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 classic novel of a post-literate future, 'Fahrenheit 451' stands alongside Orwell's '1984' and Huxley's 'Brave New World' as a prophetic account of Western civilization's enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity. Bradbury's powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.
'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
'It is impossible not to admire the vigour of his prose, similes and metaphors constantly cascading from his imagination' Spectator
'As a science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury has long been streets ahead of anyone else' Daily Telegraph
'No other writer uses language with greater originality and zest. he seems to be a American Dylan Thomas -- with dsicipline' Sunday Telegraph
Author
About Ray Bradbury
Born in Waikegan, Illinois on 2nd August 1920, Ray Bradbury is one of the world's best known Science Fiction authors. The range of his work is enormous – he has published some 500 stories, plays, poems and novels since his first story appeared in Weird Tales when he was 20 years old.
World-wide sales of his books are numbered in millions and his best known novels include THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1951), FARENHEIT 451 (1953), DANDELION WINE (1957) and THE MACHINERIES OF JOY (1964).
Ray Bradbury has written for motion pictures since 1952 when his THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS was filmed by Warner Brothers. The following year he screen-played IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE for Universal. In 1953 he lived for a year in Ireland writing the script for MOBY DICK for John Huston. In 1966, a film was made of his book FARENHEIT 451 by Francois Truffaut and starred Oskar Werner and Julie Christie. THE ILLUSTRATED MAN was filmed in 1986 by John Smight. Films have also been made of PICASSO SUMMER and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES.
In 1978 the BBC1 Arts Programme Omnibus ran a fifty minute profile on the diverse talents of Ray Bradbury, talents that he has used to their full as Idea Consultant for the United States Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1963 and the designer of one of the rides for Disney World. He has also undertaken consultancy work on city engineering and rapid transport.
An adaptation of Bradbury's work THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, one of his finest stories of man's attempts to colonise Mars was made into a 3-part 'mini series' starring Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowall and Gayle Hunnicutt. The series was shown on BBC1 in three weekly episodes in August 1980.
During the eighties he has been creative consultant for the architectural firm The Jon Jerde Partnership which blueprinted the Glendale Galeria, The Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles, and the Horton Plaza in San Diego. Since 1985 he has adapted forty-two of his short stories for his own half-hour show on USA Cable Television.
