ITT: Post SF or F excerpts which you classify as masterful examples of writing

[Anonymous No.21521551]

Post quote, work, and author.

Also, the authors of said excerpts don't have to be well reputed, and neither does their larger body of work. A bad author with a single good paragraph or dialogue also works. I just need some inspiration.

>"Outside, the moan of the tortured thousands shuddered up to the stars which crusted the sweating Vendhyan night, and the conchs bellowed like oxen in pain.

In the gardens of the palace the torches glinted on polished helmets and curved swords and gold-chased corselets. All the noble-born fighting-men of Ayodhya were gathered in the great palace or about it, and at each broad-arched gate and door fifty archers stood on guard, with bows in their hands. But Death stalked through the royal palace and none could stay his ghostly tread.

On the dais under the golden dome the king cried out again, racked by awful paroxysms. Again his voice came faintly and far away, and again the Devi bent to him, trembling with a fear that was darker than the terror of death."

- "The People of The Black Circle", Robert E. Howard

[Anonymous No.21521569]

>>21521551
>ASOIAF
>Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again.
—George “Mr. Never Gonna Finish” Martin

[Anonymous No.21521587]

>>21521569
I clicked into this thread to confirm that this excerpt would indeed be the first response

[Anonymous No.21521588]

>>21521569
I was just in the other thread, and my immediate thought was, "Oh, someone's going to post that first, aren't they?"

Man, Martin really is a hack, isn't he?

[Anonymous No.21521650]

To keep this thread rolling,

'His sword fell into the snow as he crushed her to him. Her lithe body bent backward as she fought with desperate frenzy in his iron arms. Her golden hair blew about his face, blinding him with its sheen; the feel of her slender body twisting in his mailed arms drove him to blinder madness. His strong fingers sank deep into her smooth flesh; and that flesh was cold as ice. It was as if he embraced not a woman of human flesh and blood, but a woman of flaming ice. She writhed her golden head aside, striving to avoid the fierce kisses that bruised her red lips.

"You are cold as the snows," he mumbled dazedly. "I will warm you with the fire in my own blood—"

With a scream and a desperate wrench she slipped from his arms, leaving her single gossamer garment in his grasp. She sprang back and faced him, her golden locks in wild disarray, her white bosom heaving, her beautiful eyes blazing with terror. For an instant he stood frozen, awed by her terrible beauty as she posed naked against the snows.

And in that instant she flung her arms toward the lights that glowed in the skies above her and cried out in a voice that rang in Conan's ears for ever after: "Ymir! Oh, my father, save me!"

Conan was leaping forward, arms spread to seize her, when with a crack like the breaking of an ice mountain, the whole skies leaped into icy fire. The girl's ivory body was suddenly enveloped in a cold blue flame so blinding that the Cimmerian threw up his hands to shield his eyes from the intolerable blaze. A fleeting instant, skies and snowy hills were bathed in crackling white flames, blue darts of icy light, and frozen crimson fires. Then Conan staggered and cried out. The girl was gone. The glowing snow lay empty and bare; high above his head the witch-lights flashed and played in a frosty sky gone mad, and among the distant blue mountains there sounded a rolling thunder as of a gigantic war-chariot rushing behind steeds whose frantic hoofs struck lightning from the snows and echoes from the skies.

Then suddenly the borealis, the snow-clad hills and the blazing heavens reeled drunkenly to Conan's sight; thousands of fire-balls burst with showers of sparks, and the sky itself became a titanic wheel which rained stars as it spun. Under his feet the snowy hills heaved up like a wave, and the Cimmerian crumpled into the snows to lie motionless.'

[Anonymous No.21521667]

>>21521569
Not overly fond of ASOIAF, but GRRM's Dunk and Egg short stories are kino.
>Dunk rode slowly along the fence. The viewing stand was crowded with knights. “M’lords,” he called to them, “do none of you remember Ser Arlan of Pennytree? I was his squire. We served many of you. Ate at your tables and slept in your halls.” He saw Manfred Dondarrion seated in the highest tier. “Ser Arlan took a wound in your lord father’s service.” The knight said something to the lady beside him, paying no heed. Dunk was forced to move on. “Lord Lannister, Ser Arlan unhorsed you once in tourney.” The Grey Lion examined his gloved hands, studiedly refusing to raise his eyes. “He was a good man, and he taught me how to be a knight. Not only sword and lance, but honor. A knight defends the innocent, he said. That’s all I did. I need one more knight to fight beside me. One, that’s all. Lord Caron Lord Swann?” Lord Swann laughed softly as Lord Caron whispered in his ear.
>Dunk reined up before Ser Otho Bracken, lowering his voice. “Ser Otho, all know you for a great champion. Join us, I beg you. In the names of the old gods and the new. My cause is just.”
> “That may be,” said the Brute of Bracken, who had at least the grace to reply, “but it is your cause, not mine. I know you not, boy.” Heartsick, Dunk wheeled Thunder and raced back and forth before the tiers of pale cold men. Despair made him shout. “ARE THERE NO TRUE KNIGHTS AMONG YOU?”
>Only silence answered.
>Across the field, Prince Aerion laughed. “The dragon is not mocked,” he called out.
>Then came a voice. “I will take Ser Duncan’s side.”

