Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the classic science fiction novel....

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
(1953)

Winner, Retro-Hugo for Best SF/F Novel of 1953, presented 2004 on 50-year anniversary.

I last read Fahrenheit 451 (aka Celsius 233 :) a year and half ago, 2018, just before the HBO movie was released, and I'm re-reading it again now. It's worth it just for some of the prose.

Fahrenheit 451 was made into a movie twice: in 1966 by François Truffaut and in 2018 by HBO. The latter sticks a little more closely to Bradbury's plot. I watched both movies back in 2018, too.

The first line, "It was a pleasure to burn," is a real grabber, and is well known. (I used it in our Off To a Good Start quiz a couple of years ago.)

The rest of the opening is also nicely styled. "It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history."

All those great metaphors. Fire eats & transforms. The flamethrower a python spitting kerosene. Montag destroys "the tatters and charcoal ruins of history".

"Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame."

Now, that's how to write an opening paragraph!

The novel itself is short. It's divided into three longish chapters.

It's been a long time since I read it and I got a lot more out of it this time. The book burning is actually pretty irrelevant.

One thing he really got right was the obsession with constant electronic distraction and never taking a moment to think. He correctly predicted ear buds. Even though headphones existed the first time I read it I thought the idea of people walking around with something stuck in their ears all the time was crazy.
Though he didn't predict that everybody would spend most of their time squinting at a three inch screen.

Also prophetic is how he says entertainment got so meaningless by trying to not offend anybody.

And Beatty seems really well read for books being so illegal.

Anyway that's the stuff I liked about it, the stuff he got right. The ending wasn't that great.

How were the movies? I've never seen either of them.

It's been many years since I first read this. I'm looking forward to revisiting the world.

G33z3r wrote: "I last read Fahrenheit 451 (aka Celsius 233 :) a year and half ago, 2018, just before the HBO movie was released, and I'm re-reading it again now. It's worth it just for some of the prose.

Fahrenh..."

Yep, phallic metaphor here we ....

I have the 60th anniversary edition and it had an intro by Neil Gaiman which made some interesting points.

Explaining that Speculative Fiction doesn't try to predict the future, since that's impossible, but takes one worrying aspect of society and pushes it to an extreme just to put a spotlight on the issue.

Then the question is, what is the book actually about? Censorship? Ignorance is bliss? The control of the ignorant masses? TV rots your brain? Gaiman made two points, the first was he read the book three times at varying ages and got different ideas each time. He also writes how of course the author knows exactly what it's about since he wrote it, picked the words, etc (so when Tolkien says LotR is not an allegory of the war, he should know) but authors are also a creatures of their experiences and the time the book was written (so the war probably had huge influence on Tolkien whether he's aware of it or not). So you still get a bit of a 50's vibe from 451, like the medics smoking while treating Mildred. Or the whole housewife thing where the women stay home with their TV, discuss inane things, don't appear to have jobs, etc.

I also picked up Tim Hamilton's graphic novel adaptation from the library to read in parallel and that one had an intro from Bradbury looking back at the book he wrote 50 years ago or so. And he himself was surprised to dig through his own brain to figure out his influences and realized it wasn't what he originally thought, but that there were a lot more influences involved. So even the author didn't know what he was writing about :)

G33z3r wrote: "The rest of the opening is also nicely styled."

It was an amazing intro, and it contrasts with Montag a few page later where he realizes he's unhappy in his life. He sounded like an insane pyromaniac to start with, but he apparently he's not.

Since we read as a group Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep I thought it interesting that there is a lot of similarity in setting. Both husbands work for ethically questionable jobs (book burning or android executioner) and both wives stay at home bored and addicted to electronic media.

Wonder what Bradbury would think of not just TV, but now the internet, and the fact we now have mobile devices to take that media with us where ever we go. Or the fact that the internet allows us to cherry pick our information sources that only satisfies our own beliefs and never challenges them? That we can then go around spouting our own opinion as if they were fact and attack the person directly instead of arguing against the idea.

Also I didn't remember the fact that books ended up being banned not because the government came in and said so, but because people abandoned them naturally and the government just finished it off with few people really caring by then. It's a scary thought since that's probably a more likely scenario, we'd resist a forcible takeover, but we if slowly but surely stop caring and then forgetting...I figure corporations will take over the world that way, getting more power over consumers than goverments have over their citizens, and probably having more information about them too and it will be because we handed all that information over with a smile on our face.

What would Brabury think about the fact that universities need to announce trigger warnings in their course material so that people won't be offended by something in the book, how while racism/sexism/etc are valid issues today, banning books that contained them, or banning authors that were racist/sexist/etc.

