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.
He began by breaking things that morning. He broke the glass of water on his night stand.
Charles looked at the body and got his bright idea.
"No more lies," Paula said.
It started with a load of potatoes.
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
On the morning of June 15th, Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream.
It's had it. Finished.
The old woman was dying. There could be no doubt of it now.
"Joe! There's a burglar in the house!"
“Ambassador Holliwell died here today. The end came suddenly as the ambassador was alone in his study....”
It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.
"In the middle of the night," the man said to the landlady over a soft-boiled egg and a slice of toast.
"He must die. It will look like an accident."
"It's a dead world," Thompson spoke.
For a long time, Henry Bemis had had an ambition. To read a book.
The storm ruined my plan.
I nearly stumbled over the kid in the dark before I saw him.
Fireflies on the dark meadow of Earth....
It was a deathless world, but a woman was dying.
"Nothing," Frankie answered.
He should have known better. He admitted that, now.
"The chickens got out of the coop and flew away three hundred years ago," said Barwell. "Now they're coming home to roost."
Ballard was quite dead. There could be no doubt of it.
Coming up out of five centuries of sleep was like fighting my way up from the bottom of the sea.
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts--worse for one with none!
At first I thought it was just another wrong number. Well, it was, in a sense--but not the kind of wrong number I thought it was.
Red and Slim found the two strange little animals the morning after they heard the thunder sounds.