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Our Favorite Last Lines From Science Fiction Novels |
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io9 
07/31/09
-Gene Wolfe, "The Citadel of the Autarch."
It echoes the last line of the first book, as well as giving us yet another hint that we may not know the whole story. And forces us to go back and reread the entire series again, goddammit.
07/31/09
Alan Dean Foster's "The Man Who Used the Universe"
"... You are the most monstrously evil, self-centered, cold and uncaring individual your race has likely ever produced." He extended a pair of glistening, slime-coated tentacles and exchanged liquid with the man.
"naturally I will help you in any way I can"
07/31/09
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
07/31/09
Agreed! I thought that was a perfect ending to the book: Simple and precise, yet still clearly visual. I've always regarded the book as more of a poem, though, based upon the way it reads and echos in your mind. That ending is a sentence I'll always remember...
07/31/09
07/31/09
Harlan Ellison (granted a short story not a novel, but that's gotta be worth an hounourable mention...)
07/31/09
I've always been partial to the last lines of Asimov's short story, The Last Question:
"And AC said, "let there be light!"
And there was light-"
07/31/09
"This will be a good life...
...good enough."
08/01/09
07/31/09
As in "Rose for Ecclesiastes": "But when I awakened I was in the dispensary, and alive. I felt the throb of engines as I slowly stood up and somehow made it to the port. Blurred Mars hung like a swollen belly above me, until it dissolved, brimmed over, and streamed down my face."
And in "This Moment of the Storm": "It is cold and quiet outside and the horizon is infinity. There is no sense of movement. There is no moon, and the stars are very bright, like broken diamonds, all."
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
--Avram Davidson, Masters of the Maze.
07/31/09
"The Ramans do everything in threes." - Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
"For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something." - 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
"It wasn't such a bad way for the long story to end." - Evolution, Stephen Baxter (though there is an epilogue after this)
But great list otherwise!
07/31/09
The last few lines from Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials is awesome too. I especially loved it.
"And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?"
"The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.
07/31/09
"Call me Citizen Rat."
07/31/09
(books in question are in boxes, so I ain't a'gonna get exact ones:)
Vogt, The Weapon Shops of Isher : "This is the race which will rule the sevagram."
Clarke; Rendezvous with Rama: "The Ramans always do everything in threes."
(And another vote for one of my favorites - the end of _Feersum Endjinn_.)
07/31/09
I'm gonna catch so much hate for this. I think Rendezvous with Rama is a rather dull book and although that last line is a killer hook, those sequels should never have been written. From bad to worse.
07/31/09
That said, I'll defend Rama itself thusly: Yes, in general, it's kind of a dull book. Clarke isn't here, and in general wasn't, a two-fisted adventure writer, and, man, does he demonstrate that with such epic plot developments as "I brought a SPACE BICYCLE with me!", "There's a FLOWER here! Wow!" and the length discussion of airlocks and stairwells and the like. Absolutely, it's dull as dishwater. Reasonably readable, but otherwise - meh. Even one of Clarke's misfires (such as, oh, _Imperial Earth_), in the pre-_Ghost from the Grand Banks_ era (when everything went to heck with him), was more stirring than Rama.
That is, however, the point. The Sense of Wonder works at its best when you go from zero to sixty in ought point ought ought ought one seconds. Clarke *loved* his final punchlines, to the point of ludicrousness in several cases, but here, it's the entire reason for the book's existence as a whole. The book exists to set up the last line - and stop.
The sequels - well, if they had ever been written, which they haven't, I assure you, they would be purely moneymaking exercises, because Rendezvous with Rama exists to set up the extremely sudden shift of scale between the utterly prosaic that we've been wading through for a hundred and fifty pages and the Oh, Dear of the end. Going past the end ruins that completely ... because the Sense of Wonder exists in the contrast between What You Thought You Knew and What Really Turns Out To Be The Case.
Rama itself - it's a giant thing that ignores humanity, and we're taught that over and over and over again in the book. Clarke rubs our faces in its complete unknowableness pretty much every chapter. Humans react to Rama on such a hugely superficial level - dealing with a stairwell, trying to nuke it, etc. - and when it leaves, well, that's that. We don't know what it was, but at least it's gone, right?
Welll....
That's what Rama was about.
That's also why I like the end of _Endjinn_ so much; Bascule is *such* a prosaic character. He goes in search of his friend, he gets chased, he gets into trouble, he walks/balloons up the tower ... he's the most grounded, prosaic, character we have, and he never, ever addresses bigger issues, the way the other characters do. He's focused on the here and now, and to hear HIM announce ... well, THAT .. at the end, we get the sensawunda expansion of sensibility so much more dramatically than otherwise. Asura, had she announced that, would not have been as impressive, because she's ALREADY been the one to tell us so much of what's going on - "There's a wormhole to somewhere!" is not as far from The End Line as "I'm looking for mah ant friend" is, and that's what makes it so dramatic.
(In passing, how DO you "promote" posts? Is this some ability granted by the gods, or am I just suffering from UI blindness?)
07/31/09
08/01/09
08/01/09
08/01/09
07/31/09
"Thi sun shines a teeny bit strongir evry day, & tho itl b a long time b4 nybody can c it wif thi naykid I, thi starz 1/2 moovd."
Feersum Endjinn --Iain M. Banks
Not everybody cottons to the Riddley Walker-like conceit of Bascule's crazed spelling, but the import of his final line is, well, mooving. I find the notion of the immense forces at work accurately fulfills that overused word, Awesome.
I'm a big sucker for slingshot endings. Here's the quintessential example from a writer who used them often:
"Here my pen shall halt, reader, though I do not. I have carried you from gate to gate--from the locked and fog-shrouded gate of the necropolis of Nessus to that cloud-racked gate we call the sky, the gate that shall lead me, as I hope, beyond the nearer stars.
My pen halts, though I do not. Reader, you will walk no more with me. It is time we both take up our lives.
To this account, I, Severian the Lame, Autarch, do set my hand in what shall be called the last year of the old sun."
Citadel of the Autarch --Gene Wolfe
Funny thing. That was meant to be the end of the New Sun Tetralogy, and would have worked fine as a last line. Wolfe did a follow up book four years later but really needn't have.
Slingshot endings are usually there as a baited hook for a sequel. I like 'em just fine when they are used to launch the reader's imagination into the unknown.
08/01/09
07/31/09
To say that book drags would be like accusing The Lord of the Rings trilogy of being long-winded.
07/31/09
I plow through Gibson's books like tubes of Thin Mints.
07/31/09
I got through Neuromancer in a day, but his later works were just too cerebral for me I guess.
07/31/09
Maybe you should review how you read? Calm space, quiet atmosphere, no tv, no radio?
08/01/09
Interesting. I liked Gibson's earlier works, but found them pretty slow and difficult to read, so I was pleasantly surprised that I burned through Pattern Recognition in a couple of evenings and commented specifically that he's got so much easier to read over time.