Today I read the short story “The Flying Machine,” by Ray Bradbury. Set in the past, it featured a man who had just created a ‘machine’, wings made of paper and bamboo, that allowed him to fly. He was extremely excited about his new invention, but when the emperor saw it, his thoughts were quite different. He saw the beauty in the invention, but he also realized that there were terrible things it could be used for. He thought that it could be used to destroy or bypass the Great Wall of China, which had protected China for thousands of years, and realized the destruction it could cause. As a result, he had the inventor executed. I thought that he shouldn’t have done so, because invariably another inventor would have invented a similar machine, but I could understand his reasoning for burning the flying machine and killing its inventor. I really enjoyed reading this story, which, like many of the author’s other stories, illustrated the damage that technology could cause, though not in as severe a way as in many of his other stories. I would rate it 9.4/10 and recommend it to anyone interested in reading an interesting short story.
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