People won't read Lovecraft since he was a racist, but at the same time he was a product of his times, where society decided that this was acceptable so it wasn't in a way his fault? Should we ignore those books or should we discuss them in their proper context and understand how that portrayal was wrong. Or how Twain's Huckleberry Finn gets banned because of the N word, but people entirely miss the fact that Twain himself was anti-slavery and was making a point of that in his book, even while using offensive terms?

And I wonder, what do I consider "normal" right now but will be considered offensive a century or two from now? What might I be doing that is so horrible that future generations will want to wipe the very concept out of the history books?

I must say, like Gaiman, I'm getting something very different from this re-read than I had back when I read this in high school!

I was impressed by how many things Bradbury got right. From Wikipedia: "Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship, but a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of factoids, partial information devoid of context." That's scarily familiar, isn't it?

- It has biometrics. Montag comes home & sticks his hand in the glove on his door & it recognizes him. Wow.
- Ear shells that constantly blast entertainment into his wife's head. iPod anyone?
- TV screens that cover the walls & inane programs that are more important than real life since they also allow user input. We're seeing that today.
- Montag's run is eerily familiar to King's "The Running Man" & 'reality' TV.
- Short wars that no one understands a thing about.
- A presidential race decided on which candidate looked & sounded better.

Written in 1953 - really? Was he such a visionary or are such problems perennial? I think both.

I love Captain Beatty's explanation of how the society came to be. Everyone wants to be happy & they don't have time for real thought, so...
...If the Government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy....

Jim wrote: "- TV screens that cover the walls & inane programs that are more important than real life since they also allow user input. We're seeing that today."

Mildred calling them family was seriously disturbing and sad. Which is reflected in the woman that didn't seem to care what happened to her husband in the war (he should be fine but if he's not, just get another one). And really didn't care about her kids. What happened in the parlour was far more important.

Book Nerd wrote: "And Beatty seems really well read for books being so illegal."

I wondered that too, he's spouting more literature than I know, only recognized some of the quotes. I wonder if that ties in to his (view spoiler)[ to die at the end, he was at conflict with himself? (hide spoiler)]

Interesting that all the books that survive seem to be literature of some form, nobody hung only a sleazy romance or pulp SF? ;) Not all books have much in the way of value or meaning, but then Faber said that too, that books in and of themselves won't solve or change anything. So as Jim was pointing out, its not even about books but about ideas, books was just one way of storing/recording those ideas for the future.

In chapter 2, when Montag talks with Faber, the ex-professor says, "It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the ‘parlor families’ today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not."

This is almost a decade before FCC Chairman Newton Minow would pronounce TV a "vast wasteland."

Faber also tells Montag, "Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it’s a small sideshow indeed."

Faber, he tells us, is a former professor at a libral arts college which closed because no one enrolled. (They probably all signed up for STEM classes or MBAs. Not sure if :) or :( needed there.


Andrea wrote: "Interesting that all the books that survive seem to be literature of some form, nobody hung only a sleazy romance or pulp SF?..."

As to which books survived, Faber has an explanation for that as well: "Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope..."

No word on who defines quality. But I suspect "Outlaw of Gor" doesn't qualify. :)


The War that probably concerned Bradbury in 1953 was Korea, a UN "Police Action" the US convinced the UN to endorse and then enetered without prior congressional authorization, much less a formal declaration of war (not for the first or last time in US history.) Still, at least it made the news.


Andrea wrote: "Wonder what Bradbury would think of not just TV, but now the internet, and the fact we now have mobile devices to take that media with us where ever we go..."

The other thing the internet has done is drive even shorter attention spans, smaller "factoids" and "sound bites". Bradbury's complain with the constant TV is a lack of time to think. (Montag told Clarisse earlier, "You think too many things.") Who can think with the internet/phone constantly interrupting.

G33z3r wrote: "...Bradbury's complain with the constant TV is a lack of time to think. (Montag told Clarisse earlier, "You think too many things.") Who can think with the internet/phone constantly interrupting."

On the way home I was listening to this & one of the characters says that one of the best things about books is that you can shut them when you need to think, unlike the TV & advertising of the book's world. I got home & read some of Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour. The epigraph to one of the chapters I read was "A book is a friend that will do what no friend does - be silent when we wish to think." - Will Durant, the author of Story of Civilization
Kind of neat getting the same sentiment from two such different sources within an hour of each other.

G33z3r wrote: "The other thing the internet has done is drive even shorter attention spans"

I noted that the parlour shows were really short.


So, my copy had some extra material at the end that was interesting:

Given this was a book around censorship, it was kind of ironic that things like drugs, nudity, profanity, was censored out so that school boards would be willing to use the book in school, though it had no effect on the overall meaning of the book (Montag not saying "hell" isn't a big deal one way or the other except in principle). The big problem was when they started printing that version for the general public by mistake. Eventually one school noticed the difference between their book and that of their teacher's and they notified Brabury who got it sorted out.

