Earlier today I was doing some chores in the house. A cable news program droned in the background. The far recesses of my mind was registering Covid-related dire predictions, commentary on the state of our government, and then there was a mention of book burning. This struck a chord.
My love of reading began when I was a small child and continues to this day. It allowed me to become an English teacher and share my love of reading with kids. When I was first hired to teach, I inherited the previous teacher’ s schedule. It included a semester-long elective called Science Fiction. Hmmm. I’d taken some sci fi courses, definitely not my favorite genre. That made me more determined to succeed. I developed a survey-type of course featuring different types of sci fi stories. The novel we would read as a class was Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, and the kids would read an independently chosen novel.
What’s my point? Bradbury’s iconic novel was set in a future where firemen burned books. The government did not want its citizens to be thinkers of any sort. It is a bleak and grim world. A group of people who value books live in a small colony where each person memorizes a piece of literature and “becomes” that book in order to keep it alive.
This novel grew from a Bradbury short story called “The Pedestrian.” The idea for the story came from a personal experience. Bradbury was out walking one evening. He never had a driver’s license. The police stopped him and questioned him because he was walking. Read the story for the implications of this event.
Science Fiction grew out of the Cold War unrest of the 1950s. I even prepared a Power Point presentation about fallout shelters because students had no clue about how important they became during the 1950s. A great resource that exemplified this topic was a Twilight Zone episode called “The Shelter.” Terrific story and gave us another way to connect the dots.
I hope it doesn’t come to pass during my lifetime that we become the society of Fahrenheit 451. To annihilate all semblance of creative and free thought would render us impotent beings. Keep this in mind. Better yet, sit down and read an enjoyable book.
Stories Are For Eternity 