll be on my way.  (NOTE:  Since we had this discussion, Hugh has done just that.)

HUSKINS:  What else do you do with your time besides writing and family time?  Have any hobbies that keep you occupied?

HOWEY:  I love to take pictures, especially of people. My dog keeps me busy with long walks and fetching sticks (that would be me fetching the sticks, mostly). My wife and I really enjoy our time together reading or watching a film. We’re very boring people.

HUSKINS:  What are you reading now?

HOWEY:  The latest Jon Ronson book. This man is a genius. He’s hilarious, and I love the way he strings words together. I highly recommend all of his books.

HUSKINS:  Lots of writers and artists have that “watershed moment” when they decided they wanted to write and create.  For me, it was reading Sphere by Michael Crichton when I was like 15.  It kind of planted the seed, which grew into a burning desire.  Was there a book that did that for you?

HOWEY:  Ender’s Game. I was 12, and it was when I knew I wanted to be a writer. The fact that Card was a fellow North Carolinian made that dream seem attainable.

HUSKINS:  Wool has been optioned for film by Ridley Scott, the man behind the original Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner and numerous other epics.  Tell us how that came about, and what was it like?  Did you get a phone call from an agent, e-mail?

HOWEY:  My agent sent Wool around Hollywood. One of the people who got a copy and loved it was Steve Zaillian, one of the top screenplay writers in the business. He loved it enough to send it along to Ridley, who also fell in love with the story. This duo bought the option in conjunction with 20^th Century Fox. They are set to produce, though I doubt either of them will write or helm the work. They have a lot in the pipeline.

I did receive an email from Ridley. He was busy with the release of Prometheus at the time, but was extremely complimentary of the book. It’s amazing that someone of his stature sat down and read something I wrote from cover to cover. That’s humbling.

HUSKINS:  Did you or your family ever have a big celebratory moment for all of these achievements?

HOWEY:  We’ve had a lot of little celebratory moments. Mostly meals out. My way of celebrating is to go get pizza and maybe splurge for a beer. Or go eat somewhere with a view of the water.

HUSKINS:  Thanks for chatting, Hugh.  But before you go, we have to ask you for any piece of advice you can give to writers out there, or artists of any kind for that matter.

HOWEY:  If you love creating, then do it. Art should be an outlet for everything except our desire to get rich. You’ll go mad with that as your motivation. If you view it as a hobby, but one you take seriously enough to generate the highest quality output possible, then the sky is the limit. But that’s just me. There are a million other ways to handle being an artist, and I’m sure most of those alternatives are superior to my way.

(To find out more about Hugh Howey, visit his website www.hughhowey.com.  To find his fabulous Wool series, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Omnibus-Edition-ebook/dp/B0071XO8RA/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1354623922&sr=1-2&keywords=wool.

Find me on Facebook, and on Twitter @ChadRyanHuskins

My Interview with the Guys at IndieAuthorLand

Hey guys, just a quick update on what I've been doing.  Still editing Waves Crash and Seas Split, and we're winding down with Shinobi Conspiracy at Izu Harbor.

I recently conducted an interview with the guys over at www.indieauthorland.com, concerning my latest book Psycho Save Us.  Here's an excerpt from that interview:


INTERVIEWER:  Tell us a little bit about Psycho Save Us.

HUSKINS:  Psycho Save Us is a book I’ve been working on for quite some time, maybe even since high school. In a nutshell, two small black girls with a gift for telepathy are abducted off the streets of Atlanta by a ruthless ring of traffickers and internet child pornographers, and their only hope is making remote contact with a man named Spencer Pelletier, who is a career criminal recently escaped from Leavenworth Penitentiary, and who for mysterious reasons can detect their telepathic link.

The inspiration comes from some true events. In high school, I saw a story about two young black girls that were abducted near Atlanta, and I remember hearing from black community leaders how blacks aren’t covered in the media nearly as much as whites when they go missing. In recent years, I’ve seen all of this on TV, we all have, and you can tell that it’s true, at least to some degree.

Couple that with my fascination with psychology and, perhaps one of the most controversial parts of psychology, the study of psychopaths. The story began to form in my head, and really crystallized when I read about this massive international internet child pornography ring that Interpol busted up about two years ago. The members were all over the globe—Germany, United States, Britain, parts of Asia, everywhere. It was vast, and what these people were doing defied imagination: for instance, the more they made children cry while being tortured and raped, the higher “rank” they got on their secret porn website, and thus their status was increased amongst the group and they had the “privilege” of accessing more videos of children being tortured. Truly horrific stuff, the kind of stuff you don’t read about anywhere in any fiction.

I’m also attracted to discussions about good and evil, the real discussions that matter, that dissect and analyze, and I thought, “If psychopaths are real, and one believed in God, then wouldn’t one have to believe that even psychopaths were a part of God’s plan?” The implications of that are actually quite terrifying, if you think about it.

All of these elements were kind of swirling around in my head, like ingredients looking for a pot to jump in. So, I combined them, and Psycho Save Us was the result.


Read the whole interview here:  http://indieauthorland.com/2012/11/16/interview-with-chad-huskins-author-of-psycho-save-us/

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Visit my website at www.forestofideas.com