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Fahrenheit 451
Greetings, all. I thought I'd let things settle down a little bit after my Cluetrain review, and try something slightly
safer. :-) It never ceases to amaze me how, in an age where we use the phrase "that's so yesterday!" without
flinching, the best lessons are those from "long ago." Book burning has been a hallmark of our century, although we
certainly did not invent it. From the blatant actions of the Nazis to the self-censorship of the post-WWII age to
today's filtering fights, the struggle to express ourselves has never ended. Come the middle of this century, at a time
when the status quo was as strong as it has been in recent memory, a man with a story reminded us of something
that Thomas Jefferson expressed two centuries before, that a little revolution now and then is a good thing. That
revolution may generate some uncomfortable instability, but in the end we as a society are better for it.
Fahrenheit 451
author
Ray Bradbury
pages
179
publisher
Del Rey
rating
10/10
reviewer
Jason Bennett
ISBN
0-345-41001-7
summary
Although written in a "calmer" era, F451 still resonates with us today as uncomfortable views continue to be repressed.
The Scenario Since this is fiction, I'll keep this short to avoid giving away the story. Imagine the Jetsons in a time where owning a book is illegal, in a society dominated by mindless media. In other words, it's set in the present, as the present could be. Ok, I'm exaggerating, but not as much as I'd like to be. In this time, houses have been made completely fireproof, and therefore the firemen don't stop fires -- they start them, by burning down houses containing contraband (books). The rationale is quite simple: Books are divisive. There's always someone complaining, or feeling attacked, or generally unhappy that someone else knows something he shouldn't. But there's no need to repeat what Bradbury has so eloquently expressed.
Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? [Giant list of every possible philosophical group] The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! ... 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. [italics mine] ... Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright'.... And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? ... And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely... [firemen] were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mine, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges, and executors.Jon Katz, fifty years early. Be afraid.
What's Bad? I'm supposed to tell you what's bad about a classic of science fiction written around the time of my parent's birth? Yeah, right. I gave it a zero above for a reason: there's no way to rate this. Is this a better book than, for example, Cryptonomicon? In terms of influence and longevity, certainly. Will you like it more? Go find out for yourself! It's short!
What's Good? The best books are the ones that last, the ones with the timeless lessons that speak across the ages. I felt this way with my first review for Slashdot, of The Mythical Man Month, and I feel the same now. Fahrenheit 451 expresses the issue just as well today as it did when it was written. Cyberpatrol, the CDA, and peacefire may have been decades away, but that only makes the lesson all the more poignant. In addition, there are more recent addenda in this edition written by Bradbury himself that relate some of what has happened since the original publication. All in all, a satisfying and poignant read.
So What's In It For Me?
A needle that will prick your heart, and a voice that will speak to your soul.
Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.
Table of Contents- Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander
- Part Two: The Sieve and the Sand
- Part Three: Burning Bright
- Afterword
- Coda
I never got to finish the game. How does it end?
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
It's been more years than I care to admit to since I read this book. There's nothing written by Bradbury that is not reading, and re-reading again and again.
Thanks for reminding me that it's time to check this one out again. And for pointing out that it may be especially relevent today.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Information is not Knowledge
It makes a really good comment about political correctness. While it is a good thing, this book paints the nightmare scenerio where free thought is eliminated through the destruction of books and programming of people (with television). Even the bible was changed so that Jesus was one of the family.
I do agree that being sensitive to people is important. However, even though it may offend some, having a seperate identity is important - it's what makes us human. Otherwise, as was the case in this book, we're all the same. And is that a life worth living?
-leoglas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
Yeah, 451 is a good book - some European states have it as a part of their required reading list in High School - mine among them. The thing that scared me the most in it was the analogy one can draw from it - i don't seriousley expect that anyone will start burning books today, but i can certainly see a future where - excuse the "hackers manifesto"-like sound - information will be treated much the same as books were in 451. Oh, and, if you don't wanto to read the book, there's an old (1970 or so) movie made after it. It's pretty antique compared to today, but it DOES get the message acroos... Have fun, and watch those books ;) Dave
But the thing to remember here is that the government knew that there were people who were memorizing those books for the day when the government finally collapsed and that knowledge would be needed again.
The governement in the book is the government the people wanted, but at least those in power knew it was wrong, and took steps to protect mankind (Not the citizens, per se, but the future generations) from the idiocies of the present.
And why yes, I own two copies presently, paperback, and an autographed hardcover edition.
And, BTW, I am still waiting for somebody to turn A Sound of Thunder into a full length movie.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
I have to agree that F-451 is one of the best books that I've ever read. Along with ClockWork Orange, 1984, Animal Farm, and numerous others.
Too bad the younger generations are now growing up and reading too much crap. I mean, Shakespeare is all good and stuff. But how many Shakespeare books should a person read in school before its declared enough? 5? 10? All?
The reason why the teachers never mention these books is that they never read them. They don't want students to know something they don't. They don't want their students to learn new stuff.
I say, we should make reading one of those classic books [above] mandatory reading in schools.
-- Note: These Comments are Generated by ME! Not You! ME!
This book is absolutely brilliant.
(The only thing that pisses me off is that I didn't think to do a review of it, even though I know it almost by heart. =) )
I'm a 21st century digital boy.
I don't know how to read, but I got a lot of toys.
I can't help it that you're stupid enough to listen to me! I'm an idiot!
-- einstein (slashdot user 10761)
This post will almost certainly get modded down as trolling or kissing up, but I just wanted to say hooray for Slashdot! :o)
Got Rhinos?
If books had to justify their existance in this world, this book would surely be one of the very few around. No other book that I have read has proved it's worth to be published so clearly.
I think everyone who can, should read this book. Reading it online will never do justice. Having it read will not be the same. And seeing the movie is almost blasphemous. If anything, it's a wonderful warning about how society can crush an individuals freedoms without vigilance. Not to mention a good story about a guy who is willing to fight the status quo for something as silly as some pressed wood and ink.
Fire is bright. Fire is clean. Burn all. Burn everything.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
But like all ridiculously bad movies, it can be pretty funny to watch :)
-----------------------------------------------
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how much bandwidth has been wasted by this sig?
to make it match SI units.
