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Really interesting take on the “generation ship” genre in which, unusually, the ship genetically engineers crew designed precisely for the job in hand rather than the standard “whole crew in stasis” approach. Full of horrific creations and plot twists. Its equal part horror, mystery and thriller. Loved it.
After reading the reviews of this book it is obvious that people from different generations interpret the main message of Fahrenheit 451 differently. For some it's a cautionary tale of nuclear warfare, for others it's a commentary on the dumbing down and thus control of a populace from above.
There are as many interpretations of Fahrenheits key message as there are pages in the book and some have interpreted this as poor writing or an inability from Bradbury to convey his message but I couldn't disagree more. Its book that many can identify with and that shouldn't be considered a bad thing.
For me Fahrenheit had two key messages , the first of which being, life is nothing without texture.
People constantly strive for the perfect life, for an unblemished passage through time, for ultimately, total happiness. The problem however is we often perceive happiness as the path of least resistance and Fahrenheit 451 presents us with a population that are happy and have achieved this happiness in the easiest way possible with little resistance. They have had any friction in their lives removed by both dumbing the general population down (its open to interpretation as to whether this was led from the top down in their society or the bottom up) and the removal of anything that can cause friction or inspire free thinking (books). I do believe most of the people living in Fahrenheits cities are genuinely happy but their happiness doesn't appeal to me and it doesn't appeal to me for one simple reason.
Life is nothing without its troughs, its friction, its moments of despair. None of us enjoy these moments when they occur but essentially they are what make us feel the peaks and what makes us appreciate them and crave them as much as we do. In essence happiness has to be earned to be considered true happiness and Fahrenheit sums that up.
Fahrenheits second message is probably a more controversial one and one that only seems relevant in our modern age of political correctness.
Fahrenheit presents us with a world that through the removal of books has sterilised itself from the possibility of offence. This shows us, in an extreme way, the ultimate and final result of our current times constant obsession with political correctness and its aversion to offence.
Be it a comedian telling a joke that could be considered offensive or a scientist publishing a theory deemed blasphemous we live in a world where a complaint holds more weight than the silence of someone not offended. Fahrenheit shows us a world in which we reach our apparent goal to remove all offence from our lives and I cant particularly condone it.
To often we care about the offended above all else when the offended could deal with the offensive item simply by changing channel or in a real moment of insanity, listening to the offensive point. If you don't agree and become offended, good, that's texture that makes you who you are.
The world is full of things that offend us on a daily basis and that is a good thing, it stimulates us and gives us an opinion on the world around us causing us to have input into it.
The problems that arise when political correctness takes over and the emotion of offence is considered above and therefore holier than all other emotions are highlighted in Fahrenheit. It leads us to a place where no one has anything to care about and that's never going to be a successful society. Next time I read a news story titled “BBC receives 179 complaints about Jeremy Clarkson” I'll smile because of Fahrenheit 451, and know the human race has got a while left in it yet.
