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Fahrenheit 451

First edition cover
Author	Ray Bradbury
Illustrator	Joe Pernaciaro and Joseph Mugnaini
Language	English
Genre	Dystopian novel
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	1953
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	179 pp
ISBN	ISBN 978-0-7432-4722-1 (current cover edition) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
OCLC	53101079
Dewey Decimal	813.54 22
LC Class	PS3503.R167 F3 2003

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury. The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and firemen burn any house that contains them.

This novel has been the subject of various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury stated that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time (during the McCarthy era) about censorship and the threat of book burning in the United States. In later years, he stated his motivation for writing the book in more general terms.

François Truffaut wrote and directed a film adaptation of the novel in 1966. At least two BBC Radio 4 dramatisations have also been aired, both of which follow the book very closely.

The book's title refers to the temperature that Bradbury understood to be the autoignition point of book paper.

A prequel/companion exists titled A Pleasure To Burn, and a video game sequel exists as well, also titled Fahrenheit 451.

Plot summary

The Hearth and the Salamander

On a rainy night while returning from his job, Guy Montag is followed by a cheery 17-year-old girl (she later admits to being a month short of 17 years old) named Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse initially bothers Montag with her incessant questions (and Clarisse is a bit bothered by Montag's uncalled-for reactions, such as laughing when she hasn't said anything funny), but Montag chooses to tolerate her as she tells him of how she loves nature and walking around and observing how crazy the world has become. The two walk until they reach Clarisse's house (which is next to Montag's). Before Clarisse goes inside, she asks Montag if he's happy. The question catches Montag by surprise and he mulls over his encounter with Clarisse (and how similar it was to another encounter in the park involving an English professor who was afraid of Montag).

Montag enters his bedroom, and finds Mildred in bed with her Seashell ear radio in her ear, staring vacantly at the ceiling (just as she's been doing for the past ten years or so). Montag doesn't notice anything wrong until his foot hits Mildred's empty sleeping pill bottle. Montag tries to wake up his wife, but she doesn't respond. Montag calls for medical attention, trying to shout over the screams of the passing jet engines above the house. Because "accidental" prescription pill overdoses have become commonplace, the medical department sends over two cynical, uncaring technicians who use a stomach pump to flush the poisons out of Mildred's system and replace her blood with a fresh, synthetic replacement. Montag stands outside Clarisse's house and sees that she and her family are the only ones in the neighborhood with the lights on and engaging in a spirited conversation. Montag returns to his house, sees that Mildred is looking slightly better than before, and goes to bed.

The next day, Montag finds Mildred in the kitchen, making breakfast and complaining of an upset stomach. Montag tries to tell his wife that she overdosed, but is interrupted by Mildred's ramblings of her stomach hurting, but being hungry, and rationalizes that the feeling is from drinking too much alcohol during a party. As Montag leaves for work, he finally tells Mildred (who is watching an interactive soap opera on the "parlor walls"—three enormous, floor-to-ceiling television screens) that she overdosed on sleeping pills. Mildred denies that she would do something that suicidal, but Montag insists. Mildred brushes off the issue and returns to her soap opera. Over the next few days, Montag bonds with Clarisse, who tells him that her interest in intellectual activities has made her an outcast in a society dominated by shallow entertainment, and for that, she has no friends and has to see a psychiatrist. On the final day, however, Clarisse doesn't appear alongside Montag. Montag waits for her, but the wait is short-lived when the train comes to take him to work.

A few days later, the firemen are called in to burn down the house of an old woman who has been hoarding books. The firemen go to arrest her, but instead the woman recites a quotation from Hugh Latimer and refuses to leave. As the firemen toss the books from the woman's upstairs bedroom down to the living room floor and spray the pile with kerosene, Montag accidentally reads a line in one of her books and hides it away before any of his coworkers can see. The woman is given a final warning to leave the house, but the woman produces a match. Before she can strike it, the firemen flee, save for Montag, who watches as the woman lights the match, drops it in the kerosene, and is engulfed in flames.

