Take Me Out To The Uniball Game - 1st Round: The Weird Fiction Quiz

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s the opening lines of some weird fiction classics. Let’s see if you can identify’em…

  1. I am what I profess to be - a writer of weird fiction.

  2. Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.

  3. Odd Masson, the caretaker of one of Salem’s oldest and ost neglected cemeteries, had a feud with the rats.

  4. It was about 10:00 PM when Paul Foote decided that there was a monster at Newcliffe’s houseparty.

  5. He did not want to be the father of a small blue pyramid.

  6. 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.

  7. “There’s a mutie! Look out!”

  8. It walked in the woods.

  9. “Are you serious? Do you really think that a machine thinks?”

  10. X-This day when it had light mother called me retch.

  11. The Place Stank

  12. Well, when I had been dead about thirty years, I began to get a little anxious.

  13. On an on Coeurl prowled!

  14. Yes, I said ghostgirls, sexy ones.

  15. I have ofter heard it scream.

2

C’mon guys, no guesses? Bueller?

3

  1. The Graveyard Rats by Kuttner. love that Kuttner!

  2. Born of Man and Woman by Matheson.

  3. Black Destroyer by van Vogt.

I’ll have to go to the shelf for a few of the others.

4

Divemaster - 3 points so far.

5

I thought I might have a handle on several others (5 and 7, especially), but nothing is coming to mind.

Here’s a guess:

  1. It by Sturgeon?
6

Correct. 4 points.

7

Found another one! In my favorite anthology.

  1. Who Goes There? by Don A. Stuart (John W. Campbell)

Damn you, Uniball. I was headed for bed over an hour ago. But I at least have to get the ones from works I’ve read. Some of these sound familiar enough to keep me thumbing through my shelves.

I thought for sure I would get 7), but the leads I followed came up blank.

I’ll just have to come back tomorrow and see what others can come up with. I’m probably getting the easy ones…Tell me, are any authors represented more than once on the list?

8

Yep.

Maybe.

9

Aargh! Uniball, sorry for my “Best First Lines” thread which kind of duplicates this one. Somehow I missed this thread. I didn’t mean to swipe your topic.

I’m at work and can’t check, and I’m not as good at remembering first lines as I am at last lines. And Divemaster got a few of the ones I KNEW. (Curse you, Divemaster! Once again, you have foiled me! :smiley: )

#6) Kuttner and or Moore or one of their pseudonyms (A Padgett one, maybe). Don’t remember the story. (I keep thinking that this is Weinbaum’s “Adaptive Ultimate”, but I know it isn’t)

  1. “There’s a mutie! Look out!”
    Kuttner and Moore: The Baldy Stories
    OR
    A.E. VanVogt, “Slan”
10

Robert Heinlein’s short story, “Universe”?

I think this was published along with its sequel in novel form, but I forget the title.

11

Orphans of the Sky. And I think you’re right and my guesses were wrong.

Fenris

12
  1. H P Lovecraft, “The Outsider”
  2. Ambrose Bierce, “Moxon’s Master”

Several others look depressingly familiar, but I can’t place them (rats!)

13

Divemaster - 5 points.
Steven Wright - 2 points.
Danimal - 1 point.

Fenris, your guess is also right, cause “Universe” is the first of the two novellas from the book Orphans of the Sky. But Danimal get it right first.

14

#12 is “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” by Mark Twain.

15

Excellent.
Actually, the complete title is “Extract From Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”, but you won one point.

16

Ray Bradbury. I’ve seen it with two different titles. “The Shape of Things” is the one I remember.

17

Um, who are fifteen people who have never been in my kitchen, Uniball

18

Correctamundo.

19

Is #6 “The Thing on the Doorstep” by Lovecraft?

20

FIAT LUX is right.