George
Fahrenheit 451 is indeed one of the great classics. Not only as one of the most powerful arguments against censorship (together with, say, Nineteen Eighty-Four) and repressive societies that force people to conform to an extremely narrow norm (like Brave New World's classes/levels of people), but also as a book about the joy and the importance of reading, and as a persuasive argument for the need for individuals taking personal responsibility, rather than relying on the collective (be it state, church, or movie rating board) to know what's best for them.
Ray Bradbury's books must click very well with the nerd community, especially with Free Software movement and with OSS. Today Fahrenheit 451 can be applied to the Internet freedomes just as well as to the books. What I mean is that there are many politicians, corporations, governments that would like to do just that, burn all the books, destroy free information access at all levels including the Internet, shut down the communities built around FS and OSS and maybe even kill RMS.
So if you haven't read this book yet, go to your closest library and read it. It is excellent. Don't forget to read Edgar Allan Poe as well, for some reason I always associate these two authors together, even though they are very different.
You can't handle the truth.
Looks like the 'Think geek' link is boggeled
D'oh!
451 has an edge over these other works, in that it preaches to the choir as few works of art ever have. After all, it is a book about how important books are, so the audience (people who read novels) are more apt to be shaken up by this nightmare than the average Joe.
Bradbury claimed that once he had the idea for this book he was able to write the entire book in one sitting. Just like "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis, it is a story that almost writes itself, once the author invents the concept.
Perhaps because it was written so quickly, the narrative really flows. Reading this story makes for a great lazy summer afternoon. If you just recently finished pounding your way through the choppy prose of a William Gibson novel (say, "Virtual Light"), then F.451 is a great choice for something to clear the palate with (before moving on to "Idoru").
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Idle thinking out loud...
It's interesting to draw a parallel between book burning and the propensity for Slashdot moderation to silence those with strong opinions that go against the "popular culture". I'm not talking about Natalie Portman trolls, but opinions that are very strongly worded. Having been on the receiving end of "fascist moderation", I know that it happens.
Now, granted on Slashdot messages aren't destroyed per se. But it's interesting to note how often it happens that the tyranny of the Slashdot masses asserts itself to at least attempt to silence those voices that dare to question the conventional wisdom in too strong a manner.
You should read them all. They're good for you, too. There's much drivel in school literature classes nowadays, and I certainly agree that these latter-day great books (1984, F-451, etc.) should be included, but not at the expense of other classics. This is like saying that you should give up eating salad to add more vegetables to your diet. Give up the cake.
In the limit of ab absurdum, given the choice between reading the Turner Diaries and F451, I would probably read F451. Would you prefer that everyone read F451 over the Turner Diaries? (Most people would) Does that mean that the book Turner Diaries should be censored? Albeit, this is a ridiculuous scenario, but you should see where I am going.
Self-censorship is a (paraphrasing TJ) God (creator, etc.) given right (pursuit of happiness). Now, if the majority of people prefer one book (idea, ethic, etc.) to another, does that mean the other is bad? Of course not. But, by touting one book (idea, ethic, etc.) over another, no matter what the subject matter, does just that (cf Cold War). By rating a book (a purely subjective pursuit), you are trying to impose your will on my reading habits--in effect attempting to censor what I read since I can only read so much.
The melieu depicted in F451 is a scenario (much like 1984 and Brave New World) achieved by incrementalism. Censorship is a slippery slope because power corrupts. It starts of with good intentions (ie removing curse words from elementary libraries) and ends up in hell (ie removing Mark Twain classics from an entire public school system).
Your moderation scheme here at /. is a form of censorship. I can filter out lower moderated comments. Someone else read them and deemed them inappropriate and I may never see these comments because of someone else's decision to censor (I knowingly keep my filter at >=1). While they are technically not censored, it would require a great deal of work if one were to find a jem in the trolls.
There can be no equal rights for all and everything as long as people have preferences (biases, prejudices, etc.) Of course, if people have no bias, then sound judgement cannot prevail (what is good judgement without a relative definition of good?). I will leave it to you to draw the obvious conclusion.
It was on the telly about two weeks ago here in the UK. It has this kind of old 70s cheesy feeling to it but still interesting to watch. We lately get lots of films like this at weekends, mostly around 2am. Others recently shown were "Easy Rider", the freaky "Naked Lunch" and "Logan's Run". Books like "1984" and "Brave New World" should be read by everyone at school, they sort of open your mind.
France wants to ban Nazi items.
Australia wants to ban porno.
America wants to ban gambling over the net and drug-related information.
China wants to ban all criticism.
God only knows what Iraq will want to ban when it finally gets its shit together.
It's pretty easy to see where this is all going to end up in a few years. There WILL be some sort of international treaty where all signatories agree to implement and enforce these bans. ISPs will be licensed and audited. Separate licenses will be required for T1 (and other high speed) backbone connections to the net. There's really only a handful of really big nodes in the US and probably the same is true in most countries. MAE EAST and MAE WEST anyone? Add in a dose of protect-the-children and anti-terrorism hysteria and kick it up a few notches with organized crime fears, Intellectual Property wars and BAM! it becomes all too clear. People, i.e. the Governments, will demand this wholesale control over who sees what. And the people who make those decisions will have absolutely no idea what they're doing or talking about. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
We, the enlightened ones, won't be able to stop it. We can't stop the RIAA or the MPAA. We're losing the DeCSS battle on the DVD front. Napster might be doomed, for all we know. The companies that have the money will get their way like dingos in a day-care center and THAT will set the precedents. Once the technical means are in place to impose content filtering on a large scale, then the really radical do-gooders will follow in their footsteps and screw it up but good.
I hate to say it but the Geeks and privacy activists and defense-of-rights groups are going to be left out in the cold like one-legged men in an ass kicking contest. Unless people start taking stuff like liberty seriously.
Why is there a poorly written review of a classic scifi novel on Slashdot?