Montag comes home from the jarring experience and tries to take his mind off the event by asking a half-asleep Mildred where the two first met and when. Mildred tries to remember, but can't, laughing it off as she heads to the bathroom to take her sleeping pills. As Montag reflects on his stagnant, stilted marriage to Mildred (and how Mildred has become emotionally and mentally dead from watching her "parlor wall" entertainment, driving recklessly, and her sleeping pill addiction), Montag begins to cry when realizing that if Mildred died, he wouldn't miss her at all. Montag then asks Mildred about Clarisse and her whereabouts. Mildred initially denies knowledge of what happened to Clarisse, then tells Montag exactly what happened to her: Clarisse was run over by a speeding car and, once her family heard the news about her death, they packed up and moved away, all of which happened four days ago. Montag is shocked that Mildred didn't tell him the grim news sooner and more disturbed over Mildred's apathy over the death of someone Montag had genuinely liked.

Montag wakes up physically ill and begs Mildred to call in sick for him. Mildred refuses and doesn't believe that Montag is really sick (even when Montag vomits on the rug from the stench of kerosene—which earlier was like a perfume to him—Mildred is only concerned about whether or not the vomit stain will come out in the wash). Captain Beatty, Montag's fire chief, personally visits him and tells him the story of how books lost their value and where the firemen fit in: Over the course of several decades (with the starting point being after the American Civil War), populations grew and people embraced new media, sports, and a quickening pace of life. Books were ruthlessly abridged and degraded to accommodate a shorter attention span. Later, minorities and other special-interest groups began criticizing books for their controversial content while other critics bashed authors for making people feel inferior by publishing works that no one could comprehend. Books became blander and blander due to censorship measures, and eventually, books stopped selling and authors were either locked away in insane asylums or gave up their profession and lived in exile. The only reading material that the society now accepts are captionless comics, three-dimensional sex magazines, trade magazines, and scripts used during the interactive plays on the parlor walls. To get rid of the books from the past (and their copies), the government implemented a program using the firemen to burn the books (now that houses were being rebuilt to be fire-resistant) and placate the masses. As Beatty is giving his monologue, Mildred tries to fluff Montag's pillow and nearly discovers the book hidden underneath. Montag yells at her and Mildred, at the request of Beatty, quietly leaves the room to watch the parlor walls. Beatty knows that Montag has a book but acts casual about it, stating that it's natural that every fireman gets curious about books and starts to possess one. If the book isn't burned or returned to the firehouse within 24 hours then the firemen will burn it for him.

When Beatty is gone, Montag shows Mildred the books he has hidden in the ventilator of their home. Mildred tries to incinerate the books, but Montag subdues her and tells her that the two of them are going to read the books to see if they have value. If they do not, he promises the books will be burned and all will return to normal.

The Sieve and the Sand

While going over the stolen books (and nearly getting caught by the firehouse's Mechanical Hound), Mildred argues with Montag that books have no meaning and questions why Montag dragged her into this. Montag snaps back by mentioning Mildred's overdose, Clarisse's death, the book woman who burned herself, and how society is falling apart due to apathy, ignorance, and a pending war, then states that maybe the books of the past have messages in them that can save society from its own destruction. Before Montag can finish, Mildred gets a call from her friends about coming over to watch The White Clown on the parlor walls.

Montag laments that his wife is hopeless(and he will be too if he can't force himself to absorb the information in the books). Montag then remembers a man he once met in the park a year ago: Faber, a former English professor. Montag seeks Faber's help, though Faber refuses at first due to his cowardice. When Montag starts to rip a few pages from the beginning of a rare copy of The New Testament, Faber relents and teaches Montag about the importance of literature in its attempt to explain human existence. He gives Montag an ear-piece communicator he made himself so that Faber can offer guidance throughout his daily activities.

