What is the single greatest one-word sentence in all of Sci Fi or Fantasy?

[dclary]

Forget the 200-word open. Forget hook me in 50 words or less.

Name the book, and gimme a one-word sentence that knocked your socks off when you first read it.


Here's mine:


"Nom." --- Stephen Donaldson, White Gold Wielder

[dpaterso]

I've gone for the paragraph option.

Thufir Hawat, his father's Master of Assassins, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by House Atreides in fief-complete -- an apparent victory for the Duke Leto. Yet, Hawat had said, this appearance contained the deadliest peril, for the Duke Leto was popular among the Great Houses of the Landsraad.Frank Herbert's DUNE.

-Derek

[dclary]

I'm disappointed Dpat... I was *certain* you'd have gone for


"Khhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnn nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!"

[dpaterso]

I know, I'm a dirty rotten cheat. No surprises there.

Incredibly, they don't actually say "Khhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannn nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!" in the novel.

-Derek

[Mr. Chuckletrousers]

Forget the 200-word open. Forget hook me in 50 words or less.

Name the book, and gimme a one-word sentence that knocked your socks off when you first read it.

I doubt this exercise will yield much fruit. Very few great lines stand on their own (the biggest exception is opening sentences) -- they derive much of their greatness from the buildup and mood and context that surrounds them. In other words, if they are great, it is only because they stand on the shoulders of giants.

That said, here is my pick. I don't know if I would consider it the greatest line ever in all of fantasy and scifi, but in terms of creating an impact it was the first that leapt to mind. It's the closing sentence of Steven Brust's Five Hundred Years After:

The greatest evil, the greatest heroism, the greatest disaster, the greatest triumph, the greatest horror, the greatest love -- what could better summarize, and bring to a close, the history we have had the honor to humbly lay before the reader?

As I said, just hanging out there, entirely stripped of context, it seems flaccid and silly-looking. But it packs quite a punch when it caps off five hundred pages of awesome.

[dclary]

I know, I'm a dirty rotten cheat. No surprises there.

Incredibly, they don't actually say "Khhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannn nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!" in the novel.

-Derek

You read the novelization of Star Trek II?

I bow in geekal reverence.

[dclary]

As I said, just hanging out there, entirely stripped of context, it seems flaccid and silly-looking. But it packs quite a punch when it caps off five hundred pages of awesome.

This is, actually, exactly the fruit I was looking for.

I'm a huge fan of literary melodrama... when the turns twist, and the screw tightens, and the tension rises, and then there's that moment... that solitary moment when a single word releases all that, and you go "Fucking A." -- or some less vulgar but equally meaningful epitath of sweet satisfaction.

Like River Tam's "My turn." in Serenity, or Heinlein's "His name was Zim." at the end of Starship Troopers.

You're right, there aren't very many instances when you can distill one of those moments down to a single word. And even if you could, without all the words preceding, it's just that one word.

But it's a fun exercise nonetheless.

[dpaterso]

You read the novelization of Star Trek II?

I bow in geekal reverence.
Vonda McIntyre. You didn't?? Gasp shock. You've gone down in my estimation, dc.

-Derek

[Don]

ETA: I missed the "ONE-WORD" part of the OP. Geesh!


Robert A. Heinlein was a master of one-liners. Here are a few, and I'm not even going to tackle The Notebooks of Lazarus Long. I could easily do another dozen of these.

How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?

You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

Known as Hanlon's Razor.
An armed society is a polite society.

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.


Morals — all correct moral laws — derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

Okay, that one was two lines. :)

And finally, the best definition of love I've ever heard.

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

[IdiotsRUs]

Duderino there can be only one, no matter the flaws of the book:

Out of doubt out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing
To hope's end I rode and heart's breaking
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

Chokes me . Every . time. Along with Eomer finding Eowyn on the field. *sniff*

Eta: I don't care if it's too long or whatever. The one part that speaks to me emotionally more than all the rest.

[dclary]

Vonda McIntyre. You didn't?? Gasp shock. You've gone down in my estimation, dc.

-Derek

She really turned me off with The Crystal Star, and I've kinda avoided her since.

[dclary]

Duderino there can be only one, no matter the flaws of the book:

Out of doubt out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing
To hope's end I rode and heart's breaking
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

Chokes me . Every . time. Along with Eomer finding Eowyn on the field. *sniff*

Ah, yes. And when Gandalf and the Nazgul confront each other... and the wind shifts... and a rooster crows... Dawn.

I'd include that line if I had it memorized, which alas, I no longer do. Stupid age and the aging process!

[Gynn]

Shaka, when the walls fell.

[Fenika]

Forget the 200-word open. Forget hook me in 50 words or less.


First a better robot thread, now this.

Deek, pray tell, what are you compensating for? Eh?

[dclary]

First a better robot thread, now this.

Deek, pray tell, what are you compensating for? Eh?

I'm just saying... S EpNeTnEiNsC E size doesn't matter! It's how you use it, dammit!

[Zoombie]

"electro-magnet" - Tinker.

You just had to be there, to see exactly how Tinker used said electro-magnet.

[Polenth]

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

[Sophia]

The one I always remember is from a collection of the "World's Best Short Short Stories", published in the 1970s.

The title is "Sign at the End of the Universe", and the entire story is:

This Way Up. (printed upside down on the page).

