A measure of time. The place after first. Something following. A small part, as of a minute ("just a second"). A repeating, as in a second chance. An alternate, as in every second year. Something inferior in rank ... a second vice president, a second chair in an orchestra. A standby in a duel. A gear in a car’s transmission. A reference to something or someone past … a second Pearl Harbor, a second Churchill. And the time needed for a cesium-133 atom to perform 9,192,631,770 complete oscillations.
At the beginning of this blog, thinking about beginnings. Any word can be a beginning.
Many people can name their favorite book of all time ... but how many of us can remember the first sentence of that book? Can you?
First sentences from SF books through the years:
1865 From the Earth to the Moon
During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland.
1886 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.
1895 The Time Machine
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
1901 The First Men in the Moon
As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident.
1912
The Lost World
Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth—a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self.
1919 The Moon Pool
For two months I had been on the d'Entrecasteaux Islands gathering data for the concluding chapters of my book upon the flora of the volcanic islands of the South Pacific.
1924 We
I am merely copying out here, word for word, what was printed today in the State Gazette:
In 120 days from now the building of the INTEGRAL will be finished.
1932 Brave New World
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.
1939 Lest Darkness Fall
Tancredi took his hands off the wheel again and waved them.
1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1957 The City and the Stars
Like a glowing jewel, the city lay upon the breast of the desert.
1961 Dark Universe
Pausing beside the hanging needle of rock, Jared tapped it with his lance.
1966 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
I see in Lunaya Pravda that Luna City Council has passed on first reading a bill to examine, license, inspect—and tax—public food vendors operating inside municipal pressure.
1970 Ringworld
In the nighttime heart of Beirut, in one of a row of general-address transfer booths, Louis Wu flicked into reality.
1975 The Shockwave Rider
The man in the bare steel chair was as naked as the room's white walls.
1997 Blue Limbo
As the copter lost altitude, Mitch Helwig, encased inside the prototype Honda skimmer that hung below it, suspended on steel cables like a spider dangling from some nightmarish hummingbird, donned his night goggles.