The whole "the 1950s was status quo conformism" is pure hogwash, apparently spouted by a reviewer with very little historical background of the era (not surprising from someone who actually lists as one of F451's goodpoints being that it is short.)
Finally, although the reviewer seems to extol "revolution" for its own sake even if it causes a little "instability" he should take a second from reading science fiction to doing a little historical research wherein he would find that revolutions which don't result in massive book burning are themselves in the minority. The American Revolution was the exception to the rule (and even those idiots immediately turned around and tired censoring each other with Sedition Acts, etc.)
Fahrenheit 451; A world where books are banned and reading them is an offence. A scary view; but Ray Bradbury is licensed to exaggerate-like all story tellers are.
However, there is a possibility that our world may go the way of "Fahrenheit 451". The only difference is that paper books will be banned! their electronic counterparts will be forced upon readers.
As our world increasingly tends towards the hypertext-as opposed to fibertext(text on paper)-one wonders as to what licensing terms will accompany the new books.
Here's what I think:
The corporate tiger has tasted license. Now nothing else will satiate it. If the next generation of books is released only in electronic format, and can be read using only approved readers, then the books will be sure to carry the same licensing terms as those associated with todays closed source software.
By stretching my imagination a bit; I can arrive at:
"Pay-per-page-turn"
Critiquing will now fall under "reverse engineering". So publishers can suppress negative reviews.
-Travellers, old men and story tellers must be allowed their exaggerations.
Why is Slashdot reviewing a book that 90% of the educated population read years ago?
Its not even that good of a book. 1984 is much better, and actually more accurate to 'our current culture'
F-451 is definately a landmark book...but enough complimenting. If you enjoyed Bradbury's novel, you might want to check out "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a Russian author writing, interestingly enough, before the USSR, but during the Russian Revolution. It shares some striking thematic similarities with F-451, and is definately worth a read if you are interested in Dystopias. Other suggests are: Brave New World (Huxley) 1984 (Orwell) Animal Farm (Orwell) Walden 2 (Skinner) ..For bonus points, read them all in the space of a few days, and then hide in a dark room, frought with depression for a week or so. ttyl, VVulfe
Some days I get frightened by this world, and how it's starting to converge with the world of F.451...
...every time I see "America's Most Wanted", I think of the scene where the TV tells everyone to go out to the street to watch for Montag...
...in the clutter of banner ads, billboards, infomercials, and sponsorship logos, I hear "Denham's Dentifrice"...
...when my friend buys a big-screen TV, I think of Montag's wife in her "parlour"...
...when I hear about WAVE and profiling, I think of the young girl who moved in next door to Montag...
I could probably think of more, but it's been a couple years since I've read it... definitely will be pulling this one from the bookshelf again tonight.
________________________
Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
This site seemed to already have the same idea: Farenheit 451.2
"We" is very good indeed.
I strongly disagree that this book is 10/10. To be great, books must have great content and great style. This book has none of the latter. The writing is uninspired, the plot twists are predictable and mundane, and virtually all dialogs are so contrived that they are completely unbelievable. That having been said, I will admit that I have read this book twice. Once in high school where our teacher gave it to us as an example of how an author can start with a wonderful idea and situation and then proceed to completely ruin it. Once again several years later to see if I still agreed with that opinion (and I do, even more so than before).
Here is some more food for thought: if this is such a wonderful and classic book that warned us 30 years ago about the perils of censorship, then why is it that every year that goes by our reality
gets closer and closer to Bradbury's fiction? (hint: it has something to do with the fact that posting opinions to slashdot does nothing to change to world... go out there and do something about it!)
>Jon Katz, fifty years early. Be afraid.
don't confuse ray bradbury's writing
with that of katz.
Note: this is not the hollywood-ized, cheap, lame Sci-fi that gets panned (rightly so) for lack of purpose and crappy overall effect that many of Bradbury's works have been turned into. This is some impressive fiction and even today (when much of the world presented looks a bit 'silly') it carries the sense of realism. Yeah, read the thing!
-Elendale (grammer and punctuation were completely optional in this post)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
When I was lent this book (along with "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas) it was by a friend who was trying to educate me in the finer points of literature. The fact that my own book collection is extensive and I list 1984 and Brave New World as two of my favorite books was not lost on him. He just felt that I should read a book that he felt displayed several factors from our past and could quite well become our future.
It is, quite simply, a stunning book. It is very well written and held my interest to such a degree that I never once put it down the whole time I was reading it. I kept thinking back to a short story I read once as a child about a man in the future who was arrested for "walking" at night. No other reason. I could feel the same insanity in F 451.
Even though it is entirely fiction, I can feel the history in it. What is even more disturbing, is tat I can also feel the future in it. I have seen similar acts to book burning where people have been forced to destroy somrthing of extreme value just to survive and that sort of imagery really disturbs me.
I may work in IT, I may like driving at high speeds, but I LOVE books and I think that the idea of detroying them is abhorant. I will even drive slowly round the country just to experience the sounds and sights of nature. The fact that a future culture that is not too dissimilar to our own would actively stop us doing that, disturbs me greatly. When I see the parallels between F 451 and the way "outsiders" are treated in schools today (computers kiddies being top of the list), I wonder where it will all end.
Will todays "Nanny State" become tomorrows "Big Brother"? I hope not.
Teamwork is essential. It gives the enemy someone else to shoot at
Well.. the buy link wasn't working.. so I went to half.com where I bought it for $1.19... free shipping if you buy two more. .
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
-Elendale (Not to mention it has something to do with my .sig)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
I have a sophomore english final over this book tomorrow. highly recommended for anyone. rob
I assume that you had some sort of arrangement to post ThinkGeek link as THE place to bu this book. Please consider fixing it:
:-)
1. It' easier to jump directly into the ThinkGeek's page devoted to this book.
2. ThinkGeek might be upset
Also, someone mentioned long time ago a book searching engine a la pricewatch.com? Could you repost the link please?
There are some differences between Bradbury's book and François Truffaut's 1966 film, namely that Clarisse makes it to the end of the film, but some of the performances are just down right scary.
