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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon
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| Salamander | ||
| Name given to the fire trucks of the future, which carry kerosene rather than water, and are used to burn houses. |
The fire trucks have a special role in Fahrenheit 451, of course; rather than providing equipment to put out fires, they are used to start fires.
| The Mechanical Hound was gone. Its kennel was empty and the firehouse stood all about in plaster silence and the orange Salamander slept with its kerosene in its belly and the firethrowers crossed upon its flanks and Montag came in through the silence and touched the brass pole and slid up in the dark air, looking back at the deserted kennel, his heart beating, pausing, beating. Faber was a grey moth asleep in his ear, for the moment. |
| Technovelgy from Fahrenheit 451,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Although salamanders are real creatures (lizardlike amphibians of the order Caudata, having porous scaleless skin), they once had the reputed ability to run around in fires. Here's an illustration of that legend from a modern classic Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling:
"...Hagrid had provided a bonfire full of salamanders for their enjoyment, and they spend an unusually good lesson collecting dry wood and leaves to keep the fire blazing while the flame-loving lizards scampered up and down the crumbling, white-hot logs."
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'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
