{"id":913,"date":"2008-08-20T07:30:05","date_gmt":"2008-08-20T11:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=913"},"modified":"2008-08-14T11:34:26","modified_gmt":"2008-08-14T15:34:26","slug":"opening-sentences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=913","title":{"rendered":"Opening Sentences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>io9 has a nice <A HREF=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5027128\/great-opening-sentences-from-science-fiction\">discussion of opening lines<\/A> that really grab your attention.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;They set a slamhound on Turner&#8217;s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair.&#8221; &#8212; <I>Count Zero<\/I> by William Gibson. Okay, come on. This is just so fun. It&#8217;s got the wacky jargon: &#8220;slamhound,&#8221; &#8220;slotted,&#8221; and the idea that it can be tied to random things like hair color and pheromones. And it&#8217;s crackling with energy!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a theme we&#8217;ve explored in chat from time to time.  How important is the opening sentence?  Have you ever decided to buy a book on the strength of its first line?<\/p>\n<p>Several of the post&#8217;s comments cite other arresting openers, most without noting which book they&#8217;re from.  It&#8217;s kind of fun to play &#8220;guess the book.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>io9 has a nice discussion of opening lines that really grab your attention. &#8220;They set a slamhound on Turner&#8217;s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair.&#8221; &#8212; Count Zero by William Gibson. Okay, come on. This is just so fun. It&#8217;s got the wacky jargon: &#8220;slamhound,&#8221; &#8220;slotted,&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":955,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions\/955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}