Previous readers have recognized that Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Murderer” (1953) presciently anticipates the rise of cell phones. I argue, however, that “The Murderer” does not only mirror a reality that has finally caught up with the story. Rather, looking at the disparities, not just the similarities, between the world of “The Murderer” and our own helps to reveal how the quantity and quality of sounds in our lives are related. In particular, “The Murderer” invites us to consider present-day technostress and hyperconnectivity not only in terms of today’s digital information but rather through yesterday’s analog sound. The story’s uncanny portrayal of an analog-dominated ICT culture insightfully portrays how the amount of auditory stimulation we are subjected to warps our perception of these sounds’ qualities and therefore also degrades the quality of the relationships mediated by those stimulations. My analysis of “The Murderer” reveals, furthermore, an overlooked dimension of Bradbury’s critiques of mass media, most studies of which focus on visual media rather than sound. The depictions of sound in “The Murderer” suggest how electronic media can degrade social life through restless sonic stress rather than tranquil visual isolation.
Kyle Garton-Gundling (Sun,) studied this question.