Eli Grober’s “Opening Lines Rewritten for a Pandemic” in The New Yorker humorously changes the beginnings of famous books to suit life as we knew it in the plague year of 2020.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
It was a dark and stormy night, so we stayed inside, just like we’d done every night for the last year. In that way, it was a perfectly normal night.
Filers answered the challenge to add to the list. Here is a collection from yesterday’s comments.
Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein
If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he doesn’t need to wear a mask, he’s a spaceman.
— Bill
Idle Days On The Yann by Lord Dunsany
So I came down through the wood to the bank of Yann and found, as had been prophesied, after seven days of quarantine and a negative virus test, the ship Bird of the River about to loose her cable.
— David Shallcross
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
During a pandemic, these things are ceaseless: case number charts and social distancing.
— Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger by Stephen King
The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed, being careful to maintain a distance of at least six feet.
–Nina Shepardson
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
I will make my report as if I told a story, because I was taught as a child during the pandemic that truth is a matter of the imagination.
— Vicki Rosenzweig
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that his eleventy-first birthday party was cancelled due to Covid restrictions, there was much disappointment throughout Hobbiton. Gandalf stayed out of the Shire bubble entirely, so no fireworks, either.
— Andrew (not Werdna)
Casey Agonistes by Richard McKenna
You can’t just die. You got to book an appointment first.
— Jim Janney
Pipe Dream by Fritz Leiber
It wan’t until the mermaid turned up in his bathtub that SImon Grue seriously began to wonder about the possibility of contagion from the Russians next door.
— Jim Janney
The Pride Of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh
There had been something contagious on the station dock all year, skulking in amongst the gantries and the lines and the canisters which were waiting to be moved, lurking wherever shadows fell among the rampway accesses of the many ships at dock at Meetpoint.
— BGrandrath
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
I could have become a mass murderer after a few weeks of lockdown, but I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays and music consumed.
— Lorien Gray
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
Do you remember where you were when the Meteor hit? I’ve never understood why people phrase it as a question, because of course you were inside, just like everyone had been for the last year.
— Lorien Gray
Triplanetary (Lensman Series, Book 1) by E.E. “Doc” Smith
Two thousand million or so years ago, two galaxies were carefully maintaining social distancing from each other.
— Steve Wright
Neuromancer by William Gibson
The sky was a color, but nobody noticed which color because they were all indoors on lockdown.
— Xtifr
Dragonsinger: Harper of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
When Menolly, daughter of Yanus Sea-Holder, arrived at the Harper Hall she arrived in style, with a N-95 mask and complete vaccination paperwork.
— Nancy Sauer
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Belweather by Connie Willis
It’s almost impossible to pinpoint the beginning of a conspiracy theory. By the time it starts to look like one, it’s origins are far in the past and trying to unravel them is more difficult than trying to find the source of the coronavirus
The body lay naked and facedown outside Paulk’s Tavern, a deathly gray, a ripped-open package of facemasks scattered in the snow around it.
Applause
I love the Triplanetary one.
In a quarantined hole in the ground lived a masked hobbit.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, will have a nice home to be quarantined in.
Thomas Pynchon, V:
“A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but we were all indoors and missed it.”
Joyce, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man:
“Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road sneezed so we shot it.”
Nina Shepardson’s Gunslinger riff had me howling with laughter yesterday.
Toward the end of a stormy summer afternoon, with the sun finally breaking out under ragged black rain clouds, Castle Janeil’s quarantine was overwhelmed and its population infected.
“Call me Ismael, but only during a Zoom meeting.”
“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”
“Last night I dreamt I left the house again.”
The last man on Earth sat alone in the room…or was he the last man on Earth? Who would know? Nobody had knocked on his door for what seemed eternity. So he sat. Alone.
Once upon a lockdown dreary, as I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious mask from the online store
Hold me further Tiny Dancer,
Count the space six feet away…
Slow eighties-style clap
These are incredible. Excellent work all.
I also can’t help but think that the first line of The Martian really wouldn’t need to be changed much at all….