At Montag's house, Mildred has her friends, Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles, over to watch the parlor walls. In the middle of a bloody demolition derby, Montag unplugs the walls and engages the women into meaningful conversation, only to find them concerned only with pleasure in the present moment. Montag then brings out a book of poetry to scare some emotion into them (despite Faber's warnings). Mildred tries to cover up Montag's actions by claiming that, once a year, firemen bring home one book and read it aloud as a form of mocking past literature. Mildred then turns to a page in the book that has the poem Dover Beach on it and assures that none of her friends will understand any of the words. A shaken, confused Montag reads the poem, which ends up making Mrs. Phelps cry. Mrs. Bowles, however, is disgusted, accuses Montag of being nasty, and ends her friendship with Mildred. Montag yells at the women to go home and reflect on their empty lives and burns the poetry book while Mildred locks herself in the bathroom to take her pills.

Montag returns to the firehouse the next day with only one of the books, which Beatty tosses into the trash. Beatty tells Montag that he had a dream in which they fought endlessly by quoting books to each other. In describing the dream Beatty shows that, despite his disillusionment, he was once an enthusiastic reader. A fire alarm sounds and Beatty picks up the address from the dispatcher system. He reminds Montag of his duty, theatrically leads the crew to the fire engine, and drives it to Montag's house.

Burning Bright

Beatty orders Montag to destroy his own house, telling him that his wife and neighbors were the ones who reported him. Montag tries to talk to Mildred as she quickly leaves the house, but Mildred ignores him, gets inside a waiting taxi, and vanishes down the street. Montag obeys the chief, destroying the home piece by piece with a flamethrower. As soon as he has incinerated the house, Beatty discovers Montag's earpiece (the green bullet) and plans to hunt down Faber. Montag threatens Beatty with the flamethrower and (after Beatty taunts him) burns his boss alive, and knocks his coworkers unconscious. As Montag escapes the scene, the firehouse's mechanical hound attacks him, managing to inject his leg with a tranquilizer. He destroys it with the flamethrower and limps away.

Montag runs through the city streets, to Faber's house. Faber urges him to make his way to the countryside and contact the exiled book-lovers who live there. On Faber's television, they watch news reports of another mechanical hound being released, with news helicopters following it to create a public spectacle. Montag leaves Faber's house and escapes the manhunt by jumping into a river and floating downstream into the countryside. There he meets the exiles, who have memorized various books for an upcoming time when society is ready to rediscover them. The war begins, and then, just as suddenly, ends. Montag watches helplessly as jet bombers fly overhead and attack the city with nuclear weapons, completely annihilating it. Faber escaped the city earlier on a bus, but Mildred was certainly killed.

During breakfast at dawn, Granger (leader of the group of wandering intellectuals) discusses the legendary phoenix and its endless cycle of long life, death in flames, and rebirth, adding that the phoenix must have some relation to mankind, which constantly repeats its mistakes, but that man has something the phoenix does not; man can remember the mistakes it made from before it destroyed itself, and try to not make them again. Granger then muses that a large factory of mirrors should be built, so that mankind can take a long look at itself. When the meal is over, the band goes back toward the city, to help rebuild society.

