73 Years Later, the Greatest Opening Line in Sci-fi History Is Still an Unbeatable Classic

Science fiction literature has never been lacking in spellbinding openers. William Gibson's Neuromancer conjures an entire cyberpunk world with its image of a sky “the color of television, tuned to a dead channel,” while Ursula K. Le Guin writes just four words — “There was a wall” — to introduce one of the most important ideas of The Dispossessed. Other authors, like Frank Herbert with Dune and Dan Simmons with Hyperion, take a more novelistic approach, dropping readers into the strange preparations for Paul Atreides' journey to Arrakis or the pilgrims' desperate voyage to the Time Tombs, respectively.