SFF Novels with the Best Opening Lines

I just finished reading Charles Stross's Saturns Children (see my review here) which has one of the best opening lines that I have read for some time:

Today is the two-hundredth anniversary of the final extinction of my One True Love, as close as I can date it.

The opening line of a story has to do several things. I think Stephen King said it best (as he often does) in an interview in The Atlantic entitled Why Stephen King Spends 'Months and Even Years' Writing Opening Sentences:

There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It's tricky thing, and tough to talk about because I don't think conceptually while I work on a first draft -- I just write. To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.

But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

How can a writer extend an appealing invitation -- one that's difficult, even, to refuse ...

[A]n intriguing context is important, and so is style. But for me, a good opening sentence really begins with voice. You hear people talk about "voice" a lot, when I think they really just mean "style." Voice is more than that. People come to books looking for something. But they don't come for the story, or even for the characters. They certainly don't come for the genre. I think readers come for the voice. ...

An appealing voice achieves an intimate connection -- a bond much stronger than the kind forged, intellectually, through crafted writing.

When people think of great opening lines they often refer to the same old examples. Some openings are so famous that they have made their way into everyday conversation, as with the opening to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The same is true for the opening to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, the first few words of which read “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...” Other times, they think of a classic hook as with 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

In a SFF novel, the role of the opening line is arguably even more important as it is the introduction to the world that the author has created. What are the best? Erin Bow lists five of her favorite opening lines in a recent post at tor.com. The five books, and the corresponding opening lines, are:

1. “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.”—Feed by M.T. Anderson.
2. “The first thing you find you when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.”—The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.
3. “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried out bed of the old North Sea.”—Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.
4. “Day One: My lady and I are being shut up in a tower for seven years.”—Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale.
5. “I’ve confessed to everything and I’d like to be hanged. Now, if you please.”—Chime by Franny Billingsley.

I think you'll agree that all of these are pretty good; I especially liked Philip Reeve's hook and will seek him out as a result.

Joel Williams also has a pretty good list at Ink Tank:

1. “I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one.”—Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card.
2. “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” —Neuromancer, by William Gibson.
3. “A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.” —Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
4. “Monday morning when I answered the door there were twenty-one new real estate agents there, all in horrible polyester gold jackets.”—The Hacker And The Ants, Version 2.0, by Rudy Rucker.
5. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.” —1984, George Orwell.
6. “The morning after he killed Eugene Shapiro, Andre Deschenes woke early.” —Undertow, by Elizabeth Bear.
7. “At the end, the bottom, the very worst of it, with the world afire and hell’s flamewinged angels calling him by name, Lee Crane blamed himself.” — Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, by Theodore Sturgeon.
8. “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” —A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
9. “The manhunt extended across more than one hundred light years and eight centuries.” —A Deepness In The Sky, by Vernor Vinge.
10. “It was a pleasure to burn.” —Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

Other lists abound (from people like Charlie Jane Anders, or Mark from Momentum Books)containing a lot of overlap with the above, but also a few other items:

1. “They set a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair.” —Count Zero by William Gibson.
2. “Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.”—Angels & Demons by Dan Brown.
3. “I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work.” —Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
4. “He woke, and remembered dying.” —The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod.
5. “In the summer of his twelfth year - the summer the stars began to fall from the sky - the boy Isaac discovered that he could tell East from West with his eyes closed.” —Axis by Robert Charles Wilson.
6. “I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp.” —House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds
7. “I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.” —The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursuala K. Le Guin.
8. “All children, except one, grow up.” —Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M. Barrie’s

All of the above are pretty good and some are downright great. But I think there are four pretty great ones that they missed, in my not-so-humble-opinion.  They are:

1. “Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity.” —Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.
2. “I always get the shakes before a drop.” —Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
3. “Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.” ―The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
4. “When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.” —The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.

Am I missing any?