posted
Check this one out; this has simply got to be the coolest hook ever!
* * * * *
EXCITING NEW CONTEST!
WIN FREE SEX!
"In five years, the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman.
He paused to let this planet-shattering information sink into our amazed brains. Personally, I didn't know how many more wonders I could absorb before lunch.
"With the right promotional campaign," he went on, breathlessly, "it might take as little as two years."
He might even have been right. Stranger things have happened in my lifetime. But I decided to hold off on calling my broker with frantic orders to sell all my jockstrap stock.
posted
I dunno. I've found some of Varley's stuff awful dependent on drowning the reader in details that are shocking in terms of the perspective of our society...so much so that the societies he sets up seem deliberately set up to do this. Too much obvious-hand-of the-author for my taste. (I meant to pick up a collected works collection of his that was out awhile ago, but never got around to it.)
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Robert, for collections of Varley's short fiction check out "The Persistence of Vision" (1978) and "Picnic on Nearside" (1980), both readily available on abebooks.com
Posts: 203 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
That is quite the hook. It seems like the kind of opening that will either intrigue you enough to read a little further, or turn you off completely so that you don't, as dpatridge said, get past the third sentence.
If this was a short, I would be skeptical -- just not enough in there to get me. For a novel, this would probably keep me intrigued enough to read a few pages. However, I would be expecting a lot. With a line like, "WIN FREE SEX!", you have my attention because of the sheer shock value, but you better do something really worthwhile or I'll put it down. It's the same thing when someone yells "SEX!" in a noisy, crowded room. Sure, it gets everyone's attention, but you better have something compelling if you want to hold their attention -- and you can only get away with it once before it gets old.
posted
I read both when they first appeared (or soon after.) For the record, I thought (and still think) "Persistence of Vision" not worthy of the attention and awards it got. I think that of several of his much-praised stories. ("Press Enter" and the one that became a movie with Kris Kristofferson come to mind here.) Other stories of his, like "Phantom of Kansas," I found much better. "Picnic on Nearside" was good, though.
(I apologize for possible misquotation of titles: it's been close to thirty years since I read them and my copies are relatively inaccessible these days.)
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