The first lines that grab you by the collar, drawn from thousands of vintage SF stories. Read one you like; the whole story is free.
_A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."_
"Is there anything you want to make disappear?" Clarence Willoughby asked his mother.
He was running, running down the long tunnels, the shadows hunting him, claws clutching at him, nearer ...
That night her son was the first star.
When he opened the door to the shed that day, and saw the axe suspended in mid-air, he understood what was wrong.
Mooney looked out of his window, and the sky was white.
Let the dead past bury its dead? Not while I am alive, it won't!
_Peter Karson was dead. He had been dead for some time now, but the dark blood was still oozing from the crushed ruin of his face, trickling down into his sodden sleeve, and falling, drop by slow drop, from his fingertips.
Have you found out about the Big Engine? It's all around us, you know--can't you hear it even now?
My first sensation was one of sudden and intense cold--a chill that shot through my body and engulfed it like a charge of electricity.
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones.
_This, he thought, is a crazy way to die._
Up the concrete steps. Slowly, one, two, three, four.
It could be deadly. It had to be tested.
I wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane.
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.
His name was Herrell McCray and he was scared.
He lit a cigarette, the last one they had, and asked his wife "Want to share it?"
That's what _we_ always called them, where I come from, huddlers. Damnedest thing to see from any distance, the way they huddle.
He opened his eyes. He couldn't remember having ever seen humans before, but he recognized them instantly.
You are having the same recurring dream, the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945.
I am the last of my type existing today in all the Solar System. I, too, am the last existing who, in memory, sees the struggle for this System, and in memory I am still close to the Center of Rulers, for mine was the ruling type then.
_It isn't the dying itself. It's what comes before.
He lay in the gutter. In his mouth was the taste of whiskey and defeat.
Suddenly, it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get scared.
What more fitting place for the last man on Earth to live in than a museum? Now if only he could avoid becoming an exhibit himself!
They quarreled at breakfast. This was not strange because they quarreled often.
Like a lone sentinel, the house stood apart at the edge of the village, a white cube with no windows.
"_Oh, he is dead!" my mind cried out._
It took me less than three thousand years to catch up with Pop; which, all things considered, was pretty good going.