#Fahrenheit 451

[laddersofsweetmisery]

I don't see enough people mourning over the slow death of physical media. And I don't just mean TV shows, video games, or movies--which don't even get me started about how we don't really 'own' anything anymore. It includes notes, journals, and letters to one another...so much of our history is lost when we lose a password, a website goes down, a file/hardware is corrupted, or a platform disappears. History that doesn't seem important until you no longer have access to it. Physical media does a lot for memory recall. How many memories will we lose because we don't have something tangible to tie it back to? Something to hold in our hands and stir up those memories we thought were once lost? Sometimes I wonder what the difference between burning a book and losing access to physical media is when someone can pull the plug and remove your access so easily.

[soracities]

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 [ID in ALT]

[renthony]

Hope in the Hellfire: Revisiting Fahrenheit 451 in 2024

by Ren Basel renbasel.com

When I first read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, I wasn’t much younger than seventeen-year-old Clarisse McClellan, one of the novel’s major characters. In many ways I was like her: disgruntled with classmates who found me off-putting, eager to talk to adults who would entertain my unusual questions, and constantly off exploring the woods. I was a bookish loner who struggled socially. I proudly read banned books, and carried around my mom’s paperback copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land—a book formally banned from inclusion in my high school’s library or curriculum—as a passive challenge for adults to try and confiscate it. None ever tried, but I sure was prepared to raise hell.

Revisiting Fahrenheit 451 in 2024 is a strange experience, not just because of the book’s political commentary. In 2024 I am 30 years old—the same age as Guy Montag, the protagonist. It is easy to put myself in his shoes now, the way I once put myself in Clarisse’s.

Montag is a fireman in a world where every house is fireproof. Instead of extinguishing fires, Bradbury’s firemen collect and burn books. Without books, the population is ignorant and complacent, kept busy with mindless screen entertainment.

Like Montag, I live in a world where books are targeted by a hostile government. In 2024 I live in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis makes regular headlines for his crusades against public education, libraries, and books. Many an op-ed has been written about the relevance of Fahrenheit 451 in our times, and it almost feels cliché as an anti-censorship advocate to list it as one of my favorites.

Cliché or not, I can’t help it. Fahrenheit 451 is a warning against censorship, yes; it is a pointed exploration of 1950s American social anxieties, yes; it is a well-written piece of fiction containing rich descriptions of exciting events, yes; but more than that? Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite novels because it leaves me feeling hopeful in the midst of social upheaval.

After stealing and reading forbidden books, Montag’s life spirals out of control. His wife sells him out to the authorities, he kills a former colleague in self-defense, he is pursued in a televised government manhunt, and before the story ends he watches bombs reduce his former home to rubble. Montag survives, but he doesn’t fix the world. He is not the victorious hero of a glorious rebellion. Many, many books get burned, and people die. Yet still, there is hope, because Montag finds community. He finds a way to help preserve the books’ contents so they can be passed down to later generations.

In 2024, Fahrenheit 451’s message is important not only because it warns against censorship, but because it reminds us that even if the road ahead is difficult, even if things get worse before they can get better, even if some stories are lost, there are still countless unnamed, unnoticed people fighting to preserve and share knowledge.

The best part is that any of us can join them.

_

Written on commission, using the prompt, “500 words about your favorite pre-1960s Sci-Fi.”

Lovingly dedicated to the Queer Liberation Library (on tumblr as @queerliblib!) for their ongoing mission to make queer eBooks accessible. Check them out at queerliberationlibrary.org!

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[mudwerks]

(via Ray Bradbury Wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a Coin-Operated Typewriter - 

...Ray Bradbury's iconic novel Fahrenheit 451, he composed the original version of the story at some point in the late 1940s (the precise date appears to be uncertain) when he had a newborn baby at home and wanted peace and quiet in which to write. He went to the basement of the Powell Library at UCLA and used one of the rental typewriters for 20 cents an hour. $9.80 later, he had a functional draft.

[remusjohnslupin]

LITERATURE SERIES: Dystopia

“Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever… And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon." ― George Orwell (1984)

[tilbageidanmark]

2 unusual editions of Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’.

[marslordu]

Hâlâ deliyim. Yağmur iyi hissettiriyor. Yağmurda yürümeye bayılırım.

[palatinewolfsblog]

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury.

[oowadakisser]

who else got the english class autism where you read a book in english class and end up loving it so much you immediately buy your own copy and hyperfixate on it for like a month

this actually never happened until my current english teacher started teaching at our school (he came like. semester 2 of 11th grade i think), and i actually started ENJOYING english class,, idk i think its just the way he speaks/teaches, thank you mr. s for changing english class for me you’re amazing

[melaninpov]

Michael B. Jordan aka Daddy

[stark-raving-romantic]

Since we all agree the Harry Potter is NOT it...here's a fun poll! These are just my picks but if you feel that I've neglected one, tell me and I'll make another poll, the winners can face off or something.

Please reblog to break containment!

Pride and Prejudice: It is a truth universally acknowledged , that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Northanger Abbey: No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine.

Anne of Green Gables: Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

The Graveyard Book: There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

Romeo and Juliet:

"Two households, both alike in dignity

 (In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),

 From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

 Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

Tuck Everlasting: The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.

Fahrenheit 451: It was a pleasure to burn.

The Hobbit: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

A Christmas Carol: MARLEY WAS DEAD, to begin with.

The Secret Garden: When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Far Out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Percy Jackson/The Lightning Thief: Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood

[real-odark]

people always hate on books you read in school just because theyre being forced to read them i PROMISE it is so much better when you read at your own will because the books ARE good youre just associating them with you being buckled down and made to "enjoy" them

[fromthehouseofgerber]

GUY MONTAG - FAHRENHEIT 451

I need him carnally

[smashing-yng-man]

Beyond the obvious political correlation, all four books listed here have suffered "banned book" attempts ever since they were released. Not just in American public school curriculums, either.

[the-love-song-of-alfred-e-neuman]

My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches. And the gardens, too. Not many gardens any more to sit around in. And look at the furniture. No rocking chairs any more. They're too comfortable. Get people up and running around. ~Ray Bradbury

(Book: Fahrenheit 451 https://amzn.to/3W5ed0M [ad])

(Art: Photograph by H. Armstrong Roberts)

[thesoulofbooks]

“I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing."

— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451