It seemed a pretty good idea to put together a fictional timeline of stories that led to the creation of Fahrenheit 451. What is missing here is some author or editor's commentary. Several of these stories will be familiar to longtime readers of Ray Bradbury like me, but there are a number I had not read or even heard of before this collection. Some I think were story fragments. What struck me here was that some of Bradbury's themes were used repetitively. I have noticed that in the past - it sort of is what helps create Bradbury's style - but one after another kind of decreases the original impact these stories may have had when you read the same words two, three times or more. “For the love of God, Montresor!” the words of Edgar Allen Poe used repeatedly as an example. It felt like Poe and others were invoked in virtually every story.

Fahrenheit 451 was first published in 1953. It was 1968 or so when I first read it. These first 13 of 16 stories give us an idea of how the novel came about and some of these ideas espoused 70 and more years ago are frighteningly familiar in today's world. Truly, it is rather disconcerting when reading things Bradbury wrote 70some years ago describing the future that what he is describing, some of it, is all around us today.

I really wish there was some editorial framing here. There are some very fine novellas with 'Long After Midnight' and 'The Fireman', also the 5 pages of 'The Smile' will break your heart.

After the first thirteen stories up to 'The Fireman', the novella that was the predecessor to Fahrenheit 451, there are three bonus stories. I had read the third story before in 'The Illustrated Man', but the three loosely connected short stories were different than the rest and very good. They imagine that in a dark future, such as 2155, a machine exists to allow tourists to travel back in time. In the third story a couple escapes into 1938 Mexico to avoid working on the creation of plague viruses and a super hydrogen bomb for a world at war. These were truly a good bonus.

The included material is, adapted from ISFDB:
9 • The Reincarnate • (2005) • short story
25 • Pillar of Fire • (1948) • novelette
63 • The Library • (2006) • short story
67 • Bright Phoenix • (1963) • short story
75 • The Mad Wizards of Mars • (1949) • short story (variant of The Exiles)
89 • Carnival of Madness • [The Martian Chronicles] • (1950) • short story (variant of Usher II)
105 • Bonfire • (1950) • short story
111 • The Cricket on the Hearth • (2002) • short story
121 • The Pedestrian • (1951) • short story
127 • The Garbage Collector • (1953) • short story
133 • The Smile • (1952) • short story
139 • Long After Midnight • (2006) • novella (not the same as the short story with this title)
203 • The Fireman • (1951) • novella
275 • The Dragon Who Ate His Tail • (2007) • short story
279 • Sometime Before Dawn • (2004) • short story
287 • To the Future • (1965) • short story (variant of The Fox and the Forest 1950)

I will be re-reading my 1967 edition of Fahrenheit 451 shortly. I note in passing that it is one of the most cataloged books on Librarything, coming in at #21. ( )

As a kid, I saw Truffaut's version of Fahrenheit 451 and thought it was cool, but I was way too young to understand the larger implications of the story. Years later I read the novel and the censorship angle was clearer (ah youth).

A Pleasure to Burn is a collection of short stories Bradbury wrote before 451. The themes are the same (big-brother government with a side of censorship). Two novellas near the end are dry runs for the latter half of 451. I think it would have been interesting to read this before reading 451.

If you like Ray Bradbury, you'll like this collection. I'd also recommend the 451 remake on HBO (with Michael B Jordan). ( )

Way back in middle school, I read Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles and loved them, especially the latter. I'm a bit worried that if I were to go back and reread them I'd hate them, because I didn't like this short story collection that focuses on Fahrenheit 451 precursors very much. First of all, many of these stories are either repetitious, with endless versions of the same few themes; boring, with not much action or any real ideas; or overwritten, with description or dialogue that may have sounded cool in Bradbury's head but come across poorly on the page. I get that they're works in progress or essentially story scraps, however I guess they're intended for a more hardcore fan than I. The two longer early versions of Fahrenheit 451 ("Long After Midnight" and "The Fireman") were decent, but they suffered from following over a hundred pages of stories that, quite frankly, often aren't all that great. Some of them are like two pages long, and yet still manage to be overlong. What's even worse is that apparently the collection Match to Flame, which preceded this by three years, has all of this stuff and more. I don't really know what this was supposed to add to Bradbury's legacy. ( )

This is a collection of stories that use and develop the themes found in "Fahrenheit 451" and the "Martian Chronicles". In it you get a sense of Bradbury working and developing the ideas of his later best selling novels. What left me deeply shaken was his spot on reading of the the decline of American civilization and culture. Ideas written 50/60 years ago are now headlines. Finishing the book one is left with the question of what will happen to this country in the next 25 to 75 years. Given the decline in reading, the almost 1984ish mindset regarding war, & the level of greed I am not hopeful. The only problem with the book is the lack of annotation regarding the date and development of the stories. It would have been interesting to have Mr. Bradbury's comments and thoughts on these stories and about how they aided him in the development of the novel we know today. ( )

The incipient 451.

I wonder who would have believed it, back then when he was writing it? The Burning of Books. The mark of an anti-civilisation. Yet here we are, watching it happening all around us. Manchester Library is on a rampage, it turns out they could make the library such a better place if it weren't for all those damned books:

Manchester Library destroys its books

Just as we now have generations who did not know an internet free world, now we have children being brought up bereft of books, not out of some sort of to-be-despised-or-pitied-poverty but because the format of the book is now seen as undesirable. In my home town Adelaide, whole schools are simply eradicating the book as if it is some sort of pest. Children in those schools will no longer read books, they read words on machines.

I have never felt comfortable walking into book-free houses. It is one of the things that makes a house a home, something with character, a way of reading where one is. Maybe Ray Bradbury died just in time. He hated the kindle - no great surprise there.

One impact of the internet - and it is impossible not to associate electronic forms of books with some of the bad aspects of the internet - is that falsehoods spread about enough become facts. The more times they are spread about, the more sure we are they are correct. I reflect upon that because I want to end with the famous Bradbury quote:

"I don't try to predict the future. I try to prevent it."

This has been quoted a gadzillion times lately as everybody cuts and pastes the same few bits of information to do 'their' obit of Bradbury. I wanted to see where it came from, was it a real quote, or just one of those made up internet 'facts' that we can no longer even being bothered questioning. It's on the internet, lots of people believe it, who cares whether it is actually true?

I can't find the original source at a first glance, but I am comforted to see that Arthur C Clarke says this:

PP: It’s frightening that man is so destructive and at the same time so much good is being done.

AC: I’ve many, many times quoted my friend Ray Bradbury on this when he says: “ I don’t try to predict the future, I try to prevent it”.

And there is audio of this interview with Clarke to boot: AC Clarke interview

Not that this makes it a fact either, but we are getting close. The more so since ACC himself seems to have some care for the facts. I love the dry response here:

PP: But you also said that you had a dream about extraterrestrials who got off a space ship and said: “Take me to Arthur Clarke” but that dream turned into a nightmare when they said: “Take me to Isaac Asimov!”

AC: Ah yes, I never actually dreamt that but I saw and read that quotation once, or twice.

( )