G33z3r wrote: "aka Celsius 233"

Apparently the first translation into Danish actually did it :) But all subsequent translations kept the original spelling.

Jim wrote: "Ear shells that constantly blast entertainment"

Apparently a couple years after F451 came out he passed a couple walking down the street and the woman had some radio thing with a wire that attached to an earbud, guess some early kind of walkman radio thing. Bradbury was a bit weirded out by that and was worried the he might start seeing Firemen the next week. Here he was thinking he was inventing science fiction when science had already been there, done that!

Book Nerd wrote: "And Beatty seems really well read for books being so illegal."

I wondered that too, though the answer is in the book itself, though not made explicit. The extra material in my copy made it clear though:

Apparently Bradbury made a play based on the book and he had Montag go to Beatty's place that is apparently filled with books (apparently its legal so long as you never read them). He explained as a kid that he used devour books, loved them, but life interfered and he got divorced, and other bad things happened and when he opened those same books he found them devoid of meaning now and he went out and joined the newly created Firemen. Apparently the last of the libraries were burned "30 years ago".

So if we assume Montag is maybe 30, he would have missed being exposed to books, but if Beatty (and Faber who was a literature professor) are maybe 60, they would have had access to them for several decades. Thus explaing why Beatty would know all those quotes.

In fact it's implied by he book that this state of things is relatively new given how many professors and other literary types make up the Book People, it all happened more or less within one lifetime.

The Afterword in my edition was perhaps the best part this time around. Bradbury explains that fire isn't the only way that books get burned, every minority is a fireman when they remove words or content that offends them & he'll have none of it. The edition I listened to is supposed to be the original, complete & uncut. He said that he had been shocked to find that previous editions had been edited down until 75 sections had been missing. He received letters in the same week complaining that he was prejudiced for/against the same group in this book.

He points to an anthology that contains 400 short stories by famous authors. How did they all fit into one volume? Because they were edited until every author's writing resembled the others. They were stripped of anything that made them unique. Very scary. Definitely fits well with another book I'm reading now, Talking to Robots: Tales from Our Human-Robot Futures & the sections on journalism/writing.

Book Nerd wrote: "And Beatty seems really well read for books being so illegal...."

When I first read Fahrenheit 451 (back in late 60s, I think), I guessed as he began his quote-laden talks that it was like 1984, where senior party officials had access to stuff the general population didn't. But nothing in the latter part of the book speaks to that either way.

I thought it odd that the firemen had a printed handbook for their rules. And that people could still read (maybe that's needed another generation to kick in)

Maybe they still could have factual books like instructions on how to work your Seashell, or that script for the parlour play? Isn't that a kind of "book" too?

Hmm, think one of the Firemen said that there was a list of banned books, so maybe books in and of themselves are not entirely outlawed, just the ones that try to present ideas or meaning? Like I won't consider the meaning of life while I struggle with my VCR instuctions :)

Do deaf people get captions for their parlour walls? Would transcripts of shows be allowed, after all what difference if the same content is spoken vs written.

Andrea wrote: "I thought it odd that the firemen had a printed handbook for their rules. And that people could still read..."

Bradbury covered that when Beatty explains to Montag: "It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals."

Mildred also had a printed "script" for her role in one of the interactive parlor vids.

Bradbury realizes that writing is one of the great inventions. It allowed a generation to pass down to its descendants more knowledge than could possibly be memorized by bards. (Aside: Interesting fantasy story by Dave Duncan, The Reluctant Swordsman, is one of those "modern guy gets yanked into another universe" stories, where the universe doesn't have (or permit) writing, and much revolves around memorizing a bunch of sutras specific to your profession. One of those books I really liked and no one else has ever heard of. It would BINGO very nicely for "Alternate World." Hint. :)

If Bradbury were writing Fahrenheit 451 today, he would probably make all the technical manuals into videos and writing would disappear. He'd probably also have to ban audiobooks (except for the aforementioned tech material.)

I read a story the other day that no one learns cursive writing in school anymore. Some school system finally dropped it like everyone else. Since most people type or thumb text these days, no one cares about cursive except people who print diplomas (ironically, presenting students with a document they never learned to read :).

I'm watching the HBO movie...aside from the names and book burning I'm not convinced it's actually based on the book they changed it so much. I didn't mind the alternations which pulls in the internet and more modern technology but it went way beyond that.

The first time I knew about this book was when in my college they decided to make a radio production about it, before tv I know this transmissions where greatly accepted, my parents sometimes talk about it, I never knew exactly how interesting is listening a book in that context, really different from audio books.

I just loved the story, so as soon as possible I got the book, and definitely got to my top 10 of books, so many ideas and situations are like from some nightmares, disconnection between people, banning of knowledge... it’s been some years since this, and reading it again make me wonder if we should be a little more worried to see a lot of similitudes with our every day now

Finished today. I first read it 15-20 years ago, and I think it's even more relevant now. I'll probably have some more lucid comments later on, but it's quite late.