Bee Duffell (the lady who played the Old Crone in Monty Python and the Holy Grail) is the lady who gets burned with her books. Cyril Cusack plays the fire captain and is most ruthless in his treatment of the young firemen who let their hair grow too long.
Oskar Werner is Montag and does a very very good job at playing the part.
Some of the scenes in the film just send chills down my spine, like when the van drives down the street announcing "Calling all Citizens. Wanted for murder, the criminal is alone and on foot. Let each one stand at his front door, look and listen." Damn powerful stuff.
Seeing the fire truck is almost comical - it is very surrealistic for some reason. I don't quite know why. Perhaps because that truck is just so damn red, or that the fire truck is not on it's way to put out a fire.
Just do yourself a favor and read the book and see the movie. You will love both of them.
I remember reading last year that Mel Gibson was directing a new movie of F-451. It was even listed on IMDb for a while as being a 2000 release. I haven't heard anything about it since last August or so though. Anybody know?
c.r.
That sounds obvious I'm sure, but there are other things ( which dont get the same press) which are often censored. Right now I'm specifically thinking of the of removing Bibles from school libraries. Why do that? Especially when other religous literature can easily be found there. In particular, you can find many books which present the New Age world view but are presented as self-help, etc. At least if you are going to do it lets remove all of it. Lets also remove censorship of Creation and Evolution. I think both should be taught. (That's another posting) Let ideas flow freely and trust the people to decide. The majority of people will probably make a good, fair, middle of the road position which should protect everyone's interests. Conservatives have often been accused of being the only ones interested in censorship of any kind. In truth, it is a human tendency - not just conservative. In fact, most liberals would be over-joyed ( and noticably silent) probably to find out that Janet Reno had shutdown Rush Limbaugh's radio program (classifying it as Hate Speech or some other such nonsense). Given that that statement is true, then most liberals are hippocrates. In another way, censorship often takes place in more suttle ways. Libraries and bookstores for instance have limited space (even big ones have a limit). Consequently, they cannot hold every book that their internet counter-parts can sell. Thus, they must decide what books should be available to the people who come in to their facility. By doing so, someone is in fact censoring some books in favor of others. If you dont have internet access then that censorship impacts you more. (Obviously, if you're reading this you do have internet access...it was a general 'you'). People usualy cry fowl of censorhip only when it effects them. If you like seeing internet porn, then of course your going to protest when people try to limit access to it. We as Americans need to once again stand for the ideals for which our country is based. We need to remember those ideals first. Then we must stand on them. We should fight for the rights of individuals even though their speech may make us upset. We should because when one person's rights are violated and we stand silent we are telling the government that it's ok. Then the government will become a little more bold and take more rights. Again we will be silent. This will repeat until our democracy degrades into a dictatorship.
How about a rewrite of F-451, I'd suggest Gauss-10K (cheesy sci-fi background: that's the strength of the magnetic field required to erase all the information on a hard disk (not necessarily true, just too lazy to research the real numbers)) about a CRSPES (pronounced 'crispies', the CopyRight, Security and Privacy Enforcement Squad) unit that does dramatic public invasions of ISP's that have been fingered as harboring or transmitting Not Permitted (NP) information, with the protagonist clandistinely and successfully creating a 'data haven' hidden, to the global CRSPES forces chagrin, deep in the Himalayan mountains.
Hey, front me 1.5 yrs salary and I'll finish the story!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I was working with a young hotshot techie last year, and we were discussing various obscure physical constants. Until the subject of burning paper came up. "Oh, and you know that paper burns at Fahrenheit 451, of course," I said to him.
:-)
"Of course," he replied. "Fahrenheit 451. I remember because Jon Bon Jovi wrote a song about that."
I stopped breathing for a few seconds, then quizzed him on whether he knew who Ray Bradbury was. He didn't. Quickly, I got up and left the room, muttering, "...must resist...urge to kill..."
So remember -- no matter how important your contribution to modern culture, pop culture can still assimilate, digest, and distort your entire life's work.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
... about a little revolution here and there being a good thing.
:\)
:)
If you wipe the whole slate clean, you can start anew with something better. (But sometimes you wind up with something worse
This is what happened with all those German and Japanese cities we bombed. Heck, the Japanese rebuilt and jumped way ahead of American cities with public transportation - among other things. The Germans wiped us out in the steel industry, and AMD is fighting Intel using their fab in, of all places, Dresden.
What we need is a good wiping of the slate. It's harmful and would cost lives, and I'd rather, for instance, Los Angeles be evacuated, before we have some great slate-wiper-cleaner earthquake or some crap like that, but America needs it bad. We need an even bigger temblor in Washington, DC. Nature made, or more likely, not.
- Travoltus
(Hi, NSA! I guess this ruins my White House Dinner appointment...)
(Moderators please be merciful
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Personally I feel that many people have it wrong about Farenheit 451: the book has nothing to do with censorship. Think about it, what's the point in censoring books if you censor ALL books, not just the ones that are subversive to your cause? Farenheit 451 is a novel about what happens when people stop caring and just want their lives to be easy. People don't want to have to think about the things in life that make them upset, so they burn the books. Poetry is sad, books contain controversial ideas. Everyone has their nice TV room where they watch programs that have no plot, where nothing ever goes wrong, and where everything always turns out being happy.
The scarry thing is that present day society is heading right down this path. Look at today's society. People injur themselves due to an action that is entirely their fault, but they sue some company. Why? Because it's easier. It's easier to make company X pay you for your mistakes than it is to admit your mistakes. Parents don't want to raise their children, so they blame teachers, they blame the internet, they blame everyone but themselves.
Farenheit 451 isn't our future, it's our present. Replace book burning with law suit and it's our society.
-matt
Recent editions of the book (sorry, I don't have my copy to hand) contain an appendix that details how Fahrenheit 451 was censored by the publisher in some editions, without the author's permission. Seems a bit ironical, doesn't it?
The first film version of 1984 (not the Hurt-Burton color one) was disliked by Orwell's widow. She bought up all the copies, the rights returned to her, and now that film is difficult or impossible to view. (She died before the second version was produced.)