Characters

• Guy Montag is the protagonist and fireman who presents the dystopia through the eyes of a worker loyal to it, a man in conflict about it, and one resolved to be free of it. Through most of the book, Montag lacks knowledge and believes what he hears. Bradbury notes in his afterword that he noticed, after the book was published, that Montag is the name of a paper company.
• Clarisse McClellan walks with Montag on his trips home and is one month short of being a 17-year-old girl. She is an unusual sort of person in the bookless, hedonistic society: outgoing, naturally cheerful, unorthodox, and intuitive. She is unpopular among peers and disliked by teachers for asking "why" instead of "how" and focusing on nature rather than on technology. A few days after their first meeting, she disappears without any explanation, although Mildred tells Montag (and Captain Beatty confirms) that Clarisse was hit by a speeding car and that her family left following her death. In the afterword of a later edition, Bradbury notes that the film adaptation changed the ending so that Clarisse (who, in the film, is now a 20-year-old school teacher who was fired for being unorthodox) was living with the exiles. Bradbury, far from being displeased by this, was so happy with the new ending that he wrote it into his later stage edition.
• Mildred Montag is Guy Montag's wife. She is addicted to sleeping pills, absorbed in the shallow dramas played on her "parlor walls" (flat-panel televisions), and indifferent to the oppressive society around her. Despite Guy Montag's attempts to break her from the spell society has on her, Mildred continues to be shallow and indifferent. After Montag scares her friends away by reading Dover Beach and unable to live with someone who has been hoarding books, Mildred betrays Montag by reporting him to the firemen and abandoning him. She is described as being very sickly and pale, thanks to dieting, her pill addiction, and the stomach pumping operation she underwent earlier in the story.
• Captain Beatty is Montag's boss. Once an avid reader, he has come to hate books due to their unpleasant content and contradicting facts and opinions. In a scene written years later by Bradbury for the Fahrenheit 451 play, Beatty invites Montag to his house where he shows him walls of books left to molder on their shelves.
• Faber is a former English professor. He has spent years regretting that he did not defend books when he saw the moves to ban them. Montag turns to him for guidance, remembering him from a chance meeting in a park some time earlier. Faber at first refuses to help Montag, but later realizes that he is only trying to learn about books, not destroy them. Bradbury notes in his afterword that Faber is part of the name of a German manufacturer of pencils, Faber-Castell.
• Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Phelps are Mildred's friends, and, like Stoneman and Black, below, are representative of the anti-intellectual, hedonistic society presented in the novel. During a social visit to Montag's house, they brag about ignoring the bad things in their lives and have a cavalier attitude towards the upcoming war, their husbands, their children, and politics. Mrs. Phelps has a husband named Pete who was called in to fight in the upcoming war (and believes that he'll be back in a week because of how quick the war will be) and thinks having children serves no purpose other than to ruin lives. Mrs. Bowles is a single mother who was married three times—her first husband divorced her, her second one died in a jet accident, and her third one committed suicide by shooting himself in the head—and has two children who don't like or even respect her (which stems from her permissive, often negligent and abusive parenting—Mrs. Bowles brags that her kids beat her up and she's glad that she can hit back). When Montag reads Dover Beach to them, Mrs. Phelps starts crying over how hollow her life is while Mrs. Bowles chastises Montag for reading a "filthy" poem.
• Granger is the leader of a group of wandering intellectual exiles who memorize books in order to preserve their contents.
• Stoneman and Black are other firemen that are mentioned in the novel, but do not have a large impact on the story. Their main purpose in the novel is to show the reader the contrast between the firemen who do as they're told without question and someone like Montag, who formerly took pride in his job, but now realizes how damaging it is to society.

Themes

There are two major themes of this novel: resistance to conformity and control of individuals via technology and mass media. Bradbury explores how the government is able to use mass media to influence society and suppress individualism through book burning. In addition, the characters Beatty and Faber point out the American population is also to blame. Due to their constant desire for a simplistic, positive image, books must be suppressed. Beatty blames the minority groups, who would take offense to published works that displayed them in an unfavorable light. Faber, went further to state that the American population simply stopped reading on their own. He notes that the book burnings themselves became a form of entertainment to the general public.

Predictions for the future

Sam Weller notes that Bradbury "predicted everything from flat-panel televisions to iPod earbuds and twenty-four-hour baking machines."

More notably, the novel is frequently interpreted as being critical of state-sponsored censorship. Indeed, when Bradbury wrote the novel, during the McCarthy era, he was concerned about censorship in the United States. In a radio interview broadcast on December 4, 1956, Bradbury said:

I wrote this book at a time when I was worried about the way things were going in this country four years ago. Too many people were afraid of their shadows, there was a threat of book burning. Many of the books were being taken off the shelves at that time. And of course, things have changed a lot in four years. Things are going back in a very healthy direction. But at the time I wanted to do some sort of story where I could comment on what would happen to a country if we let ourselves go too far in this direction, where then all thinking stops, and the dragon swallows his tail, and we sort of vanish into a limbo and we destroy ourselves by this sort of action.

