The Mechanical Hound

Ray Bradbury's dystopian classic, Farenheit 451, fuses animal and machine to create the terrifying "Mechanical Hound". The technological prowess of this creature makes it the most efficient hunter in the twenty-fourth century. By taking what people already fear about animals and rewriting it in a science-fiction context, Bradbury creates a creature much more frightening than any human threat.

Dogs used as instruments of violence are machine-like in their obedience and execution of orders. The most terrifying thing about an animal that has been trained to kill is that you can't appeal to its morality. The natural social inclination of a dog dictates that it choose a leader, heed the signals given by that leader, and protect the pack from outside threats. A snapping, snarling dog can be more intimidating A war dog from the game Killzone 2.
than a person with a gun (which may explain why
guard dogs are popular with drug dealers and other criminals). You can't plead for your life with a war dog. This is the same anxiety that society has about machines- a murderous robot would be the tragically perfect weapon, effective because it does not have morals.

A dog's olfactory system functions like the "Watson" computer compared to the clumsy Commodore 64 that is the human sense of smell. Bradbury's mechanical hound even seems to be able to smell the seeds of dissent in Montag's mind. Dogs can pick up and track scents that are undetectable to humans. The machine-like precision with which a dog can track is mystifying, much like the super-human ability of an FBI computer to find a matching fingerprint in a database of thousands. We fear some animals because we cannot compete with them on a physical level. Dogs have been domesticated, but their bite and running speed still exceeds that of most humans. Machines can cause humans to worry for the same reason- we can't out-perform them. As Clarisse learned, you can't outrun a car.

Bradbury's clever combination of animal and machine speaks to the anxiety people have about their worth as a species. Humans may have ethics and abstract thought, but our bodies are relatively weak. The mechanical hound is a fusion of our deepest fears- the fear that we can be outdone and, ultimately, replaced.