Farenheit 451

Cafe Society
1

This has got to be one of the creepiest books I’ve ever laid eyes on. Now granted, when I first read it 20 years ago I thought “Hmph, sounds a bit paranoid and far-fetched to me.”

But now in an age where reality TV is gobbled up in huge volumes and served up on contracptions like this, and when we find ourselves in a war on the other half of the planet, the cause of which has never really been clear, how can anyone read a story like this and not believe, even just a little bit, that these guys are nothing more nor less than some guys who fit a profile but who had no nefarius intentions?

I guess my question is, does anyone know how the book was received when it was first published? And just to keep this C.S., what did you think when you first ran accross it?

2

Bradbury was on a roll when Farenheit 451 was published. His stuff was selling very well. I think it was his second or third book to come out in hardback and he was one of the few SF authors to actually be read by mainstream readers. It suffered (or was helped because of the publicity) because it was banned in a couple of places. Still it was accepted very well for a book most people thought of being for a niche market. Many people could accept the book and rationalize by saying, “See this is what would have happened if Hitler would have won.”

When I first read it decades ago, I was very impressed with it and its feelings about the printed word.

I would add that I feel one of the great sins of making a book into a movie was the film version of this novel.

3

I can’t follow the thread any further so as to avoid spoilers but I just starting reading this for the first time. Based on the OP, I plan to be as creeped out as I was by 1984. :eek:

4

I am way to young to be able to comment on how it was recieved when it came out, but when I first read it in high school I wasn’t a huge fan to tell the truth. I love the plot and a lot of the concepts put forth in the book, but I could never bring myself to care about any of the characters. I love Bradbury’s short stories ,including the one Farenheit 451 was based on, but the novelization just never grabbed me.

If you aren’t following this thread you probably won’t see this response, but never the less. I didn’t find Farenheit 451 to be nearly as creepy as 1984; mostly because the government of 451 didn’t have the same level of psycological control over the populace that was the theme of 1984.

As to the slightly less CS ideas of the OP I think that 1984 is a better fit when discussing false accusations by a zealot government. Think of the scene where Winston is in the Ministry of Love (I think it was Miniluv at least) talking to his former neighbor who had been arrested for thought crimes. The neighbor commented that his children must have been quite vigilant, as he himself had been unaware of his crimes before he was captured.

5

Agreed; 1984 is far more frightening than Farenheit 451. It’s actually quite cheerful and optimistic, for Bradbury. The world is in bad shape, but it’s not beyond fixing, and there are people working to do just that.

As for super-big-screen TVs, one point raised in the book is that the tragedy isn’t the loss of books per se, but the loss of creative expression. Great art could, in principle, be produced for the TV walls; it just wasn’t. And technical manuals and other books were still around, just not artistic ones.

6

Hee. I risked one more peek…I’ve only read a few pages but him saying “Houses have always been fireproof” reminded me of “We’ve always been at war”; the past reinvented.

7

Minor nit: Fahrenheit 451. Haven’t read the book, but the movie with Oskar Werner and Julie Christie is excellent.

8

As you said, you haven’t read the book.

9

Didn’t knock the book, just added an aside on my opinion of the film. You don’t like my opinion, or feel it is not warranted in this thread, noted.

10

Related, but I think “We have always been at war with Eurasia” is much more of an imposed-from-the-top absolute belief, while “Houses have always been fireproof” is just people not caring to bother thinking about it, like the stories you hear of kids being surprised that their parents didn’t grow up with computers.

11

Doesn’t it end with a nuclear war, though, that destroys civilization?

12

I thought the part of civilization working to preserve creativity/expression in books survived.

13

As someone else mentioned, the characters were just not very likeable. I’m not saying one has to always love characters to enjoy a book, however, it is my firm belief that many people have to at least identify with them. Which I did not.

The book *was *creepy and well-done, though.

14

Didn’t Bradbury write this novel on a coin-operated typewriter that charged by the hour in some public setting? I seem to recall that he did that with one of the books he wrote. That’s gotta put some pressure on a guy.

His short story “The Pedestrian” is more nightmarishly Orwellian, except in this story the goverment relies on computers and robots to do its dirty work.