In the paperback edition released in 1979, Bradbury wrote a new coda for the book containing multiple comments on censorship and its relation to the novel. The coda is also present in the 1987 mass market paperback, which is still in print.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist / Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist / Women's Lib / Republican / Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse….Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.

In the late 1950s, Bradbury observed that the novel touches on the alienation of people by media:

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

In a 2007 interview, Bradbury stated that the book explored the effects of television and mass media on the reading of literature. Bradbury went even further to elaborate his meaning, saying specifically that the culprit in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state—it is the people.

During an interview in 1975, Bradbury describes himself as "a preventor of futures, not a predictor of them." He did not believe that book burning was an inevitable part of our future, however, he wanted to warn against its development. In a later interview, when asked if he believes that teaching Fahrenheit 451 in schools will prevent his totalitarian vision of the future, Bradbury replied in the negative. Rather, he states that education must be at the kindergarten and first-grade level. If students are unable to read then, they will be unable to read Fahrenheit 451.

Writing and publication

In 1947, Bradbury wrote a short story titled "Bright Phoenix" (later revised for publication in a 1963 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction). Bradbury expanded the basic premise of "Bright Phoenix" into "The Fireman", a novella published in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. First published in 1953 by Ballantine Books, Fahrenheit 451 is twice as long as "The Fireman". A few months later, the novel was serialized in the March, April, and May 1954 issues of Playboy

Bradbury wrote the entire novel in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library on a pay typewriter that he rented for a fee of ten cents per half an hour. The first draft, which would become The Fireman, was 25,000 words long and was completed in nine days.

Publication history

The first U.S. printing was in October 1953 by The Ballantine Publishing Group. This first edition was printed with asbestos binding. The second U.S. Printing was in April 1991. In January 1967, the Revised Bal-Hi Edition was printed and in March 1967, the Special Book Club Edition was printed. The first Canadian printing was in October 1953 and the seventh printing was in October 1972.

The book has also been adapted into a 4.5-hour-long audiobook.

The novel was released as an e-book in December 2011.

Reception

When the book was first published in 1953, Galaxy reviewer Groff Conklin placed the novel "among the great works of the imagination written in English in the last decade or more." The Chicago Sunday Tribune's August Derileth described the book as a "a savage and shockingly savage prophetic view of one possible future way of life," calling it "compelling" and praising Bradbury for his "brillant imagination." Over half a century later, Sam Weller wrote, "upon its publication, Fahrenheit 451 was hailed as a visionary work of social commentary." Today, Fahrenheit 451 is still viewed as an important cautionary tale against conformity and book burning.

However, when the book was first published there were those who did not find merit in the tale. Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, were less enthusiastic, faulting the book for being "simply padded, occasionally with startlingly ingenious gimmickry, . . . often with coruscating cascades of verbal brilliance too often merely with words." Reviewing the book for Astounding Science Fiction, P. Schuyler Miller characterized the title piece as "one of Bradbury's bitter, almost hysterical diatribes," although he praised its "emotional drive and compelling, nagging detail." Similarly, The New York Times was unimpressed with the novel and further accused Bradbury of developing a "virulent hatred for many aspects of present-day culture, namely, such monstrosities as radio, TV, most movies, amateur and professional sports, automobiles, and other similar aberrations which he feels debase the bright simplicity of the thinking man's existence."

