Background

• Bradbury describes the exciting way in which the book was born. He had made up his mind to be a writer, and, in order to escape distractions at home, found a typing room in the library at the University of California that he rented:
  • In neat rows were a score of old Remington or Underwood typewriters which rented out at dime a half hour. You thrust your dime in, the clock ticked madly, and you typed wildly, to finish before the half-hour ran out. Thus I was twice driven; by children to leave home, and by a typewriter timing device to be a maniac at the keys. Time was indeed money” (p.168).

Bradbury finished the book in nine days. It cost $9.4 and contained 25,000 words, and was later expanded to 50,000 words. Several editions and reprints have been issued for the novel.

In the Studio Theatre Playhouse adaptation, Bradbury made Beatty explained his fixation for burning books through Montag’s entry to his apartment. Montag is amazed to find many shelves of books in Chief Fireman’s concealed library. Beatty explains that gave up his love for books after life was hard on him, and books were unhelpful in giving him any comfort. As Chief Fireman of his civilization, Beatty began burning books from then on.

Bradbury gave Faber also a more ghastly end in the Theater. Using Faber’s ear device, Beatty traces his whereabouts. It scares him so much that he dies of a heart attack.

In contrast, Clarissa meets with a happier fate, as seen even in Francois Truffaut’s cinematic adaptation. She meets Montag in the forest and leads him to the possibility of a happy future. Bradbury felt she deserved it because it was she who had introduced Montag to the charm of books.

• For Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 was special because it was his only work of science fiction:
  • First of all, I don’t write science fiction. I’ve only done one science fiction book and that’s Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. It was named so to represent the temperature at which paper ignites. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal (Gerken et al., n.d.).

• It was not an imaginary tale; it had come true in his own time:
  • In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction (Kingsley, 1960)

Fahrenheit 451 is as relevant today as it was when it was written.