news-record.com

LIFE

'Fahrenheit 451' finally out as an e-book

Tuesday, November 29, 2011
(Updated 10:23 am)

NEW YORK (AP) — At age 92, Ray Bradbury is making peace with the future he helped predict.

The science fiction/fantasy author and longtime enemy of the e-book has finally allowed his dystopian classic "Fahrenheit 451" to be published in digital format. Simon & Schuster released the electronic edition Tuesday.

First published in 1953, "Fahrenheit 451" has sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into 33 languages. It imagined a world in which the appetite for new and faster media leads to a decline in reading, and books are banned and burned. Bradbury himself has been an emphatic defender of traditional paper texts, saying that e-books "smell like burned fuel" and calling the Internet nothing but "a big distraction."

"It's meaningless; it's not real," he told The New York Times in 2009. "It's in the air somewhere."

In a statement released Tuesday, Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp said the new e-book was "a rare and wonderful opportunity to continue our relationship with this beloved and canonical author and to bring his works to new a generation of readers and in new formats."

Simon & Schuster also announced that a new paperback edition of "Fahrenheit 451" would go on sale in January. New paperbacks of two other Bradbury favorites, "''The Martian Chronicles" and "Illustrated Man" will be available in March.

As the electronic market has grown to at least 20 percent of overall sales, a wave of former e-holdouts have changed their minds, notably "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling.

Comments

This article has been closed to new comments. Comments are generally closed after 14 days. However, comments may be closed earlier at the discretion of the News & Record.

Inappropriate content? Please report abuse.

nemo0037

November 29, 2011 - 12:44 pm EST

I guess Bradbury is getting familiar today with the sweet, cloying taste of irony. What he seems to have missed out on is the fact that reading and writing are simply means of communicating via a collection of symbols. There's nothing magical or sacred about the medium by which that communication takes place, any more than were cave paintings, scrolls or stone tablets.

In a world of e-books, there will still be a need for talented writers and editors. But typesetters and press operators, not quite so much...

eMail Updates

Advertisement | Advertise with Us

Local Tickets

View All

Featured Ads

Search

Advertisement | Advertise with Us
Advertisement | Advertise with Us
Advertisement | Advertise with Us

News & Record Network Sites

User Tools

  • Mobile
  • Social
  • RSS
  • Share
  • Sign in to MyNR

Search