Hi, I'm Doug Gordon, sitting in for Anne Strange Hamps.

Just imagine about 400,000 years ago what it must have been like for the first human who learned how to harness fire.

What was going on in her head? Could she have known about the chain of events she'd set off that would lead us to the present day?

Our ancestors' mastery of fire gave us the ability to cook our food, and it also gave us another

important innovation. We could now share stories around the campfire. Fires have always intrigued,

captivated, and mesmerized us. So it's no surprise that telling stories around the warm, hypnotic glow of the fire

would inspire stories about fire. Fire is inherently beautiful in its own right. It's a complicated

symbol. We speak about Prometheus and gifts of fire. And in every culture, you have these

crow traveling up to the realm of the gods to bring fire back to mankind.

Fires sort of the hallmark of civilization.

And yet there's also a powerful destructive side to fire,

one that we can see in the wildfires that have been wreaking havoc across the country for the past few weeks.

But that doesn't mean fire is always a bad thing.

Fire either consumes and destroys or makes things stronger.

And it's also a very strong element of regeneration, both in a mythical manner and

an actual manner.

A lot of times forests that are burned, they grow back healthier than before.

Today on to the best of our knowledge from PRI, we're talking flammable fiction, asking the question,

how does fire inspire a writer's imagination? We're going to get started with Joe Hill. He's the son of a writer,

I'm sure you've heard of, Stephen King. And Joe Hill is

following in his father's footsteps by writing the same kind of bone-chilling horror that his dad's

famous for. Hill's latest novel is called The Fireman. I'd like to say that it's burning up the

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