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Fahrenheit 451

19:32 / 07.03.02

"Jesus God, " said Montag. "Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How the hell did those bombers get up here every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it? We've started and won two atomic wars since 1960. Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumours; the world is starving, but we're well-fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumours about hate. too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!"

19:37 / 07.03.02

[shudder with eery relevance of the block quote]

eloquent use of quotation...happen to have ever read Yvgeny Zamayatin?

22:25 / 07.03.02

Agreed - excellent quote.

BTW, Care to enlighten us, monkey (aware of vacuity)?

[ 08-03-2002: Message edited by: Lurid Archive ]

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:29 / 07.03.02

Ahh, good ol' Ray Bradbury. He has (had?) a nice line in eerie preiscence.

23:08 / 07.03.02

mmm... indeed. just saw the Manchurian Candidate. couldn't believe how exactly it described the current US. everyone should be checking out this film --

23:17 / 07.03.02

Zamayatin - author of We

Surprisingly, can't find much substantive on him on the net. It's another formative dystopic novel, about a society where Order is enforced by the stamping out of diversity and individuality. Lots of its ideas were coopted into the dystopic works of Huxley, Rand, and Orwell.
In relation to the Brabury, I was thinking about Zamayatin's description of the Green Wall...the barrier that keeps the society from those who don't belong. To be inside the Green Wall is to have one's needs fulfilled, but one's will culled. To be outside is to subsist, deprived of all but the most rudimentary technology, and be intellectually free.

Also mulling about H.G. Wells and The Time Machine. When you were a kid, the Morlocks were the Baddies. Now I'm older, and know that Wells was an ardent member of the Fabian Society, and the whole picture gets more icky. Have been meaning to read "When the Sleeper Wakes," which is also a critique work, but haven't gotten around to it.

23:20 / 07.03.02

The one where the guy has a code phrase that turns him into an assassin? And Angela Landsbury (his mum) is the mole who'll activate him? Great film - god I love Red Scare Stuff [hee!] - but wish you would further expound on its relevance.

03:49 / 08.03.02

we have always been at war with eastasia.

04:56 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by grant:
we have always been at war with eastasia.

LOL!

(but you know, in a "it's too sad not to laugh" way)

quote:[monkey...] speaks
...about a society where Order is enforced by the stamping out of diversity and individuality.

And there is a freakin' rippin' JG Ballard short story about this sort of thing as well (of course). THEY put things in your head if you're smart that fill your mind with a loud and disrupting noise if you think too much, THEY put heavy weights and binds on people who run fast or show other athletic talents: basically, THEY impede the individual in anyway THEY can to promote a unified lowest common denominator amongst the society's members. Excellent story, but I can't remember the name off hand--anyone read it?

And Tom, that is one bang on quote in its fictional reflection of our reality. To all the nay-sayers of sci-fi: stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

m3

05:45 / 08.03.02

I think Bradbury was probably less prophetic than describing his contemporary situation. It's hardly a new phenomenon for people in the North to enjoy their relative riches and not know much about the outside world.

But it's still a good quote, of course. It reminds me of a pro-refugee poster I saw in Brunswick, with a long quote from 1984 about going to the movies and laughing hysterically as the army machine-gunned refugees trying to land. Now that was scary accurate.

05:58 / 08.03.02

One of the things that seemed most resonant in Manchurian is the structure of the Red Scare as it plays out. The power hungry senator needs only to start saying the word Communist, with no evidence, to throw everyone into a tizzy. In needs only to claim there are Communists about for people to back him and for him to gain power -- he is ina sense using the word Communist as a mind-control, hypnotic spell to create a fear resonse from America and play the country like a fiddle. Then it turns out -- and this is the kicker -- that the entire Mcarthyesque Red Scare, the terror of communist infiltrators that detroyed freedom and free speach was created entirely BY THE COMMUNISTS THEMSELVES. the relationship to today, where a "War on Terrorism" accomplishes more for the terrorists than any offensice and politicians use fear of infiltration to destroy what they claim to defending, is elequently put in the movie.

i hadn't even liked the film when i saw it 5 years ago. I saw it with a group of people last week and we were all AMAZED at it's incisive and terrifying critique that is immediately relevent.

05:58 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by modthree:

And there is a freakin' rippin' JG Ballard short story about this sort of thing as well (of course). THEY put things in your head if you're smart that fill your mind with a loud and disrupting noise if you think too much, THEY put heavy weights and binds on people who run fast or show other athletic talents: basically, THEY impede the individual in anyway THEY can to promote a unified lowest common denominator amongst the society's members. Excellent story, but I can't remember the name off hand--anyone read it?

That's the Kurt Vonnegut story 'Harrison Bergaron(?)' I think. Absolutely wonderful story.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:21 / 08.03.02

Yeah, there was a film made of it.

20:41 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Rizla Year Zero:
That's the Kurt Vonnegut story 'Harrison Bergaron(?)' I think. Absolutely wonderful story.

oh geez.

I think it is a Vonnegut story. I'm now recalling that I had read, in an anthology (one day while bored at school), a Vonnegut story and a Ballard story. Musta' ran the two together in my mind. oops. Thanks for the reset.

{0, 1, 2}

[edited to actually add my response and not merely have reposted Rizla's comment.]

[ 08-03-2002: Message edited by: modthree ]

21:11 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by modthree:

oh geez. I think it is a Vonnegut story. I'm now recalling that I had read, in an anthology (one day while bored at school), a Vonnegut story and a Ballard story.

I had to do exactly the same thing in English one day, probably the same anthology - got me into both authors, and Philip K Dick into the bargain. Isn't school great sometimes?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:49 / 09.03.02

Course, there's also the Bradbury story (I think it's called "The Pedestrian"?) about the guy who gets arrested for going out for a walk because the cops don't understand why he's not indoors watching TV like everyone else...
Fuck, I hate it when pessimistic social prophecies come true...

04:52 / 11.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Rizla Year Zero:
...probably the same anthology - got me into both authors, and Philip K Dick into the bargain. Isn't school great sometimes?

I would not be suprised if it was!

And ya' got into these three great authors all from the same anthology?!! Wow, three strikes and your mind was outta' the park, ya? Super sweet.

m3

18:30 / 12.03.02

true story I heard on the radio today. in the US now (though not in the city where I live where many read books already) the city government encourages everybody to read a particular book... unwritten rule that they choose a novel as opposed to a nonfiction book or poetry or a short story collection..., have discussion groups around it and invite the writer to participate. recently Los Angeles selected Farenheit 451 as that book but no... because the way the novel portrays firemen of course.

08:57 / 13.03.02

That's up there with those people who decided to ban and burn Slaughterhouse 5 just seemingly for the hell of it a few years ago..

16:28 / 17.03.02

quote:Course, there's also the Bradbury story (I think it's called "The Pedestrian"?) about the guy who gets arrested for going out for a walk because the cops don't understand why he's not indoors watching TV like everyone else...
Fuck, I hate it when pessimistic social prophecies come true...
That actually happened to him back in '64, causing him to write the story. Seems to me sci fi is usually about the present, no matter what time it's set in.

17:31 / 17.03.02

quote:Originally posted by wanderingstar:

That actually happened to him back in '64, causing him to write the story. Seems to me sci fi is usually about the present, no matter what time it's set in.

I remember reading in Anthony Burgess's "1985" that Orwell's 1984 world is very similar to what life was like in 1948 when he wrote it: rations, cheap gin and smokes, can't remember the rest, but the book is worth a read.