Gideon the Ninth

 

Tamsyn Muir wrote a long and packed first sentence for Gideon the Ninth, one of this year's Hugo Award nominees. She set up a detailed and clearly different world for her story. Let's look at the pieces.

First we have a time stamp: "In the myriadic year of our Lord." "Myriad" is a word that means either "very many" generally or "ten thousand" specifically. "Year of our Lord," as a translation of the Latin phrase "anno domini" recalls medieval times and monasteries. Then, between the dashes, the meaning takes a twist. "Ten thousand" clarifies "myriadic." "King Undying" is a little off to describe the "our Lord" that "year of our Lord" refers to in our world and "kindly Prince of Death!" doesn't match in either tone or terms. This time is disjointed from ours. 

I particularly like "kindly Prince of Death!" The Greeks called the Furies the Kindly Ones to mollify them, as the Celts called the fae the "fair folk" to soften their attention. So "kindly" here balances on an edge – is this "Prince of Death" truly kind, or is he capricious and powerful enough that those who speak of him try to soothe him? "King Undying" and "Prince of Death" places him as someone who does not die himself but has dominion over those who do – or can cause death. "The kindly Prince of Death" has a strict alternation of accented and unstressed syllables, creating a strong, march-like rhythm. To put the final gloss on the phrase, the exclamation point adds extra emphasis to the word "Death" – strengthening the rhythm and treating "Prince of Death" as something to be excited about. Why would someone be cheerily enthusiastic about death or its ruler?

Now we have a time that is not our time and a world that is not our world, since it has the King Undying in it. Some sentences would be content to accomplish that much and raise curiosity about the narrator's attitude toward death. This one has half its words still to go. 

Tamsyn Muir next places a person in this time and world. The name "Gideon Nav" is a close match to our naming conventions but not a name we'd expect in our world. We learn of three specific bundles she grabs, "her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines" which show her priorities. The sword suggests she is a fighter, with an archaic weapon. The shoes are a fairly common item to pack. The dirty magazines are a surprise, placed in the strong final position in the list. The previous allusions to monks and premodern weapons don't match the modern, popular culture of "dirty magazines." By the time we had mass color printing, we'd stopped using swords and saying "the year of our Lord." Plus, we often tend to romanticize knights and ladies and thus imagine them too noble for smut. 

Finally, Gideon "escaped from the House of the Ninth." "House of the Ninth" is a return to the aristocratic flavor of "sword" and "our Lord" (and those words added an internal rhyme to the sentence). "Escaped" is a vivid word that creates excitement. It means she is running from danger. What is the danger? Will her escape succeed? 

At forty words, this is a long sentence for a contemporary opener. That length contributes to an antique feel. The fusion of feudal words with a pop of current culture and a date that must be in the future shows that this world won't color inside expected lines. That's fresh. I'm curious about Gideon Nav, her world, and her situation, and ready to see a new story. Muir has used her extra words well. 

Graphic design by Ken Silbert

Adulthood Rites

When writing science fiction or fantasy, how important is it that the first sentence signal that we are not in the current world? 

One way to approach the question is to see what effective writers do. Octavia Butler published influential science fiction and her legacy has continued to grow. The first sentence of Adulthood Rites lets us know that her main character is different from the people we know.

"He remembered much of his stay in the womb." Human memories most often start around age three. (Here's a quick article about that: Earliest Memories.) Since the brain has yet to fully develop before birth, it takes some extraordinary and perhaps supernatural ability to remember that time. Butler put a clue that her story takes place in another world right in her first sentence. 

The sentence features a character, "he." He has at least one exceptional characteristic, remembering his time before birth. Look also at "his stay" – this is how we talk about someone visiting a home or taking vacation lodgings – it is as if he chose to be there, and might have chosen otherwise – which adds unusual agency to his unusual mental capacity. Whoever he is, he has significant power. 

So far, Butler has promised that we will see the story of someone very capable of impacting the world. She also offers us poetic language. "Remembered much" is a graceful and uncommon phrasing; "womb" is the more mythic word for the uterus. She is also promising us pleasing language. And because we see this is not our world, she promises a new world to explore. 

This sentence makes a strong argument for signaling a different world right away. Since I like different worlds, powerful characters, and rich language, I am eager to read on. 

Adulthood Rights is the second book of Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy. The first sentence of the first book, Dawn, is "Alive!" and the first sentence of the third book, Imago, is "Slipped into my third metamorphosis so quietly that no one noticed." While "Alive!" hints at something strange, "a third metamorphosis" is very clear about it. I count that as two more tallies in the Yes column on whether to start an alternate-world book with a clue in its very first sentence. 

Graphic design by Ken Silbert