Censorship need not be by the government, and bad laws are not the only way it is implemented. The film version of Fahrenheit 451, by Francois Truffaut points this up very well in just the initial frames: one sees telescopically a lot of television antennae over an English suburb. It is television that is the technology that causes these social changes, not the government. Montag in the film (but not the book) tries to explain why books are burned--it boils down to "books make people unhappy."
Neither Fahrenheit 451 nor 1984 is likely to be read freely online soon--their copyrights will extend for a long time. But their spirit of freedom and aim in preserving our book culture does motivate those of us "bookpeople" who scan books and place them online to share. Please join us! and please boycott those locked-up e-books being announced today!
i doubt it. it may be possible that they will stop printing the books, but that alone is far in the future. The Library of congress just refused to make their books available in electronic format. In addition publishers don't like having their books available electronically either -- how are they gonna make any money if their book is so easily copied? Don't be ignorant of the strength of capitalism; money decides what happens now not people (unless they have money).
.).
"The corporate tiger has tasted license. Now nothing else will satiate it. If the next generation of books is released only in electronic format, and can be read using only approved readers, then the books will be sure to carry the same licensing terms as those associated with todays closed source software."
that would absolutly never happen today. The publishers would lose too much money. "hey you got the new tom clancy novel? zip it up and put it on a couple of disks and bring it over." Hell and if they don't BAN gnutella and similar technologys (i'm being sarcastic here) i'm sure you'll find plenty of popular books available there.
Oh, and don't even suggest encryption, because you know people will get around it. Hell, if they couldn't crack the encrpytion you could always take a few hundred b/w screenshots and OCR it (not that that would be the most efficent way to pirate a book. .
Will todays "Nanny State" become tomorrows "Big Brother"? I hope not.
:-)
Gee, what a sexist remark. Why does it have to be 'Big Brother'? Can't it be 'Big Sister', 'Big Nanny', or if you're humanist, "Big Sibling'?
"At least the dictatorship of the future will be a politically correct one." - me
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
All you did was compare one of the characters to Jon Katz. Saying, "I can't rate this book" What's that? "I can't say what's wrong with that" what's that? I'm sure there are things that are wrong with the book. And I never pictured the 'future' in 451 to be anything like the Jetsons, the only technology they have that we don't are really, really big LCD panels.
And secondly, The kind of censorship in Fahrenheit 451isn't really anything like the problems we are facing today. Today, it isn't the government, but corporations with far more power filtering. Dragging the book out only to say that it agrees with your viewpoints isn't a review, and isn't even really that important.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
In the limit of ab absurdum, given the choice between reading the Turner Diaries and F451, I would probably read F451. Would you prefer that everyone read F451 over the Turner Diaries? (Most people would)
Considering that I, and most people, haven't read the Turner Diaries, I'm not sure if this is a meaningful question. All I know is that the media has made it sound as if the TD were some sort of mind control device which can turn normal people into fanatic anti-government terrorists. It might be interesting to see what the fuss is all about, but it probably isn't interesting enough to risk being profiled as a potential terrorist by the governments of the western world by purchasing it.
In these civilized times we do not burn books. We delete them.
Tomorrow, the House judiciary Committee takes up the Methamphetamine AntiProliferation Act http://www.house.gov/judiciary/schedule.htm , which will allow the Justice Dept to order summary removal of Info from the net on a mere ALLEGATION that it can be used to manufacture or use a controlled substance.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
The media is filtered by what people want to see (ie, they only want to hear about themselves), not censored. The danger our society faces today isn't censorship by Big Brother, but filtration by market forces.
Want proof? Compare any CNN/NBC newscast to a BBC newscast. CNN/NBC are selling entertainment, not information. If they think an issue isn't going to get them viewers, it doesn't get covered.
The truth is out there, but the marketing folks don't think you want to see it.
With so much information available to us, it is necessary and important to organize content and use recommendations. The important thing is to recognize that all content has bias, and to understand the source of the information so you can identify that bias.
Recommendations are just one more form of content. You can choose to read the book, you can choose to read the recommendation. The problem is not that there are recommendations, as such, but that information sources get consolidated, reducing the number of alternatives for getting information.
b.t.w....I loved F451.
I agree that Bradbury's books tend to be easy to put down and never pick up again. I actually went through that after reading the first couple pages of F451. I'm glad that I did get to read the whole thing though. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Bradbury has spent a lot of time writing short stories.
And thats breaking the encryption on dvds. Call it what you want, but its still illegal. If you want a dvd player for linux why not get together and do it legally? All DeCSS does is dump a 4 gig file on your hard drive. The DeCSS legal team wasn't too smart with their defense of "nyah nyah we broke j00r encryption" to a billion dollar global industry. What do you think the outcome will be?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I read this book for the first time only about two years ago. They should make that a mandatory read in more schools, it's got enough historical implications to make it quite a though provoking piece. (Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it)
"Spandex, it's a privelege, not a right." -Cereal Killer, Hackers
One condition I wanted to report was colloquially described as "News is on fire" so I checked the appendix.
The 4xy series is for "Transient Negative Completion reply", i.e. errors which are temporary, indicating the client can try again.
The x5y series is for "These replies indicate the status of the receiver (mail) system vis-a-vis the requested transfer or other (mail) system action."
Since it was the first error in this series, I arrived at error 451, which gave me a chuckle...
The US government doesn't want to ban Drug related information. Some people in congress do, but that is why we have a system of checks and balances. As far as I know, that bill was crushed.
As far as gambling, that isn't information. It's an action. And they don't need to go to the router level to stop it ether. Basically all they have to do is tell visa corp. and MasterCard to simply not pay the gambling places when people loose there money there.
But, on the other hand, there is a far more serious threat when it comes to online free speech. Copyrights. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the network castrated in the manner you described. Not to stop porn or Nazi related items, but to kill the trade of items 'owned' by the MPAA or RIAA. And they won't need the government to do it ether. AOL-Time Warner owns the pipes leading to half of all the citizens of the United States. What's to stop them from blocking the gnutella/napster ports of all there clients? What's to stop them from filtering their cable networks (that they have local monopolies in) for copyright infringement?