[Anonymous No.21522000]

At that sound the bent shape of the king sprang suddenly erect. Tall and proud he seemed again; and rising in his stirrups he cried in a loud voice, more clear than any there had ever heard a mortal man achieve before:

Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder. And straightway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains. Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor! Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first éored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Oromë the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young. His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like an image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed. For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.

[Anonymous No.21523049]

Maiden,
No prospect of hardship comes to me new or unexpected.
I anticipated it all and have rehearsed it in the privacy of my mind.
You makes these threats today—I have always threathened myself and prepared my human self for human possibilities.

[Anonymous No.21523243]

>Dorcas belonged, as I now realized, to that vast group of women (which may, indeed, include all women) who betray us—and to that special type who betray us not for some present rival but for their own pasts.
-book of the new sun

[Anonymous No.21523404]

>>21521551
Now the King mocked Goldry, saying, "Rebellious hound, it is fit that I make demonstration unto thee, and unto these Foliots and Demons that witness our meeting, that I am thy King and Lord not by virtue only of this my crown of Witchland, which I thus put by for an hour, but even by the power of my body over thine and by my might and main. Be satisfied that I will not have done with thee until I have taken away thy life, and sent thy soul squealing bodiless into the unknown. And thy skull and thy marrow-bones will I have away to Carcë, to my palace, to be a token unto all the world that I have been the bane of an hundredth great champion by my wrastling, and thou not least among them that I have slain in that exercise. Thereafter, when I have eaten and drunken and made merry in my royal palace at Carcë, I will sail with my armies over the teeming deep to many-mountained Demonland. And it shall be my footstool, and these other Demons the slaves of me, yea, and the slaves of my slaves."

But the Lord Goldry Bluszco laughed lightly and said to the Red Foliot, "O Red Foliot, I am not come hither to contend with the King of Witchland in windy railing, but to match my strength against his, sinew against sinew."

Now they stood ready, and the Red Foliot made a sign with his hand, and the cymbals clashed for the first bout.

- The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison

[Anonymous No.21523650]

>>21522000
This has always been such a powerful passage to me. I legitimately think it's superior to the scene in the movie.

[Anonymous No.21524391]

>>21523650
The movie scene is better for the cry of "DEATH!", which is the most appropriate for the core conflict between men and Sauron, who convinced men that death was a curse to be feared instead of the greatest gift of Eru. In that moment men are again embracing death as a blessing instead of cowering away from it.

[Anonymous No.21524697]

>>21521551
This. And nothing you can post will ever come close.

[Anonymous No.21525255]

>>21521588
Why is this making him a hack?

[Anonymous No.21526361]

>>21524697
Every time I am reminded he exists I go and look at his Wikipedia page again, and every time it's exactly as funny as the first time.

[Anonymous No.21526427]

>>21521569
Bravo American Tolkien!

[Anonymous No.21526541]

>>21521569
I fapped to this while reading

[Anonymous No.21526554]

Groans escaped from both her ends as air pockets caught between the turds and her rectum walls released with a bassy roll of wet pops. From where the young man leaned over her could see the ring of light brown wrinkles spread open, and the dark face of the first serpent peek into creation. The body that followed was so much larger than it's nose made it seem. Her circlet clung to it as it passed, as if desperately trying to apprehend the newborn before it could escape, and a projecting sphincter interrupted the once smooth valley between the oracle's spread butt cheeks. She gasped and shuddered against the young man's legs. Though at first the procession was snailishly slow, the ropey length gathered speed until its tail finally threw itself onto the grass behind her, tangling into the rest of its coiled body. Her anus began settling back into place, as dough might, but stopped to shudder at a machine gun burst of flatulence, whose depressive pitch made it sound embarrassed to be there. Without delay, another girthy line of brown paste followed like custard from a machine. Somewhere along it's middle, she contracted her nethers, severing the soft turd in half and squeezing feces into the cleft of her bottom. What had already escaped fell limp beside it's older kin, and in a moment it was joined by the rest of itself with a moist thud. Bitter steam billowed from her leavings. The young man crinkled his nose, while she began catching her breath.
"Are you finished?" the young man said.
"Yes," she said, in her low, scratchy voice.
"Then face the tree and turn your butt towards me."
Still squatting, she rotated until she could rest her cuffed hands against the birch. The young man, kneeling now, found himself staring into the dilations of a reeking black star. He ripped off a sheet of toilet paper, bunched it between his fingers and drew it across the filthy corona, stretching her sphincter and gathering brown sludge beneath the tissue. Thoroughly used, the paper was thrown in with the rest of the refuse and another, clean piece was torn from the roll.
She looked over her shoulder at him, grinning, "have you ever wondered how it tastes?"
"Be quiet," he said, and began wiping again.
"You could just lean in and have a lick and no one would know. I certainly wouldn't tell anybody."
"I said shut up."
"Look, here," she said, "I'll make you something fresh."
She tensed up and began to groan again. He was wiping the inside of her butt cheeks when he saw her rim bunch and erupt with one small, dark turd, right next to his foreknuckles. It slid out, barely missing the young man who had kicked himself up and away from the squatting priestess and now watched as her gift slapped against the ground where he had just been kneeling.
"You're disgusting!"
She laughed and raised her swaying hindquarters at him.
"What are you waiting for imperial?" she called to him, "clean it up!"

