Other editions of book FAHRENHEIT 451 Easton Press

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."

Reviews 'Another indispensible classic' The Times 'Fahrenheit 451 is the most skilfully drawn of all science fiction's conformist hells' Kingsley Amis 'Bradbury's is a very great and unusual talent' Christopher Isherwood 'Ray Bradbury has a powerful and mysterious imagination which would undoubtedly earn the respect of Edgar Allen Poe' Guardian 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 classi

Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel "Fahrenheit 451"is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family." But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

Fahrenheit 451 is Ray Bradbury's classic novel of censorship and defiance, as resonant today as it was when it was first published over 50 years ago.Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires... The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning…along with the houses in which they were hidden.Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames…never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid. Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think…and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do!

Montag had been a fireman for ten years: he knew the pleasure of the midnight runs, the fire trucks screaming through the dark, the clean small of the kerosene and the joy of watching the books consumed by flames. And then, one night, he encountered an old lady who refused to leave her house when the firemen came to burn her books. And he met the girl Clarisse who knew something of the past, when there were no informers and people were not afraid. And that was the beginning of Montag's doubt about himself and the society he lived in. From then on, Montag was an enemy of the "normal" world, a fugitive in the inferno, pursued implacably by the authorities, stalked by the Mechanical Hound....

In this classic of dystopian science fiction, censorship is so prevalent that "firemen" are entrusted with the task of burning books to keep the citizenry away from anything that might cause dissent. Suicides are commonplace, and people drug themselves with pills, thrills, and the meaningless programming that pours from four-wall television. Guy Montag is a fireman; he loves the act of burning, but he's never actually stopped to consider what it is he's burning. Nor has he ever stopped to consider whether his life contains any meaning, or happiness. Then he meets a strange girl named Clarisse, who encourages him to question everything. Inspired by Clarisse, Montag does two radical, forbidden things: he begins to read, and he begins to think. One of Bradbury's definitive works, FAHRENHEIT 451 is an amazingly prescient book, anticipating not only social but technological trends. Bradbury described a world where people would be surrounded--bombarded, in fact--by their televisions and personal sound systems, and where the threat of war is a sufficient excuse to limit freedom. Today, individual acts of censorship are continually flaring up around the country, and many people never even bother to pick up a book once they've finished their schooling. FAHRENHEIT 451 is the banner book for organizations fighting these trends--both censorship and simple apathy.