Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"The immediate problem with our meat brains is that they have no back-up. We can lose the most precious information we have from one bump on the head or stroke. You want a mind system with back-up that can access other databases."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| 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?
Comment/Join this discussion ( 6 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Fahrenheit 451
More Ideas
and Technology by Ray Bradbury
Tech news articles related to Fahrenheit 451
Tech news articles related to works by Ray Bradbury
| MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User |
| Bone-Building Drug Evenity Approved |
| BrainBridge Concept Transplant Of Human Head Proposed |
| Natural Gait With Prosthetic Connected To Nervous System |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Science Fiction Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.'
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.'
'Completely silent, accurate up to about twenty meters. No recoil...'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