-from my diary desu by anon

[Anonymous No.21526631]

>>21524697
Damn. Maybe I should get into Bakker.

>>21526361
Why?

[Anonymous No.21526874]

>The small beam of white light shone steadily into the left eye of Rachael Rosen, and against her cheek the wire-mesh disk adhered. She seemed calm.
>Seated where he could catch the readings on the two gauges of the Voigt-Kampff testing apparatus, Rick Deckard said, "I'm going to outline a number of social situations. You are to express your reaction to each as quickly as possible. You will be timed, of course."
>"And of course," Rachael said distantly, "my verbal responses won't count. It's solely the eye-muscle and capillary reaction that you'll use as indices. But I'll answer; I want to go through this and — " She broke off. >"Go ahead, Mr. Deckard."
>Rick, selecting question three, said, "You are given a calfskin wallet on your birthday." Both gauges immediately registered past the green and onto the red; the needles swung violently and then subsided.
>"I wouldn't accept it," Rachael said. >"Also I'd report the person who gave it to me to the police."
>After making a jot of notation Rick continued, turning to the eighth question of the Voigt- Kampff profile scale. "You have a little boy and he shows you his butterfly collection, including his killing jar."
>"I'd take him to the doctor." Rachael's voice was low but firm. Again the twin gauges registered, but this time not so far. He made a note of that, too.
>"You're sitting watching TV," he continued, "and suddenly you discover a wasp crawling on your wrist."
>Rachael said, "I'd kill it." The gauges, this time, registered almost nothing: only a feeble and momentary tremor. He noted that and hunted cautiously for the next question.
>"In a magazine you come across a full-page color picture of a nude girl." >He paused.
>"Is this testing whether I'm an android," Rachael asked tartly, "or whether I'm homosexual?" The gauges did not register.
>He continued, "Your husband likes the picture." Still the gauges failed to indicate a reaction. "The girl," he added, "is lying face down on a large and beautiful bearskin rug." The gauges remained inert, and he said to himself, An android response. Failing to detect the major element, the dead animal pelt. Her — its — mind is concentrating on other factors. "Your husband hangs the picture up on the wall of his study," he finished, and this time the needles moved.
>"I certainly wouldn't let him," Rachael said.
>"Okay," he said, nodding. "Now consider this.You're reading a novel written in the old days before the war. >The characters are visiting Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. They become hungry and enter a seafood restaurant. One of them orders lobster, and the chef drops the lobster into the tub of boiling water while the characters watch."
>"Oh god," Rachael said. "That's awful! Did they really do that? It's depraved! You mean a live lobster?" >The gauges, however, did not respond. Formally, a correct response. But simulated.

[Anonymous No.21526886]

Btw to the niggers who come on lit and complain about paragraph size. Fuck you you illiterate faggots kys

[Anonymous No.21526921]

>>21526874
pkd - do robots dream of electric sheep? (bladerunner)

[Anonymous No.21526957]

>>21524697
Wow i think that image wins

[Anonymous No.21527268]

bump

[Anonymous No.21528499]

>>21526554
>-from my diary desu by anon
This is actually really good. I'd be masturbating furiously if I were into scat.

[Anonymous No.21528509]

>>21524697
What's the hoopla over this? Wasn't bad or anything but it's nothing breathtaking either.

[Anonymous No.21529830]

>>21528509
Found the illiterate discord nigger tranny

[Anonymous No.21529859]

>>21529830
Okay, faggot.

[Anonymous No.21530498]

Bump
>>21529859
Kys reading is for the civilized and educated not we-was-kingz negro ghettonomics

[Anonymous No.21530501]

>>21524697
I kneel

[Anonymous No.21530514]

>>21530498
You feel that >>21524697 is some grand antithesis of "we-was-kingz negro ghettonomics"? You're in like three different threads getting BTFO while preening about how you're above the non-readers when clearly you are bottom of the barrel when it comes to how much you read. You're up late after smoking a bunch of meth or something, aren't you? Put the pipe down and actually do some reading instead of just pretending like you read more than everyone who blows you the fuck out.

[Anonymous No.21530518]

>>21522000
>sprang suddenly erect
hehehe