During his introduction to the 60th anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury’s classic, Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman discusses the purpose of speculative fiction. Instead of predicting the future, as some works of dystopian literature and science fiction seem to do, speculative work…: “is really good at…the present—taking an aspect of it that troubles or is dangerous, and extending and extrapolating that aspect into something that allows the people of that time to see what they are doing from a different angle and from a different place. It’s cautionary” [emphasis added].

Rather than concern ourselves with what an author “got right” about the future, Gaiman invites us to use the genre to explore our contemporary beliefs and surroundings. What’s important is not that Bradbury included references to big-screen televisions and ear buds, but that he forced his audience to examine their attitude toward the printed word. Were firemen actually burning the canon (and the occasional senior citizen) in 1953? Certainly not, but what if that was the case? Would anyone care, or would life go on as usual?