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by: Ray Bradbury
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780007181704
Format: Special Edition
ISBN: 0007181701
Label: HarperVoyager
Manufacturer: HarperVoyager
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: August 02, 2004
Publisher: HarperVoyager
Sales Rank: 498418
Studio: HarperVoyager
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books. The classic novel of a post-literate future, 'Fahrenheit 451' stands alongside Orwell's '1984' and Huxley's 'Brave New World' as a prophetic account of Western civilization's enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity. Bradbury's powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.
Amazon.com Review:
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, 'Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.'
Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television 'family,' imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.
Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Timely now that we're entering into the new dark ages...
I don't want to think how many years ago I first read Fahrenheit 451, but it must've been around the same time (1966) that Truffault came out with his horrible cinematic version of the novel. I know this because I remember being unimpressed with both versions (although the movie may've soured me on the book).
Re-reading the novel now, I still don't think that it ranks up there with, say, Huxley's Brave New World. But it is an astoundingly prescient vision of the sort of society in ... Read More
Rating:  - It's good, but...
I can see why so many people like the works of Ray Bradbury. He is a very effective story teller, he has a particular talent for building vivid imagery with few words (his "less is more" style is DEFINITELY a winner) and he is able to take very important, very relevent modern themes and inject them into his stories. In this story, we see how Bradbury has taken aim at the world of electronic media as an advancement that very well may, over time, become the downfall of mankind.
So ... Read More
Rating:  - a great book of our time
A science fiction thriller. A true masterpiece that will blow you away. Although it's a science fiction book, it has some frighening resemblances to our own world. I could easily see this world turning onto the thoughtless "utopia" described by Ray Bradbury.
The government tries to keep everyone happy in the process of no self thought and the burning of things that would cause debate and conflict, such as books. Now that houses are completely fireproof, the firemen no longer need to ... Read More
Rating: - Written in the basement of the UCLA library
I do not want to tell much of the story, as the unfolding is part of the intrigue. However now that houses are fire proof the purpose of firemen is performing a service by burning books to maintain the happy social order.
Naturally one fireman goes awry after several emotional incidences from someone burning up with the books to a young neighbor with strange ways, which run counter to his carrier. This leads to all kinds of deviant things like reading. What are you doing now?
... Read More
Rating: - True Fiction
True Fiction
Though this book [Faremhieght 451] is a piece science fiction, it relates in its own little ways to the way the world is today. I, for one, can see this world of ours turning into a world with the same basis and same ideals that make up this book Farenhieght 451; a world which trys to keep everyone happy and careless about everything to the point of making people seemingly mindless, and in the process of doing so they destroy everything that brings people feeling and a individual ... Read More
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