In light of the recent controversies over the SFWA’s internal censorship policies, consider these excerpts from the author’s afterword to Fahrenheit 451:
“About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles.
But, she added, wouldn’t it be a good idea…to rewrite the book inserting more women’s characters and roles?
A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail…complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn’t I ‘do them over’?
Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped….
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches. Every minority…feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blancmange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Fire-Captain Beatty…described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever….
If the Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters….If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my ‘Wonderful Ice Cream Suit’ so it shapes ‘Zoot,’ may the belt unravel and the pants fall….
All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It’s my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch, I run the bases. At sunset I’ve won or lost. At sunrise, I’m out again, giving it the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you.
I wonder what Mr. Bradbury would think of an organization of science fiction writers that expels and campaigns against other writers who dare to pen words and ideas that offend some members of some minorities. Not very much, I suspect.
Here are some other thoughts from prominent SF writers on this topic:
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