Angie wrote: "Finished today. I first read it 15-20 years ago, and I think it's even more relevant now. I'll probably have some more lucid comments later on, but it's quite late."

I've read it several times over the past 50 years or so & think it is more relevant each time. Incredible!

I'm about halfway through - I haven't read it since high school. Bradbury was not as good as some of his contemporaries at predicting future technologies, but he is very good at societal trends. I am finding this far more disturbing than I did when I read it in the 70s.

I found the blu-ray of the HBO telemovie as part of a 2 for $20 sale, so I bought a copy - along with the long-awaited (by me, anyway) sequel to Iron Sky :) Nazis on the Moon !!!

I have now finished and my thoughts about Bradburys predictive abilities didn't really change - with tech, he's average at best (but Bradbury didn't really focus on tech in his stories), with societal trends, he's far more insightful.

Ultimately, I'm not sure this book really counts as dystopian - the society as presented is certainly not one that I imagine anyone in this group would look forward to, but the ending, nuclear war notwithstanding, is somewhat upbeat. The ending of this book is certainly far more optimistic than either 1984 or Brave New World.

There seems to be a certain level of optimism among American sci-fi authors of the 50s and early 60s (reflecting, I expect, the general optimism of American society of the time) that is somewhat irrepressible. I notice this particularly in Heinlein (whom Bradbury reminds me of in certain passages in the final parts of the book) and Asimov.

My edition is the 50th anniversary edition, and it has both an introduction and an afterword written by Bradbury., which are interesting reading. In the afterword, Bradbury discusses his thought processes and the evolution of the book, and how he had trouble getting it published due to the rise of McCarthyism. I had not known that the original publication of the full novel was as a serial of three parts in early editions of Playboy magazine (which, no doubt, explains the division of the book into 3 longish chapters). Apparently Hefner was quite appreciative to Bradbury, as having a writer of his stature would have provided invaluable publicity to the new, and controversial, magazine.

I thought the Nuclear War for an ending was an interesting if insanely melodramatic touch. I presume it's society's punishment for not paying attention. (There are a few bits of foreshadowing, so it's not totally out of the blue, but we never hear what the war is about, or several predecessor wars that apparently didn't cause the destruction of any cities.) Not that anyone in this society would be interested in international relations, apparently content to let some government run things as long as the parlor friends keep coming.

It does seem dystopian to me, though. The government has very tight rein on permissible speech and thought, and people turn in their own neighbors for deviations. The fact that most of society is happy doesn't seem to make it any better than Brave New World using Soma to keep everyone happy.

I view dystopia as the setting, not the tone. So it can be a dystopia even if at the end of the book they overthrow whatever the oppressive order is and create a perfect new world utopia, but the point of the book was to fight the initial dystopian state.

And often one person's utopia's is another person's dystopia (which is probably why we will never ever have the former). I mean the wives were perfectly happy the way they were, sending their kids off to boarding schools, not worrying about whether husbands come back from the war. Everything seemed perfect to them since they were ignorant of what was really going on around them, and they didn't care to learn. But as a reader we see the flaw in that, and is the key point Brabury makes, that while ignorance is bliss, it also makes you easily manipulated and controlled since you forget how to question, to disagree, to think.

I did find the background nuclear war kind of interesting, since I wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to point out to us other than the fact that people (including the readers) are completely ignorant of anything going on outside that city. I mean for all we know it wasn't even a foreign government that dropped the bomb but their own, trying to wipe out a particularly problematic city that had an unusually high number of dissenters.

BTW, the graphic novel is available on Tor. Although I counted around 151 pages and GR says there are 192 I think pretty much the whole thing is there.

https://www.tor.com/2009/09/26/fahren...

I wouldn't give it to particularly young kids, they wouldn't really get it, some of it is kind of subtle, a "show not tell" kind of thing, like showing how brainwashed all the wives were. But it should be required reading in high school, like it was in mine. Along with 1984 and others. And both also benefit from guidance from say a teacher, that can fill in the background of the author and such (though not of course strictly necessary, but just as you looked for more info you can see how it could benefit)

We often underestimate what kids can understand, or what they can handle. And adults/parents also often make assumptions. Take Watership Down. I loved this as a kid, but watching it as an adult...wow, it's pretty brutal and I'd be tempted to say that's NOT for kids...except I watched it as a kid and didn't turn out traumatized or a serial killer. There is death and blood and gore and all kinds of stuff. But it's about "bunnies" so it must be for "kids". The fact the bunnies rip each other apart I guess got missed by the parents giving the thumbs up :D

I watched the exelent 1966 film when I was 13 then immediately read the amazing book--I spent months intending to memorize a book as shown in the story.

The dystopia is inappropriate for kids younger than that imo