Banning

In the February 2007 issue of Villanova University's Falvey Memorial University Library newsletter Compass: New Directions at Falvey, Bill Greene notes that Fahrenheit 451 was subject to censorship by its publisher, Ballantine Books, beginning in 1967. Among the changes made by the publisher were the expurgation of the words "hell," "damn," and "abortion"; the modification of seventy-five passages; and the changing of two episodes: "In one episode, a drunken man is changed to a sick man. In another, cleaning fluff out of a human navel becomes, in the expurgated version, cleaning ears." The publishing of the censored version (along with an uncensored one) continued for six years, after which Ballantine decided to publish only the censored work until 1979. According to Greene:

In 1979, one of Bradbury’s friends showed him an expurgated copy. Bradbury demanded that Ballantine Books withdraw that version and replace it with the original, and in 1980 the original version once again became available. In this reinstated work, in the Author’s Afterword, Bradbury relates to the reader that it is not uncommon for a publisher to expurgate an author’s work, but he asserts that he himself will not tolerate the practice of manuscript "mutilation."

In 2006, parents of a tenth grade high school student in Montgomery County, Texas, demanded the book be banned from their daughter's English class reading list. Their daughter was assigned the book during National Banned Book Week, but stopped reading several pages in due to the offensive language and description of the burning of the Bible. In addition, her parents protested the violence, portrayal of Christians, and depictions of firemen in the novel.

Adaptations

Playhouse 90 broadcast "A Sound of Different Drummers" on CBS in 1957. The script, which was written by Robert Alan Aurthur, combined plot ideas from Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen Eighty-Four; Bradbury sued and eventually won on appeal.

A film adaptation written and directed by François Truffaut, starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie was released in 1966.'

BBC Radio produced a one-off dramatisation of the novel in 1982 starring Michael Pennington. It was broadcast again on February 12, 2012 and April 6, 2013 on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

In 1986, the novel was adapted into a computer text adventure game of the same name.

In 2006, the Drama Desk Award winning Godlight Theatre Company produced and performed the New York City premiere of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 at 59E59 Theaters. After the completion of the New York run, the production then transferred to the Edinburgh Festival where it was a 2006 Edinburgh Festival Pick of the Fringe.

The Off-Broadway theatre The American Place Theatre presented a one man show adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 as a part of their 2008–2009 Literature to Life season.

In June 2009, a graphic novel edition of the book was published. Entitled Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation, the paperback graphic adaptation was illustrated by Tim Hamilton. The introduction in the novel is written by Bradbury.

Fahrenheit 451 inspired the Birmingham Repertory Theatre production "Time Has Fallen Asleep in the Afternoon Sunshine", which was performed at the Birmingham Central Library in April 2012.

The film Equilibrium was heavily influenced by Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

