A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories

by Ray Bradbury

Overview

Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 is an enduring masterwork of twentieth-century American literature—a chilling vision of a dystopian future built on the foundations of ignorance, censorship, and brutal repression. The origins and evolution of Bradbury’s darkly magnificent tale are explored in A Pleasure to Burn, a collection of sixteen selected shorter works that prefigure the grand master’s landmark novel. Classic, thematically interrelated stories alongside many crucial lesser-known ones—including, at the collection’s heart, the novellas “Long After Midnight” and “The Fireman”—A Pleasure to Burn is an indispensable companion to the most powerful work of America’s preeminent storyteller, a wondrous confirmation of the inimitable Bradbury’s brilliance, magic . . . and fire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062071033
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/21/2013
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	828,752
File size:	358 KB

About the Author

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

Hometown:

Los Angeles, California

Date of Birth:

August 22, 1920

Place of Birth:

Waukegan, Illinois

Education:

Attended schools in Waukegan, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California

Website:

http://www.raybradbury.com

Editorial Reviews

Editors Donn Albright and Jon Eller assemble 16 stories that span six decades of Bradbury's extraordinary career in an insightful thematic expansion of his famous 1953 novel of state-sanctioned book burning. The longer, slower stories “Long After Midnight” and “The Fireman” are revealing precursors to Fahrenheit 451 itself, but the real gems are the shorter stand-alones, such as “The Reincarnate,” in which a recently dead man experiences a harsh rebirth and desperately seeks out his own widow; in “The Mad Wizards of Mars,” the red planet is inhabited by all the authors and characters from literature destroyed on Earth; and three intense interconnected pieces: “The Dragon Who Ate His Tail,” “Sometime Before Dawn,” and “To the Future.” An essential addition to the bookshelf of every Bradbury fan, the collection is also accessible to curious readers with a taste for the dark, the strange, and the macabre. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

All 16 pieces in the collection explore the hazards befalling mankind when society contrives to restrain the imagination. An indispensable companion to Bradbury’s most celebrated novel.” — Booklist

“An essential addition to the bookshelf of every Bradbury fan, the collection is also accessible to curious readers with a taste for the dark, the strange and the macabre.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

All 16 pieces in the collection explore the hazards befalling mankind when society contrives to restrain the imagination. An indispensable companion to Bradbury’s most celebrated novel.

Booklist

All 16 pieces in the collection explore the hazards befalling mankind when society contrives to restrain the imagination. An indispensable companion to Bradbury’s most celebrated novel.

Booklist