(e)Book- Fahrenheit 451

(e)Book- Fahrenheit 451 

Author: Ray Bradbury

Score: 9/10

Year:  1953 (reprint )

Publisher : Simon and Schuster 

ISBN : 978-1-4391-4267-7

280 pages 

Language : English.

Much like in The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury's comments about wars continues in this 1953 dystopian novel, set in a distant future, after two atomic world-wars 'since 2022' in the dialogues and set, according to Ray's Coda, in 2049, adding a new aspect, not present in 'Martian' nor "Illustrated man" : an American society where books and reading them are outlawed  ; an American nation where firemen's job isn't to tackle and extinguish fires, but to start them, in order to burn any books that are found - with the houses and sometimes the people who dared offending this totalitarian Law.

The story follows Guy Montag, a fireman who meets a 17 year old girl whose free-thinking ideals cause him to question his life, and propels him into a very different path - whilst his own wife remains brain-washed by the various slogans and tv-reality shows she watches from the giant screens filling three out of their four walls...Her sole goal in life is for her husband to continue working and to afford a screen for the fourth wall...

This would turn to be a very prophetic aspect of future tv-viewing habit, of reality-tv and the consumerism that society did develop in the past few decades, despite Bradbury's - and others- literary warnings on such dangers... 

Whilst the (fictional) government is busy burning books, people worrying only about being happy, complacent and ignorant, everyone's also desensitized to the very notion of an impeding war...   

Via this dystopian future, and dialogues in this story, Ray Bradbury reminds of the dangers of a totalitarian government which censors culture and knowledge by burning books and enslaving people to some ideals or others, and the cyclic, repetitive nature of humankind passing from Dark ages of censorship to more Enlightened ones, back and forth... and pauses the question of human's ability - in a far distant future - to burn war and censorship instead. 

I did find some of the constant repetitions of 'god' this and 'god that' and the overall message that the bible's as important to save as some other books to be annoying, almost like proselytizing, but I understand that not only it's an author's choice but also the period in which it was written that can guide towards this destination.  

The book's tagline explains the title as "'the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns": the autoignition temperature of paper."  In Neil Gaiman's introduction (pages 7-11), and elsewhere, the explanation about this temperature is given (an answer to one of the phone calls Ray Bradbury had passed to find this information), as well as the various working titles the story had, and most of these novel 'bonus material' all give up far too much information and spoilers, so I suggest reading them after the three chapters this novel's comprised of. 

I find that Ray's prose is somewhat lessened in comparison to Martian Chronicles. At some passages, it's absolutely exquisite, but in others, too heavy with punctuation that breaks phrases far too short from one another.

Characters aren't all equally elaborated, and perhaps it's not totally necessary in this format, but perhaps it misses a bit of panache to them? 

There is a mix of despair and hope in Fahrenheit 451, marking its initial writing period, the early 1950's, and projecting into a future of 'what if this goes on' question about American society, government, education and ... let's say 'nurtured curiosity' towards books, knowledge and imagination. 

Fahrenheit has to make you think about all these, and perhaps, or rather hopefully, about a lot more... 

In this edition, these chapters start on pages 13, 55 and 82-116.

The 'bonuses' are 

• Neil's Introduction (7-11)
• History, context and criticism (edited by Jonathan R. Eller) (117-208), further subdivided into part one (119-164) and part two (165-188).

Part one : the story of Fahrenheit 451, includes text from J.R. Eller, and several from Ray Bradbury.

Part two : other voices.  Includes exerts from 9 reviews (sadly only one from a woman, Margaret Atwood), about the novel - they are all full of spoilers, down to the resolutions and plot twists! 

• We continue to Fahrenheit 451 : the motion picture (189-200) including exerts from François Truffaut's filming journal, also includes spoilers. 
• About the author, and other novels / short stories (201-204) 
• and all about the edition and copyright (205-208).

This edition is rich, it offers not only the novel but also sociopolitical context (the Cold War) and backstories of how Ray came to compose it, via stages and incorporating, expanding, previous shorter stories. There are also a few facsimiles of book covers, notes and drafts, but just a few, and all with official permissions - actually hyperlinked within the ebook! 

Because some reviewers and Neil Gaiman had a few points in common in their texts, there are a few overlapping repetitions, but they remain interesting on the overall.