To be honest, I don't even see why there bothering with trying to get the government to pass laws anyway. Other then the fact that they're stupid.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Most excellent point.
"Give me convenience or give me death" does seem to be the Modern American Slogan these days..
-----
"O Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can,
the serenity to accept those I cannot, and a big pile of money."
".sig,
Got a beef? Plug a name into the Bizarre Rumour Generator!
If you liked this book you'll certainly be thrilled by its provocative sequel: Fahrenheit 452!
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Let's see; two world wars. Huge death and suffering under Communism. Innumerable smaller wars.
At the beginning of the century, no antibiotics. Polio disfigured millions of children (Most of the churchbells in the US rang when the cure was announced).
Now let's see, at end of the last and beginning of this one, we have incredible medical advances. The world is (relatively) at peace, and borders are the most stable in history. There is more freedom that at any time in history. The Internet has created more free access to information than at any time in history.
And people whine that their "right" to steal music via Napster may be taken away. Oh yeah, no generation has ever suffered like this generation.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again: The people of today are the most spoiled in history. Instead of looking at the incredible upward curve of freedom and quality of life, they can only focus on "hardship" the current generation endures. Cry me a river.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Fahrenheit 451 is one of the few books I make myself reread every two years or so, because we are, in some ways, in the middle of the world gone mad that Bradbury prophesied. But it's interesting for many, many other reasons than the censorship issue. The "parlor walls" that Montag's wife interacts with presage MUDs, chat rooms and cybersex, and her dependence on artificiality over reality leads her to suicidal depression when confronted with her husband's reality. And the scene in the end, when the suspected murderer is on the run, running past houses filled with people who are watching the chase on TV, and they come out to watch the chase-- yes, Bradbury described OJ in the white Bronco forty years before the fact.
But the essence of the story really is the nature of the censorship. There's no 1984/Brazil-type monolithic central authority that's the source of the repression here, but a collective of unthinking people doing their part to keep the imagination of the individual under wraps. Note Mrs. Montag's lady-friends in the parlor tut-tutting over Guy's strange behavior, or the amoral teenagers driving fast on the highways looking for something to hit, or the blase half-interest in far-off wars on the TV. Even the chief fireman isn't presented as a functionary of central authority, but a dangerous anti-intellectual who functions with some autonomy but has no reason to change his relationship with society, because he's comfortable with his influence over others, not because he's pure evil.
Well chosen, a book that gets subtler upon rereading. Get it, read it often.
"Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
I really hope timothy isn't getting paid for this review. Sounds like somebody was supposed to write a book report but didn't finish the whole thing and claimed that he couldn't give away the story. I give him a D- on this just because I don't want to have to teach him again next yera for him failing.
Bah, trying to lend credibility by just quoting from the prologue..
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
Actually, "PC stuff" is exactly the wave of fear what Sen. Joe McCarthy was exploiting--you have your definition of "PC" backwards.
The present day label "politically correct" hearkens back to the actual use of that phrase by communists in the time of Joe McCarthy. At that time the American Communist Party was highly conformist with the Stalinist party in control of the Soviet Union. Under Stalinism, and later Maoism, uttering any statement that hinted at disagreement with "the party line" was forbidden, and being labelled "politically incorrect" would get you excommunicated or sent at to a "reeducation" camp, if not to your death. The phrase achieved currency more recently in describing the brittleness of some well-intentioned left-wing ideas as expressed in overreaching rules and regulations on college campuses where, for example, saying "girl" instead of "woman" for an 18y.o. female could get you in hot water without regard to your supposed freedom of speech or thought.
It is just not accurate to use "political correctness" to refer to right-wing zealotry, both because of its historical inaccuracy, but also because the term lacks irony in that usage.
I sometimes wonder if, in the collective mind anyway, freedom is an idea whose time has passed.
When people were oppressed, they wanted freedom. But now that they (think they) have it... all they seem to want is safety.
I sometimes think the sad truth is, freedom and safety both have a price. But while freedom's price is very visible, often difficult, and sometimes hard to justify... safety's only real price is freedom.
Besides which, people seem quite willing to pay a lot more to be safe, than they are willing to pay to be free.
And once they feel safe, they won't want to risk it. They're already safe. Nothing else matters; not enough to fight for, anyway. "Let someone else protect my free speech for me," they say. "I am warm, sheltered, and fed. Anything more is really incidental. I don't have time to march on Washington. I have bills to pay."
This is why I think the battle's getting so hard; because it's turning into a battle to change human nature. And that's a lot of inertia to deal with. Or, to (roughly) quote Men In Black, "People are not smart. A person is smart. People are stupid and dangerous."
Mahnamahna!
I've read this and many of Bradbury's other works. Ditto for old Asimov, and if you really want to get ancient, Jules Verne. This stuff was groundbreaking at the time, and these guys have incredible imaginations to be able to come up with all of this.
But honestly - they pale in comparisson to today's sci-fi masterworks such as Cryptonimicon (or anything by Stephenson), the Hyperion books, Vernor Vinge's stuff, and so forth. Scifi fans always seem to think of the older, classic material as "required" reading. I don't really agree. It's certainly very interesting to go back and take a look at the roots of the genre, but as literature they hardly hold a candle to the works available today.
There is one exception, although it's not sci-fi, it's fantasy: Tolkien. His stuff remains the best fantasy even written, despite being close to a century old, and I doubt that will ever change.
Please refrain from posting stuff that a tenth-grader turned in for a class.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
-Elendale (Just a thought)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
I personally spent some time scouring the internet for good songs that would keep me busy while my boss found more work for me. There were times that I realized I was doing something illegal, but the amount of time I spent doing it, and the quality of the mp3's I was able to get made it nothing more than a advertisement to go out and buy the CD. Not to mention the ILOVEYOU virus which would have destroyed all your mp3's if you were stupid enough to open the vbs attachment.
InterPlanetary Corporation =)
I can see where you are trying to compare today's targeted technologies to the books. I think the main theme is the censor of free speech and free thought. That is the main point that must be passed to the reader. I don't see how Napster suppression would limit free speech. Although music is an expression, Napster is only the middle man. Napster is the bookstore and newspaper boys of delivering our information.
