Page "Fahrenheit 451" Paragraph 29

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades.

But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog.

I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned.

The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering.

From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear.

There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there.

This was not fiction.