“There’s no sound in space, but my saucer cannons simulated a shriek with every blast.”
Emperor Mullusk Versus the Sinister Brain, by A. Lee Martinez
“Nature is like a giant clockwork mechanism.”
The Secret Network of Nature: The Delicate Balance of All Living Things, by Peter Wohlleben, translated by Jane Billinghurst.
“Peter Parker looked at the clock on the wall, smiled, and said, ‘We’ve got a few minutes, so let’s go to the next chapter: The Periodic Table of Elements’.”
Spider-Man: Down These Mean Streets, by Keith R. A. DeCandido
“I am writing this for you. My enemy. My friend. You know, already, you must know. You have lost.” The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
“It started with the Cold War.” – Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles by David Darlington
The autumn air hung mild and faintly misty, and the grass in Callander Square was dappled yellow with fallen leaves in the late afternoon sun.
Callander Square, by Anne Perry
On May 7, 1944, in the deep of night, a train carrying the 130th Chemical Processing Company of the U. S. Chemical Warfare Service steamed toward London.
12 Seconds of Silence: How a Team of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon, by Jamie Holmes
“Edwin St. John St. Andrew, eighteen years old, hauling the weight of his double-sainted name across the Atlantic by steamship, eyes narrowed against the wind on the upper deck: he holds the railing with gloved hands, impatient for a glimpse of the unknown, trying to discern something — anything! — beyond sea and sky, but all he sees are shades of endless grey.”
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
“Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.”
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
“In the small hours of morning, when sleep has fled and the strange noises of night crowd young imaginations, numbers can be magical.”
Clockwork Futures: The Science of Steampunk and the Reinvention of the Modern World, by Brandy Schillace
Slowly and carefully – as befitted her years, which were many – the star tramp Caliban dropped down to Port Forlorn.
The Rim of Space, by A Bertram Chandler
“It’s hard to stay cordial while fighting for your life, even when your life doesn’t amount to much.”
Kiln People, by David Brin
“I was born on July 3, but I wanted a birthday on the Fourth of July.”
Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule
The glass in the French window shattered.
Cocaine Blues, by Kerry Greenwood
“The space elevator (alias Sky Hook, Heavenly Ladder, Orbital Tower, or Cosmic Funicular) is a structure linking a point on the equator to a satellite in the geostationary orbit directly above it.”
Liftport: Opening Space to Everyone, edited by Bill Fawcett, Michael Laine, and Tom Nugent, Jr. (Note that this is an anthology of articles and stories about space elevators. The above sentence is from the article “The Space Elevator: ‘Thought Experiment’ or Key to the Universe?” by Sir Arthur C. Clarke.)
“The trap had closed at sundown.”
Brain Wave, by Poul Anderson
It was eleven by the Green Mill’s clock when the cornet player went into a muted reprise in ‘Bye Bye Blackbird,’ and one of the marathon dancers plunged heavily and finally to the floor at Phryne Fisher’s feet.
The Green Mill Murder, by Kerry Greenwood
“Cardinal de Retz very judiciously observes, that all historians must of necessity be subject to mistakes, in explaining the motives of those actions they record, unless they derive their intelligence from the candid confession of the person whose character they represent; and that, of consequence, every man of importance ought to write his own memoirs, provided he has honesty enough to tell the truth, without suppressing any circumstance that may tend to the information of the reader.”
Tobias Smollett: “The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom”
“When I was a young woman at the police training academy, I learned two important things.”
Curfew, by Jayne Cowie
From A Slaying in Savannah by Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain, part of the Murder, She Wrote mystery novel series…
“Ah’m hoping to make contact with a Mrs. Jessica Fletcher.”
“The original NASA photographic film from the Apollo missions is some of the most important and valuable film in existence.”
Apollo Remastered by Andy Saunders