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Along the SF lines, my favorite first line ever is: The sky over the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. From "Neuromancer", by William
by beat 7y ago
Along the SF lines, my favorite first line ever is:
The sky over the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
From "Neuromancer", by William Gibson.
- jhbadger 7y agoAnd at least two more recent books followed that up with "It was bright blue", as that's what many modern digital TVs show rather than the grey analog static Gibson was referring to. I love Gibson's line, but it's the sort of thing that will need to be explained by a footnote the way Dickens' description of a ghost in "A Christmas Carol" as glowing "like a bad lobster in a dark cellar" is today.
- beat 7y agoThat's one reason I like it! Fits right in with the Gibsonesque view of technology.
- duskwuff 7y agoOne of the books you're probably thinking of is Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere: "The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel."
- Kalium 7y agoI believe Gibson actually did mean that bright blue. If memory serves his TV at the time didn't do grey analog static, and he generalized somewhat hastily.
- beat 7y agoBeing from the same vintage as Gibson, I can assure you, tvs in those days gave us grey static.
- tekproxy 7y agoCame to the comments to find this line. You didn't disappoint,
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]