Amongst those literary giants of his own lands whose imagination fired Ray Bradbury's thoughts was, Ernest Hemingway such that he dedicated two short stories to his memory.
One of these was entitled The Kilimanjaro Device, that is contained in the Ray Bradbury collection I Sing the Body Electric. That is certainly where I came upon the story, and remains the only version of it that I am familiar with.
One of the few things that I know of Ernest Hemingway was that he spent some of his life in Africa, and I believe that one of his stories at least references, the Snows of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Ray Bradbury I oft time feel puts himself in the tale that he is telling, as the protagonist or merely the story teller.
What is Time, there are many treatises devoted to its ramifications? It may just be a construct of mankind to justify and measure, its own existence of no more use or value than humanity itself.
Here we are presented with a novel twist with the notion that there is or at least may well be, not only a good time to live, but a good time to die.
But surely at least in the normal run of things while we choose our way of life, we don't exactly get a chance to choose our death, or indeed the right time and place to go?
Here the teller of the tale appears at least to me to be on a voyage more of discovery, but of what exactly, himself?
Ostensibly he is on the trail of a literary hero Ernest Hemingway, of the end of his life's trail?
But what exactly does that actually consist of, what can he hope to find there?
What has been written is done and dusted surely, and can never be altered or undone?
Is his truck just a means of conveyance, or can it really traverse more than mere miles?