Burn baby...Burn.
Dystopian stories and novels fascinate me as a consumer of
storytelling. Much of what's foretold
within the pages of these thoroughly depressing bits of literary prophesy have
come to pass (you need look no further than the World of Blair and his
masterpiece, 1984) and it's downright
Orwellian when you look around and see various predictions from various books
becoming reality...
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit
451, along with Nineteen Eighty-Four
and Atlas Shrugged, can, in my humble
opinion, be classed as one of a sacred trinity of 20th Century novels that
truly has an impact on the way we view what surrounds us with a high modicum of
suspicion. Published in 1954, Bradbury’s
take on the destruction of Liberty and Freedom, his vision, so to speak,
entails a future where all books are eliminated by squads of 'firemen" who
sally forth to destroy, by burning, any shred of the printed word. The title in itself speaks to the rage of
flame, representing what the author imagined as the temperature by which paper
ignited.
Unfortunately, while Fahrenheit
451 is not available as a first edition for your viewing
displeasure, the precursor to Bradbury's very successful
novel is.
Personally, after having delved into few of his works, I've
noticed that Bradbury's stories are evolutionary in nature. He develops his stories over time, improving,
expounding, combining, making them better...and creating a somewhat final draft
to the original idea...
Here is The Fireman as
it was publisher in Galaxy Science
Fiction magazine in February of 1951...the genesis of Ray Bradbury's most
enduring, and famous, work...
The Fireman ...beginning on p.4