I think a more correct comparison would be internet filters. This is a full blown violation of free speech in use of public places.
Thank you for reviewing this fine book about ME (it is my personal favorite). However, you mention ME noplace in your review! What gives? BTW, I prefer the movie to the book ;-)
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Sic scribit timothy:
I'm not sure this expresses the whole horror of book-burning. It may have been oft done in our present, nearly extinguished century, but it was also a hallmark of earlier periods. It's difficult to even speculate how many times the Torah was burned, for example. And how many famous libraries of the past burned after their navies or cities were sacked?--binkley
A few people have commented on the fact that the book is dated. Others have already pointed out that most Science Fiction points out situations in today's society more than it points to the future.
I will take it one step further. Most of the great science fiction written today or yesterday reflects a vision of the time the people lived more than it embodies a visionaries gaze into the future. Yet, it is the ability to speak to themes that are universal that keep drawing people back to works by Bradbury or even Asimov. The trick is therefore to speak about the situation of your world today through an inherently dated vision of the future that speaks to a theme that never ceases to touch people who care enough to pick up a book.
Personally, I thought Philip K. Dick (Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?) had a prose style that was a good mix of the soft style of writing that Bradbury was famous for and the hard more technical style of Bradbury. Bradbury had a wonderful imagination for the results and consequences of the possible future that lay ahead from the perspective of his world. That is what makes him special.
ACK
half.com, no referral bullshit
Reading the posts, I wonder why my high school was so different. I read nearly all of the books listed by every poster as required reading in English class at some time during my high school years. The required reading list was recommended by the English Department and approved by the school board, it wasn't an individual decision by any of the teachers. What was discussed and so on was up the teacher, but the reading list wasn't. And yes, I went to a public school.
I can think of no good reason to pick and choose among these books, they are all great literature and offer important messages about humanity, and should required reading. Merchant of Venice (OK, its a play but its bound and published as a book as it has been for four centuries) may not be F451 but both should be on every high school student's reading list. As should all the other works cited by the various posters.
I think the main theme is the censor of free speech and free thought.
Correct
but this...
I don't see how Napster suppression would limit free speech. and this
Napster is the bookstore and newspaper boys of delivering our information.
don't quite fit together.
When I see one bookstore lobbying congress to make sure that another, incredibly superior and offering better service at a lower price, bookstore would be illegal, I know someone is trying to burn something. If you start burning down the new bookstores and killing the new newsboys, don't you believe that action is limiting free speech?
--
+&x
when the lowest I can read at is -1.
Oh, wait - it doesn't work that way.
Moderation is reviewing - some people say "this is crap" - and then I, as a reader, can choose to pay attention to their opinion or not.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
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We apologize for the inconvenience.
Interestingly enough, we in the US continue to be misled by the notion that we have a free press, when in reality we have a capitalist press that caters to the wills of the advertisers and the viewers. In essence, they create the informaiton that we demand to see. Case and point, all the "reality" shows on the tube these days.
Bradbury has a point in that, perhaps, some ideas are too dangerous for the masses. The question is, are we as a society willing to pay the price?
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
I read Fahrenheit 451 in English class freshman year of high school. We were issued the school's copies of the book, while my teacher used her own copy. Well, to make a long story short, I had read the book before, and I noticed a distinct lack of profanity in this edition. Sure enough, I flipped through the publisher's introduction, which promoted itself as a "Special Student Edition" of the novel. What they didn't say was that all the mild profanity ("Damn in, Montag!") and other potentially objectionable material had been removed -- including several whole paragraphs, which my teacher hadn't noticed because she was reading from her own copy. The book was published by a now-defunct publisher (Lloyd-Merson Publications), that edition copyright 1985; with a little bit of digging I found that it had been published against Ray Bradbury's permission, and when he found out about this abomination he was nothing less than immensely pissed off, as was I and my teacher (one of the few that I've ever had that really had a good head on her shoulders). Citing [legitimate] bugetary constraints, the school and district politely refused to buy new copies, so all the students wrote "Warning: this book has been censored" in the front covers. How ironic that a book critiquing the censorship and repression of objectionable material is itself censored for a few pathetic words which are already in every American student's vocabulary.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Interesting. I have thought long and hard about being a teacher in order to avoid doing what I believe was done to you. Your teacher seems to have given you his/her opinion of F.451 BEFORE having you read it ... thus coloring your perception of it. I've always despised teachers that would do that, because once that seed is planted, there's no telling what it can do. If I were ever going to teach English, I'd have everyone read the book (without telling them what it's about), have a class discussion on the book, THEN tell the kids what I think, which would allow them to incorporate a learned opinion into their own ... if they choose. Another tough thing about teachers is that they can also color your opinion through the grade they give you on a project. If your thoughts don't mesh with the teacher's, do you get graded down? I know I had teachers that did this. The best teacher I ever had had me write a book report on a book I can't even remember. I can't remember it because it was a lousy book (IMO). My report was one paragraph, effectively saying that the book was terrible, poorly written, boring, and that I couldn't understand why it was a classic. I got an A on that report, with a note from the teacher applauding me for not giving her what she wanted, but telling her what I honestly thought. Everyone else's report she graded on content, but mine, she graded on spirit. Ok ... glad I have that out of my system now.
It was at a book show, but sadly, far too expensive for me to buy.
It had a brass cover and was printed on asbestos cloth pages.
-Ross
With that said, I still thought this was a good book. But by far the best part was the end where the author talks directly to the reader. He explains how angry he was that people would take a book about censorship and censor it. He gives the example of a school that censored out all the profanity in his book. He also talks about how bad the movie was. (And trust me it sucked!)
P.S. Do any of you know if this is in all the versions of the book or just the school version?
----------
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler
I get $5 bucks if you buy the book from my link.... It will help fund my education. You can fund your education through half.com as well by Joining their affiliate program.. .. ok ok.. sorry.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Your post set me to thinking about another basic defect of democracy... it's government by the people. Go stand in line at the DMV or hang out at K-Mart. That's the people.
