Fahrenheit Foresight

I always wanted to do a post on Ray Bradbury's most famous story, Fahrenheit 451, named after the temperature at which paper ignites. I had originally introduced myself to the story via the 1966 French adaptation directed by Francois Truffaut, which was filmed in his country amazingly in English with an American cast. Given the anti-government sentiment in our country at that time I can see why tailoring it to US audiences would have made sense. After watching a few more recent film adaptations I still would recommend the older film for its faithfulness to the book version. I remember thinking it was better sci fi than I had expected due to some interesting world building elements - like a real monorail system that was built and operated on site.

Years later one or my friends kids was reading the book in his high school English class and was really impressed with all the technological ideas it contained. He excitedly described some of it to me and given that it seemed to have a lot that was not covered on film, I decided that I would not create a blog entry until I had read the book myself, which finally happened last year. I really enjoyed the read and would like to share a few things that left an impression for me.

Apparently this story started with an ironic thought in Bradbury's conversations with friends about censorship and book burning which actually had occurred in Germany during the war. The thought was what it in the future a fireman's job was to start fires rather than put them out? This led to some short essays in local publications which were later expanded into his famous novel published in 1953. You can see certain wartime influences in it like the appearance of fighter planes flying overhead which is mentioned occasionally.

This was the first Ray Bradbury novel I had actually read and the first thing that struck me was his writing style. The narrative was almost exclusively from the perspective of the main character Montag and contained a lot of his internal musings, which made it seem almost dreamlike. And since the narrative is from from a character living in the future, a lot of his thoughts are initially confusing and incomprehensible since he is referring to things that he understands but which the reader knows nothing about. Yet somehow after reading 3 to 4 sentences Bradbury is able to weave in enough clues that the scene just clicks and comes crashing into your imagination with vivid detail. This happened enough times during my read that I realized it was deliberate and greatly increased my respect for the author. A poignant example is the first time Montag starts to doubt his role as a "fireman". They receive a "fire alarm" for an address because it was reported by a neighbor as containing books. An elderly lady is there when they arrive and she sets fire to the book as she stands in the middle of the pile and burns to death in protest. Montag is shaken by this experience and we begin to witness his "conversion" to a rebel from that point.

The other thing that repeatedly blew me away was the technologies that Bradbury imagined were uncannily prescient. I'd like to list some of them individually.

• Media inundation - in Montag's home, the four walls of a room were digital screens that brought the media to your home. Not only was this a foresight of digital screen technology (in contrast to cathode tubes of the time), but the screen were interactive allowing the viewer to respond to what was happening in much the same way as our social media does today. And to top it off, one of Montag's main complaints was that addiction to media was preventing hime from interacting with his wife and friends. Wow.
• Wireless Earbuds - an inventor that Montag works with gives him a device to place in his ear so he can be given directions in real time from a remote radio broadcast. In another scene, Montag's wife puts "seashell" type devices over her ears to listen to music and news.
• Video Calls - The same walls used for media could also take calls and would display the caller's face and location on the screen.
• Pneumatic propulsion - There are "air propelled" trains and other transport systems. Maybe this is where Elon Musk got the Hyperloop idea?
• Abandonment of Books - The book mentions that burning books was not hard to implement since people had stopped reading them long before as they spent much more time on digital media.
• Robotic weapons - The firehouse features a robotic dog which was well developed as a terrifying creature that would hunt down and kill whatever it was commanded to.
• Bank ATMs - There is mention of a bank open 24 hours with "robot tellers" to serve you.

These technological features give the story a fascinating backdrop upon which Bradbury then weaves a well crafted story about a protagonist on the run from a dystopian government - similar in some ways to the story in Logan's Run. But it is not a long story as it was expanded from an original short form and can be read easily in an afternoon.