15

Um, yeah. That’s kind of the point of ALL dystopian fiction. You’re supposed to see elements of current society in the futuristic world the author is portraying. 1984, Fahranheit 451, Brave New World, Blade Runner, Brazil, Children of Men - all these books and films are showing you the modern world through a warped funhouse mirror. That’s what makes it scary.
And for what it’s worth, I think those guys from NJ were up to a bit more than just a bunch of Muslims playing paintball. They always seem like harmless buffoons until they actually DO get ahold of a weapon and kill 30 people.

16

Read the book. Twice. Well written, yes, but I thought it was over-rated. But I think that about all Bradbury.

17

Bradbury has made the point in recent years that Fahrenheit 451 isn’t supposed to be about the burning of books so much as it is about the banning of ideas, and he uses it as a launching point to decry too much PC-ness.
Regarding the movie:

1.) Generally very good, but it drags in some places.

2.) I love the fact that the opening credits are spoken, rather than written in words on the screen. It’s the same thing Orson Welles did for the credits at the end of The Magnificent Ambersons, and that’s probably where trufaut got the idea. One thing that dates this is the fact that the spoken credits are done over shots of TV aerials atop houses. Will kids today even understand what this means?

3.) The special effects (of “Firemen” flying) are atrociously bad. I can understand de-emphasizing special effects (You don’t need elaborate effects for a good science fiction film, and there are several with few or none), but putting in particularly BAD ones draws attention to them. And this one wasn’t even necessary.

4.) I agree with the critics who have said that the final scene of The Book People seems to cut against the author’s intent. Instead of perpetuating living literature, these people, walking around zombie-like, muttering their memorized tomes, seem to have merely preserved it without soul.
Regarding the book:

1.) A special edition was released early on that was printed on asbestos paper (!) Talk about non-PC. Try doing that today!

2.) The Dog was one of the features that wasn’t even attempted for the film. There has been talk of remaking the film, and, if so, it would be a cinch to use CGI to do the dog. But I’m not sure it would help the film in any way except making it more salable via trailers.

18

Although I was a huge Ray Bradbury fan at the time, my first exposure to the book was actually the computer adventure game based on it. It was made by Telarium, and was one of the better adventure games out there. You progressed through the game by making contact with various ‘books’; in order to continue, you had to complete a quote from their book. Though I think it might have been possible to get through by other means, this usually meant actually going to the library and tracking down the quote by reading the book (it’s a little unfortunate that it’d be harder to achieve that effect today). I don’t know if Bradbury had any input on that design, but it certainly would seem like something he would do.

As for the book, I’d say it’s not frightening in the 1984 sense (which is more horrifying) but in a more disturbing, believable outcome sense. (Though the champion of that is Brave New World).

19

Interesting question. I’ve been poking around to see what I could find on contemporary reviews and comments.

The quick summary is that the book as treated as a major publication by a up-and-coming writer. It was reviewed favorably in the New York Times. Orville Prescott wrote: Fahrenheit is “frightening in its implications… Mr. Bradbury’s account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating.”

Even small papers like the Delta Democrat-Times of Greenville, MS reviewed it. “Bradbury often makes one think, occasionally annoys with what appears to be an exaggeration of probability, and always interests.”

Kingsley Amis devotes several pages to it in New Maps of Hell, the first critical mainstream book on sf as an art form, so it was already a classic by the late 50s, when Amis was writing.

Just the fact that it was published in hardback was significant for a story that has first appeared (as “The Fireman”) in Galaxy magazine in 1951. They padded the first edition out to fuller length by the addition of two short stories left out of later editions.

And the special edition of 200 signed, numbered copies in asbestos is something that is done only when a publisher wants to make a nationwide publicity splash. That alone makes it stand out from any other sf book published at the time. Or ever.

That’s probably the single most valuable book in modern sf. Here’s the copy that L. W. Currey, one of the top two or three dealers in sf books, has for sale. It’s $17,500. Barry R. Levin, Currey’s only true rival, has a slightly worse condition copy for slightly more.

The story has flaws that everyone recognizes, and it is usually called a lesser novel than 1984, but it was a major publication from the very beginning. Certainly, it got much more attention than that other book published around the same time, The Fellowship of the Ring, by some English professor.