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" I think that computers today allow us one last opportunity to provide something like a level playingfield in America."
- William Gibson
 |
| Big Flue | ||
| Enormous incinerators serviced directly by helicopter. |
Fire is, of course, the central metaphor of Fahrenheit 451. It is ironic that what is arguably humanity's earliest technology provides all of the answers in this future dystopia.
| Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo? Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin? Burn it. Someone has written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator. Funerals are unhappy and pagan? Eliminate them, too. Five minutes after a person is dead he's on his way to the Big Flue, the incinerator serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man's a speck of black dust. Let's not quibble over individuals with memoriams. Forget them. Burn it all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean. |
| Technovelgy from Fahrenheit 451,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Doubleday in 1953 Additional resources -
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| Is There A Subterranean Ocean? |
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| Marie Curie's Papers Still Radioactive |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
