science fiction

Book discussion: Fahrenheit 451 1

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“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.”

Those are the opening words of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. They could also have been the words of whoever torched Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore in Minneapolis. (The crowdfunding campaign to restore it is still active.)

The arsonist might have gone on, as the protagonist’s thoughts do: “You weren’t burning anyone, you were burning things! And since things really couldn’t be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don’t scream or whimper … there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up.” The goons who write in defense of looting and burning regularly say there’s nothing wrong with destroying mere property.
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Book discussion: Frankenstein 2

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With this post, I’m aiming to start a series of book discussions. I didn’t say book reviews; I’ll include old classics, forgotten works, and new books, depending on what I’ve been reading lately. Some of them might not even be in English. My aim is to post one article a week. We’ll see. I’m not going to promise until I’ve turned out a few.

Some of the books I’m thinking of covering are obscure, but I should start a series strongly, so the first book I’m covering is one everyone has heard of: Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. It’s widely considered the first science fiction novel. Most people know the story from the movies rather than the book, but the movies tend to play up the sensational aspects. The heart of Shelley’s tale is responsibility, abandonment, and retribution.
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