The one from Neuromancer has long been one of my favorites, as it so perfectly set the tone for that book: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

But that's becoming something of an anachronism, as most TVs tuned to dead channels on cable or satellite now show either a black screen or bright blue screen, instead of the white-noise grey hash of static that Gibson was evoking.

I seem to remember somebody explaining once that the grey/white noise on dead channels contained energy signatures that stretched back over some impossible length of time, perhaps to the Big Bang itself. I'm sure I'm not remembering the physics right, but I do recall there being some kind of connection.

Hmmm. Among things, there seems to be a little confusion between Great Opening Lines of Novels and Opening Lines of Great Novels. The list does include my two all-time favorites, though. One Hundred Years of Solitude has the single greatest opening sentence of any novel in the last fifty years, IMHO. Lolita is a close second, but you need to go past the first sentence to get the full maniacal, obsessive effect:

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

Good writing, in a widely misunderstood book. Nabokov never doubted that Humbert Humbert was pure evil.

I didn't see "It was a dark and stormy night." WTF?

It was there, Brian. Number 22.

And I was being tongue-in-cheek.

Now I feel stupid.

I thought "It was a dark and stormy night" was by Snoopy...

Any "greatest" list that includes "Tristram Shandy" is fatally flawed.