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Post by jamesdoig on Apr 24, 2019 21:40:37 GMT
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Post by mcannon on Apr 25, 2019 1:43:50 GMT
That's a wonderful collection, James. This particular Bradbury cover is probably my personal favourite - I'd always thought it was the work of Bruce Pennington, but the Internet Science Fiction Database credits it to Josh Kirby. Mark
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Post by jamesdoig on Apr 25, 2019 3:25:53 GMT
This particular Bradbury cover is probably my personal favourite I've always had a soft spot for the Panther October Country cover by Peter Goodfellow, with the skull - I remember buying it aged around 13 or so at Perth airport. I wonder how and why so many British paperback publishers had editions his work out at around the same time - Panther, NEL, Four Square, Ace and Corgi - and Penguin for that matter.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 25, 2019 9:18:55 GMT
Further examples here, albeit some are criminally disfigured by loathsome "proudly hosted by ph*t*fuckers" logo.
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Post by andydecker on Apr 25, 2019 11:20:14 GMT
Some wonderful covers. Thanks for sharing. When artwork often was art. And not the garbage which is on most of today's ebooks.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Apr 25, 2019 12:48:14 GMT
This one's my favorite--same artwork as the one James posted, but with some colors that really make it pop.
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Post by Knygathin on Mar 30, 2020 23:51:56 GMT
I just started on Fahrenheit 451 for the first time, in a nice paperback that recreates a used copy of the first hardcover edition.
I have read the first few pages. WOW... No other writer I have encountered shows human nature so openly, and the act of living so directly, and intensely, and madly. If not the absolute greatest writer, at least he is the most innocently honest and passionate. Some details he captures in their distillated essence.
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Post by andydecker on Mar 31, 2020 9:09:30 GMT
I just started on Fahrenheit 451 for the first time, in a nice paperback that recreates a used copy of the first hardcover edition.
I have read the first few pages. WOW... No other writer I have encountered shows human nature so openly, and the act of living so directly, and intensely, and madly. If not the absolute greatest writer, at least he is the most innocently honest and passionate. Some details he captures in their distillated essence. One of those classic I never read but only about about. I have so many books, but I don't think I have a Bradbury among them. Weird.
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Post by Knygathin on Mar 31, 2020 10:10:19 GMT
One of those classic I never read but only about about. I have so many books, but I don't think I have a Bradbury among them. Weird. We can't have everything, can we. I don't have any books by Jules Verne (had a few in my childhood. Struggled with Journey to the Center of the Earth, knew I was 'supposed' to enjoy it, but found it boring. Maybe the dull illustrations had something to do with that.), nothing by George Orwell (like 1984), nothing by Isaac Asimov (ugh!), etc, etc ... I think Something Wicked This Way Comes was the first book I read by Bradbury, and that developed my taste for him (or his early work, I should say, because I don't have anything after 1966). Some of his writing I have found tottering on the brink to mushiness, but the positive in it triumphs, especially as I get older. (It is a very different kind of attraction than I find to, say, Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith.) I want to read classic books, but only those I intuitively feel attracted to. I don't want to die without having read Hodgson's The Night Land for example, so I read it! And enjoyed it tremendously!
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 1, 2020 7:39:32 GMT
Fahrenheit 451 repeats some words twice, thrice, even four times in the same sentence, to make his point. Writes with his heart, more than the brain. Like an enthusiastic amateur. Some of it nearly embarrassing disaster, other brilliant genius.
He begins the book with a quote: "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way".
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 23, 2020 16:10:14 GMT
I liked the first half of Fahrenheit 451 best. It is like a feverish dream. Brilliant imaginative stuff, ecstatic, passionate. The bizarre future setting, with subtle impromptu details, such as the landing helicopters transforming into beetle cars. The bare but futuristic fire station. The fire engine, sweeping through town like a dragon, with the fire chief steering the big wheel on top, his coat fluttering behind like bat wings. (The French film actually captures some of this atmosphere pretty well, but the book is better.) The burning of the fire chief is just incredible in its descriptions; some of the very best direct analogies I have ever read.
The latter part of the book becomes more ideology focused, less artistic, less like a bizarre dream.
The book shows in principle what has become of society today. A dictatorship through media. I doubt Bradbury could have 100% foreseen this. The tendencies must have been pretty clear to him already in 1953 when this was written: Shallow TV entertainment to distract and hold the masses down. He did it beautifully. Very perceptive.
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Post by Dr Strange on Apr 23, 2020 16:44:51 GMT
I liked the first half of Fahrenheit 451 best. The book shows in principle what has become of society today. A dictatorship through media. I doubt Bradbury could have 100% foreseen this. The tendencies must have been pretty clear already in 1953 when this was written. He did it beautifully. Very perceptive. Not sure I'd completely agree with this. The problem "today" (at least in the West) isn't censorship of ideas - maybe, if anything, it's the opposite. I'm not ( definitely not) arguing for censorship (or dictatorship) - just pointing out that (in the West at least) anybody can pretty much publish anything they want, no matter how ridiculous or harmful; and any numpty (e.g. Eamonn Holmes) can read it, believe it, and repeat it. Bradbury was very much writing about his own times - i.e. 1950s McCarthyism. The story focuses on books because that was (maybe still is) the main way ideas are spread. The fact that they are books made of paper is incidental. He didn't foresee the internet, which has gone in completely the opposite direction: now all ideas are accessible at all times, and the problem is working out which ones aren't either malign or crazy.
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Post by cromagnonman on Apr 23, 2020 17:39:18 GMT
James has already posted such a profusion of covers that I don't have much to contribute in addition. But I've always really liked this one. Always have the intention of reading it every Halloween but never have yet. Joseph Mugnaini
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Post by PeterC on Apr 24, 2020 11:23:12 GMT
'now all ideas are accessible at all times, and the problem is working out which ones aren't either malign or crazy'
Surely the bigger problem is deciding who is to do this working out? Few people wish to see or hear things they find unwelcome.
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Post by Dr Strange on Apr 24, 2020 14:39:12 GMT
Surely the bigger problem is deciding who is to do this working out? Few people wish to see or hear things they find unwelcome. Ultimately, everyone has to do the working out for themselves, I think. I'm not trying to make any kind of political point here - just that Bradbury didn't quite get it right. If I remember correctly, he blamed it all on "minorities" and what we would now call "political correctness gone mad" - again, I don't think this is where we are right now.
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