FAHRENHEIT 451

New York: Ballantine Books, [1953]. First edition. Some rubs to lower board edges and corner tips, a fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket with mild wear at spine ends with a little stress creasing at the head of the spine panel, tiny sliver chip at base of spine panel, a little darkening of the spine panel, the orange lettering of the "451" very slightly faded, much, much less than usually observed. A superior copy. (29050). Octavo, red boards, front and spine panels stamped in yellow. The hardbound trade issue. (Currey binding D [no priority]). A short novel expanded from the novella "The Fireman" published in 1951. "While the jet bombers boom overhead and another nuclear war threatens, Americans live a mindless life in a society where everyone is encouraged to lose himself in such distractions as four-wall television, hearing-aid radios, high-speed travel, and group sports. Life is reduced to the paste-pudding norm of a mass audience, for it serves the purpose of the government to keep people from thinking ... The gadget are, of course, marvelous and everywhere, while the greatest enemies of the status quo are books, which, when they are occasionally discovered, are burned by firemen who are, in this fireproof age, no longer needed to put out fires, but to set them ..." - Hillegas, The Future as Nightmare, pp. 158-9. "In a totalitarian state, books are burned and private thought or action is criminal." - Gerber, Utopian Fantasy (1973), p. 159. Filmed in 1966 by Francois Truffaut. Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-153. Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels 8. Survey of Science Fiction Literature II, pp. 749-55.