The last real human died on a Tuesday, and the androids, in their infinite and clumsy compassion, declared a planet-wide holiday.

***

**Why a sentence like this works, and a few other options by subgenre:**

A great sci-fi opening must do three things at once:
1.  **Establish a World:** It instantly signals that we are not in our present reality.
2.  **Create a Question:** It makes the reader ask *why*, *how*, or *what happens next?*
3.  **Set a Tone:** It can be wondrous, terrifying, cynical, humorous, or epic.

Here are a few more, categorized by the type of story they might begin:

**For a Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic Novel:**
> The old stories claimed the sky was once a single, unbroken blue, but looking up through the chemical haze and the orbital scaffolding, I never believed them.

**For a Cosmic Horror/Space Opera Novel:**
> No one knows why the stars started winking out one by one, but everyone remembers where they were when Orion lost his belt.

**For a Cyberpunk Novel:**
> The black market memories I’d installed were starting to glitch, showing me a murder I was increasingly certain *I* had committed.

**For a Time Travel Novel:**
> My father gave me the chronometer on my tenth birthday, a full fifty years before he was born.

**For a First Contact Novel:**
> The message arrived on every screen, in every language, and in every mind at the same instant, and it was only one word: "Sorry."