J
My ninth-grade English class read this, and it is still one of my favorite books. I loved how Bradbury urges readers to think for themselves, instead of letting the media think for them.
I attended a very small Catholic high school, and we were not allowed to see "Schindler's List" when it came out a few years later; one of the teachers did not like the nudity (particularly the shower scene). We eventually saw the movie on video, but the irony was astonishing.
One more thing- the teacher who banned "Schindler's List" also banned "The Chocolate War" as "inappropriate". We eventually found out that "The Chocolate War" was actually based on the author's son's experiences at my high school (which was all boys until 1978).Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
yea well, while Thomas Jefferson may have expounded upon the ideal that a revolution was a handy sort of thing to have around every now and again, He's no model for anti-censorship claims.
If you visit the Jefferson museum, the Bible he owned is proof positive of this point. Througout the entire book, he took a razor blade and cut out certain verses or entire passages that he didn't agree with.
Like every censor, he came across ideas he didn't agree with and eliminated them.
I just thought it was ironic that someone, who while he may have supported free speech (and event only for priveleged classes) was an active censor himself.
---
Jedi-Bene Gesserit
"Teachers leave us kids alone
i remember reading this long time ago when i was just a kid, maybe around 10 years old - i was freakin out every week in library to borrow these cool sci-fi books and this eventually got into my bag. after reading the book i probably didn't read a book for month or so - cause i got a bit paranoid of the story.. anyhow got over it, read a lot more, and a bit more good books but i probably remember this book as long as i live.
ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
Posterity
Yes, there is a hyphen in "nit-pick".
Sorry, while we were discussing literature I couldn't let that one slide.
"I am an American. You are a sick asshole!!"
DeCSS and Napster are attacks on middlemen, not knowledge. As Linus said "Die, RIAA. Go, Metallica" ...and for what its worth, I agree.
"The reason I was speeding is.....
[Connery] Goosh shtepping moronsh like yourshelves should try reading booksh inshtead of burning them.[/Connery]
"Zuerst die Bücher brennen, dann die Menschen"
"First the books burn, then the people" - Heinrich Heine
-----
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
Here's a link to a site about Aldous Huxley.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Reading it online will never do justice. Having it read will not be the same. And seeing the movie is almost blasphemous.
Of course, the proper setting to enjoy it is in an unlit basement narrated by an old man who memorised it before it was burnt. Add some distant howls of fire trucks and you have total immersion.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
This post will almost certainly get modded down as trolling or kissing up, but I just wanted to say hooray for Slashdot! :o)
I am happy that moderators could resist this attempt at guilt karmawhoring. Those pathetic self-victimisations make me doubt about moderators. But here they kept their calm.
I saw that an AC claims it moderated the post down, but either it didn't (I see no moderation points) or the posting undid the moderation.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The old pages (the first website for DC2600) is here:
http://www.stevenet.net/2600/
Those pages have not been updated in ages. As far as I know, there is no mirror of http://www.dc2600.com anyplace. Sorry.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The original SlashDot refers to Thomas Jefferson and mentions that a little revolution is sometimes a good thing. Perhaps that's true, but as Samuel Johnson wrote (about Jefferson):
Native Americans might also question that statement, since the American Revolution took away their protection from land-grabbing settlers, and led, eventually, to the ethnic cleansing and even extinction of some of their groups.
I just read it for grade 11 english: My review
Fahrenheit 451 is about a time when books are banned in order to preserve the status-quo. Its author is Ray Bradbury. In the book fireman are the people who burn books for a living. People refer (not jokingly mind you) to their televisions as the "family". I throughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who has an opinion about censorship, people who enjoy stories that force you to stop and think about the world. The book is good for a number of reasons. The book achieves it's goal fully, it's written in a very pleasant way and it let's the reader do most of the thinking.
The main goal of the author is to educate and to intice people to think about what books mean. Books have for a long time played an important role in society. Books allow people to imagine whole new worlds, books tell their stories, and teach people countless things. Fahrenheit 451 displays a world where the value of books has been lost. Only a few people still value books, they memorize books and then burn them to prevent themselves from being killed. The world portrayed by Fahrenheit 451 is a dismal place, people run over people while driving 100 MPH just for fun. The picture painted by Ray Bradbury lets people sit back and think about the value of books, therefore achieving its goal in the fullest sense.
One of the best ways to fail as an entertainer is to draw out the work needlessly. No one enjoys the part of the movie where nothing important is happening, the plot isn't thickening and people rant on and on about nothing; the same thing is true with books. Fahrenheit 451 never shoots itself in the foot by boring people, everything is important in one way or another. The books keeps the plot flowing and never has to backtrack just to clarify details. The book maintains a consistent connection and does not break the flow without a very good reason. The only place where more detail would have been nice is the ending, I would have liked to see a much more detailed portrait of the events. However, if Fahrenheit 451 were to draw itself out needlessly and continually force distraction from the normal flow it wouldn't have been as good a book.
Fahrenheit 451 lets the reader do most of the thinking, it doesn't distract from the train of thought and it doesn't explicitly tell the reader to think anything. By allowing the reader to think for themselves the book can achieve its goal more fully. The book only presents an underlying tone, but it doesn't shout out its message directly. The book's bias is obvious but it does provide a good counter argument for all of the points that it raises. The counter argument causes the reader to agree with one side more then the other, therefor sympathizing with certain characters more then others. Letting the reader think creates a whole new dimension in this book, it can change a happy ending into a sad, the "good guys" can become the "bad guys" just in how the reader choose to interpret the message.
Fahrenheit 451 achieves its primary goal very well, by not being overly complex, not dragging on forever and forcing the reader to make choices and gather their own opinions. When I finished I knew I would be reminded of images from the book. The book is very well written and provides a consistent path, letting the reader sit back and enjoy. No major mistakes were made, combining for a great read. To finish with a short quote from the book "The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are".
Aaron "PooF" Matthews
E-mail: aaron@fish.pathcom.com
To mail me remove "fish."
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Quote: "Success is the greatest revenge"
Welcome to the internet. And thanks for the complement coward.