[Stormhawk]

Shaka, when the walls fell.
"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra."

[dclary]

Can you include the story/book names, too, for those of us who don't get the reference?

[williemeikle]

"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

The closing line from The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clarke

[williemeikle]

The one I always remember is from a collection of the "World's Best Short Short Stories", published in the 1970s.

The title is "Sign at the End of the Universe", and the entire story is:

This Way Up. (printed upside down on the page).

I've got that book... there are some really brilliant short shorts there... required reading for anyone tring to write flash genre fiction.

[Mr. Chuckletrousers]

Can you include the story/book names, too, for those of us who don't get the reference?
If you are talking about the "Darmok and Jilad" folks, they are referring to the episode Darmok, from Star Trek the Next Generation. It's one of the few times that the medium of television has ever really tried to explore the idea that alien minds think in alien ways.

[Tasmin21]

I'm not sure about all time greatest, but as opening lines go, this one was always one of my favorites:

The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault. Jim Butcher, Blood Rites

[dclary]

I'm going to guess the task was too challenging. My bad. Sorry.

[Diana Hignutt]

"Hazel-Ra!" - Richard Adams, Watership Down.

[StevenJ]

I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen. Arthur C, Clarke, The Sentinel/2001: A Space Odyssey

[Mr. Chuckletrousers]

"Huh!" -Mal Reynolds, Firefly, episode 1; uttered upon discovering that the mysterious metal box contained a naked hibernating girl.

[dclary]

Joss Whedon is a master of the one-word sentence.

[triceretops]

Poul Anderson in Vigin Planet:

"Gak."

Tri

[MargueriteMing]

"Duck!"

Of course, back then I did what most people would do, I said, "Huh?" That's how I got beheaded, the first time.

[StephenJSweeney]

Forget the 200-word open. Forget hook me in 50 words or less. Name the book, and gimme a one-word sentence that knocked your socks off when you first read it.

"Die, puny human!" - Brisingr

:)

[Makai_Lightning]

"Die, puny human!" - Brisingr

:)

...No, wait, is that line seriously in the book?

Maybe it'd work in context, but that would probably make me laugh out loud.

That can't be serious. It sounds like something from a parody.

[StephenJSweeney]

...No, wait, is that line seriously in the book?

Maybe it'd work in context, but that would probably make me laugh out loud.

That can't be serious. It sounds like something from a parody.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/382170_paolini08.html

[Nivarion]

the whole time i was reading the star wars cycle, i was expecting something along the lines of "BANG" or what ever sound a blaster makes.

what i got was just as good, but wasn't one word.

[Esopha]

"YES."

Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man. I got up and did a dance around my room when I read it.

[maxmordon]

Some of Borges:

"One of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of humankind."

"hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö." (Upward behind the onstreaming it mooned. Andrew Hurley, one of Borges's translators, wrote a fiction in which he says that the words "axaxaxas mlö" "can only be pronounced as the author's cruel, mocking laughter".)

"Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books."

From Gabriel García Márquez (Does Magic Realism counts?)

"... as he discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, he had arrived without surprise at the ignominious fiction of commanding without power, of being exalted without glory and of being obeyed without authority when he became convinced in the trail of yellow leaves of his autumn that he had never been master of all his power, that he was condemned not to know life except in reverse, condemned to decipher the seams and straighten the threads of the woof and the warp of the tapestry of illusions of reality without suspecting even too late that the only livable life was one of show ..."

"... and one January afternoon we had seen a cow contemplating the sunset from the presidential balcony, just imagine, a cow on the balcony of the nation, what an awful thing, what a shitty country ..."

"They felt that they had been the victims of some new and showy gypsy business and they decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings"

"The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight."

"He [Aureliano II ] had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth"


Sorry... I couldn't think of a single word...

[Doodlebug]

"It was a pleasure to burn." - Fahrenheit 451

My husband, ever the prankster, has always wanted me to write a novel in which the first sentence is, "Laser fire crackled through the air."

[Tom Johnson]

"What if." I first read that in "Martians Go Home" by Fred Brown in the 1950s. I bet it's been used thousands of times!

"The Weed of Crime Bears Bitter Fruit!"

[badducky]

Have I got the 'zine for you.

Thaumatrope:

http://thaumatrope.greententacles.com/

[dclary]

"YES."

Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man. I got up and did a dance around my room when I read it.

That's exactly the kind of response I was hoping for. I'll go check this one out. :D

[Haggis]

"42."

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

eta: The irony of this post number is palpable.

[Zoombie]

Superman counts as sci-fi, right?

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w162/screwballsquirrel/lex-luthor-wrong.jpg

[ChaosTitan]

:e2point:

[badducky]

Speaking of Gabriel Garcia MArquez, I nominate his single sentence short story, "Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship". If you haven't read that, seriously... Go! Go, now!

[maxmordon]

Speaking of Gabriel Garcia MArquez, I nominate his single sentence short story, "Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship". If you haven't read that, seriously... Go! Go, now!

Autumn of the Patriarch is also written in long sentences. Some of them change of speaker in middle of it.

[Inarticulate Babbler]

"Frag" - The new Battlestar Galactica

"Drokk" - Judge Dredd

"Shiny" - Firefly/Serenity