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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
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| Electronic-Eyed Snake | ||
| A fully automated stomach pump. |
In the not-too-distant future imagined by Bradbury in the novel, accidental suicide by ingestion of freely available tranquilizers and other drugs is so common that machines are created to deal with it.
In this excerpt, Montag is forced to summon medical help for his wife, who has apparently overdosed on sleeping pills.
| They had this machine. [It] slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there... Did it suck out all of poisons accumulated with the years? It fed in silence with an occasional sound of inner suffocation and blind searching... The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one's yard. |
| Technovelgy from Fahrenheit 451,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Here's another description:
All of us who read this novel as school children in the 1960's recognize many elements of the world of Fahrenheit 451 in present-day America. The depersonalized care offered to poor people in large cities might as well be done by the same contractors who install cable TV in your house.
The author artfully draws an analogy, getting you to think about the psychology of a person who willingly loses herself to drugs and media. If you dug down deep enough, would you find the despair or ennui that causes this behavior?
He tried to count how many times she swallowed and he thought of the visit from the two zinc-oxide-faced men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths and the electronic-eyed snake winding down into the l ayer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water, and he wanted to call out to her, how many have you taken tonight?
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and Technology from Fahrenheit 451
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Tech news articles related to works by Ray Bradbury
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'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
'The Consul remembered his first glimpse of the kilometer-long treeship...'
'His contract with Space Industries required him to work summers in their orbital factory.'
'The basement was huge... carved deep into the rock that folded up to underlie the ridge...'
'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