References

1. Blackwell companions to literature and culture, 34. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. Page 491 – 498
2. ^ "Ticket to the Moon (tribute to SciFi)". Biography in Sound. NBC Radio News. December 4, 1956. Retrieved March 1, 2013.
3. Rogers, John, Associated Press. U.S.News & World Report, 6 June 6, 2012, "Author of 'Fahrenheit 451,' Ray Bradbury, Dies at 91". Accessed 12 June 2012.
4. Reid, Robin Anne (2000). Ray Bradbury : a critical companion (1st ed. ed.). Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press. pp. 59–60. ISBN 0-313-30901-9. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
5. Weller, Sam (2010). Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. p. 263.
6. "The Definitive Biography in Sound Radio Log". Retrieved March 1, 2013.
7. Bradbury, Ray (2003). Fahrenheit 451 (50th anniversary ed. ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 175–179. ISBN 0-345-34296-8. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
8. Quoted by Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (1960). Bradbury directly foretells this incident early in the work: "And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talking coming in." p.12
9. ^ Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted: "Bradbury still has a lot to say, especially about how people do not understand his most famous literary work, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953... Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature."
10. Aggelis, ed. by Steven L. (2004). Conversations with Ray Bradbury. Jackson (Miss.): University press of Mississippi. p. 99. ISBN 1-57806-640-9. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
11. Aggelis, ed. by Steven L. (2004). Conversations with Ray Bradbury. Jackson (Miss.): University press of Mississippi. p. 189. ISBN 1-57806-640-9. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
12. "About the Book: Fahrenheit 451". The Big Read. National Endowment for the Arts.
13. Bradbury, Ray (1963). "Bright Phoenix". Magazine of fantasy and science fiction: 23–30. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
14. Bradbury, Ray (1951). "The Fireman". Galaxy Science Fiction. 5. 15 (1): 4–61. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
15. Bradbury, Ray (2003). Fahrenheit 451 (50th anniversary ed. ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 167–168. ISBN 0-345-34296-8. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
16. Bradbury, Ray (2003). Fahrenheit 451 (50th anniversary ed. ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-34296-8. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
17. Hurt, Ray Bradbury ; read by Christopher (2005). Fahrenheit 451 (Unabridged. ed.). Ashland, Or.: Blackstone Audiobooks. ISBN 078617627X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
18. "Fahrenheit 451 becomes e-book despite author's feelings". BBC News. November 30, 2011. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
19. Flood, Alison (November 30, 2011). "Fahrenheit 451 ebook published as Ray Bradbury gives in to digital era". The Guardian. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
20. "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf", Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1954, p.108
21. Derileth, August (October 25, 1953). "Vivid Prophecy of Book Burning". Chicago Sunday Tribune. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
22. Weller, Sam (2010). Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. p. 124.
23. McNamee, Gregory (15). "Appreciations: Fahrenheit 451". Kirkus Reviews. 78 (18): 882. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
24. "Recommended Reading," F&SF, December 1953, p. 105.
25. "The Reference Library", Astounding Science Fiction, April 1954, pp.145–46
26. "Nothing but TV". The New York Times. November 14, 1953. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
27. ^ Greene, B. (2007). The mutilation and rebirth of a classic: Fahrenheit 451. Compass: New Directions at Falvey, 3(3). Retrieved from http://newsletter.library.villanova.edu/147
28. Wrigley, Deborah (October 3, 2006). "Parent files complaint about book assigned as student reading". ABC News. Retrieved March 2, 2013.
29. William F. Nolan, "Bradbury: Prose Poet in the Age of Space", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June, 1963.
30. Stephen Bowie. "The Sound of a Single Drummer", The Classic TV History Blog, Aug 19, 2010.
31. IMDB
32. Ray Bradbury Radio Plays, Diversity Website, retrieved June 7, 2012
33. "BBC iPlayer – Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451". Retrieved February 19, 2012.
34. Genzlinger, Neil (March 25, 2006). "Godlight Theater's 'Fahrenheit 451' Offers Hot Ideas for the Information Age". The New York Times. Retrieved March 2, 2013.
35. http://www.edinburghguide.com/festival/2006/fringe/review_theatre.php?page=f
36. "Literature to Life – Citizenship & Censorship: Raise Your Civic Voice in 2008–09". The American Place Theatre.
37. "Macmillan: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation Ray Bradbury, Tim Hamilton: Books". Us.macmillan.com.
38. Edvardsen, Mette. "Time Has Fallen Asleep In The Afternoon Sunshine Presented at Birmingham Central Library". Retrieved March 22, 2013.

Further reading

• Tuck, D. H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 62. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
• McGiveron, R. O. (1996). "What 'Carried the Trick'? Mass Exploitation and the Decline of Thought in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451". Extrapolation. 37 (3): 245–256.
• McGiveron, R. O. (1996). "Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451". Explicator. 54 (3): 177. ISSN 0014-4940.
• Smolla, R. A. (2009). "The Life of the Mind and a Life of Meaning: Reflections on Fahrenheit 451" (PDF). Michigan Law Review. 107 (6): 895–912.

External links

• Fahrenheit 451 title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

• 1953 novels
• American philosophical novels
• American novels adapted into films
• Dystopian novels
• Fahrenheit 451
• Novels about consumerism
• Novels by Ray Bradbury
• Prometheus Award winning works
• Books about books
• Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction
• 24th century in fiction
• Books about freedom of speech