Ray Bradbury- Fahrenheit 451

My tactic for catching up with my constantly growing to-be-read book pile is to read through the shortest books on the pile. Ingenious

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury
1954 

"There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them."

After reading and enjoying the Ray Bradbury short-story collection The Illustrated Man not too long ago, I found an old, very cool looking retro 1963 Corgi edition of Bradbury's most widely known work, Fahrenheit 451. Running in at a meager 126-pages, Fahrenheit 451 could be accurately described as a novella; it was developed into its final form from two earlier incarnations, the first of which was a short story. For those who haven't heard of this extremely famous sci-fi classic, it's essentially a very carefully and specifically designed parable regarding a fascist, dystopian future that's very similar in tone to Nineteen Eighty-Four (published only six years earlier), yet holds its own as a powerful, meaningful and touching window that contains moments of action, horror and philosophical musing; all the hallmarks of a sci-fi classic.

Set at an undefined point in a United States of the future,  Guy Montag has a very important job in the community; he is a fireman, and like any good fireman his job is to set fire to books, which are all now completely illegal. In this world, people don't read, enjoy nature, or listen to and converse with each other, they simply watch hideous amounts of television and obey the state. Guy's life and sense of self begin to unravel like Orwell's Winston Smith, as his eyes begin to open to the oppressive fascism around him. Montag can't resist exploring the nature of the books he's supposed to be burning, learning more about the situations that led to the nature of this world, and, somewhat inevitably, finally becomes an enemy of the state.

Bradbury presents a very liberal agenda here, but it's such a clear and sensible one that anyone who objects to it would have to be an idiot. Guy Montag is a likable, believable character who becomes a hero of a type, and (unlike Nineteen Eighty-Four) leaves the book on a positive, optimistic note (well, not for everyone, but I won't spoil), and Bradbury brings passion and craft to his philosophies. The key to the books success for this read was Bradbury's ability to create, in a small amount of space, an intriguing world environment containing occasionally-horrifying science fiction that isn't overburdened with excessive detail. The short nature of the book creates more intrigue and mystery, and as Guy Montag becomes a normal (by out standards) person with aspirations of freedom, this mysterious society as a whole becomes a faceless enemy.

Fahrenheit 451 is one of the most memorable sci-fi books I've ever read, and I recommend it not only to fans of the genre but to anyone interested in this sort of dystopian parable influenced by Orwell and Aldous Huxley. It's short and sweet (well, proverbially), contains interesting characters, and enough horror and drama to push the meaning and philosophy forward at a quick pace.