Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’ is released as e-book

Simon & Schuster released an e-book edition of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction classic “Fahrenheit 451” on Tuesday. First published in 1953, “Fahrenheit 451” is a dystopia in which reading is banned and it is the job of firefighters to burn books. 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns.

The irony of releasing an e-book edition of a novel built around the death of print books was not lost on Bradbury, which is why he resisted the e-book idea. The Associated Press reports that the author was dismissive of the form, saying that e-books “smell like burned fuel.” Bradbury, a noted futurist who at one time was a consultant for NASA, told the New York Times in 2009 that the Internet is “meaningless; it’s not real…. It’s in the air somewhere.”

But the 91-year-old author has since changed his mind — about e-books, at least. Hence “451” is available to digital readership.

Full article in the LA Times

NPR also has this related piece: Fahrenheit 451: What’s The Temperature At Which E-Books Burn?