As you will come to learn, I love "dark utopia" stories. To me, they're far scarier than any traditional slasher horror story ever written. Scary because I suspect that unless humanity changes their ways, perhaps years from now we'll find ourselves in our very own dark utopia. For those that don't know, a "dark utopia" describes a version of the world where culture on the surface seems to better than we have now, but built upon a dark and twisted reality for the unfortunate non-elite.
At the time when "Fahrenheit 451" was written (1953), this book really scared a lot of people. In fact, it was banned by many schools and libraries. Why? The official reason given by the very first case of it happening was at a Mississippi public school, solely because the book contained the word "damn". Really stupid. But we're talking about the relatively conservative 1950's. And following that incident, many parents and religious institutions have likewise condemned the book because the story itself was considered offensive. I don't see it, personally. Regardless of the exact reasons behind the banning, it's still an ultimate irony that it would be. Here's why:
It's about a dark future where instead of books being a good thing, they were considered detrimental to society by the thoroughly evil bastards in power. The government in "Fahrenheit 451" had a great deal of power, and almost total control over the people - even more than they do today. This twisted government believed that books, on the whole, would allow people think for themselves. If the people started thinking, then perhaps they would also realize that what was going on was something worth rebelling against.
This government of the future employed any means necessary to prevent people from learning. The traditional role of firefighters was even reversed - instead of having firefighters as we know them, putting out fires to protect the people, these twisted firefighters started fires in order to burn outlawed books. Even to the extent that they would burn down houses (with the owners still inside them) if they were suspected to have books hidden on the premises.
The story follows one of these firefighters - a man called Guy Montag. Without giving away too much of the plot (I'm assuming most people reading this review haven't read it yet), along the way Guy has a revelation, and sees what he's doing as what it is - thoroughly wrong. And then that's where the story really starts. Wanting more? Well, this book even has vicious killer robot dogs.. and any good sci-fi fan knows that killer robot dogs are freakin' awesome. :) And thankfully, the book is not as hard to find as it used to be - by today's standards, there are much more dangerous books out there for the schools & libraries to worry about. So before the firemen turn all evil, I urge you to pick this one up, if you haven't already. It's a relatively short read, and I found it hard to put down.
They've made a couple of movies based on "Fahrenheit 451" over the years. (And incidentally, even a crappy text-based video game in 1984 that despite it's awfulness, I loved back in the day!) Just last year (2008), it was rumored that production had begun on yet another movie. Not sure if that is going to pan out or not.. probably will. But like every other movie out there based on a book, READ THE BOOK FIRST! 99.99% of the time, the book is way better. Especially in the case of "The Da Vinci Code" (I will complain about this in another article, I assure you.)
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