#OpeningSentence

The trick is remembering that it’s all a game.

— Atlas Alone by Emma Newman

By all accounts, I should be scared.

— The Dragonfly Gambit by A. D. Sui

The protesters outside are getting louder.

— Ghost Station by S. A. Barnes

He didn't like beating people.

— Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I am not on this beach.

— Before Mars by Emma Newman

It's times like these, when I’m hunkered in a doorway, waiting for a food market of dubious legality to be set up, that I find myself wishing I could eat like everyone else.

— After atlas by Emma Newman

Every time I come down here I think about my mother.

— Planetfall by Emma Newman

I hadn’t seen Juan in years, not since I left the commune.

— These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein

Light. The light of that murdered sun still burns me.

— Empire of Silence (Sun Eater) by Christopher Ruocchio

They call me Mr. Scales because I’m a snake.

— Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson

When the multiverse was confirmed, the spiritual and scientific communities both counted it as evidence of their validity.

— The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Loret had spent the voyage braced for pirates.

— Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky

It is a vision of hell.

— House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky

An engorged, yellow moon painted the sky a sickly amber hue, illuminating a solitary figure.

— Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In the course of a single life, a man can be many things: a beloved child in a brightly embroidered gown, a street tough with a band of knifemen walking at his side, lover to a beautiful girl, husband to an honest woman, father to a child, grain sweeper in a brewery, widower, musician, and mendicant coughing his lungs up outside the city walls.

— Blade of Dream by Daniel Abraham