Editing Fahrenheit 451 (section)

==Writing and development==

''Fahrenheit 451'' developed out of a series of ideas Bradbury had visited in previously written stories. For many years, he tended to single out "The Pedestrian" in interviews and lectures as sort of a proto-''Fahrenheit 451''. In the preface of his 2006 anthology ''Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451'' he states that this is an oversimplification.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bradbury|first=Ray|author-link=Ray Bradbury|editor1-last=Albright|editor1-first=Donn|editor2-last=Eller|editor2-first=Jon|title=Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451|year=2006|publisher=Gauntlet Publications|location=Colorado Springs, CO|isbn=1-887368-86-8|edition=1st|chapter=Preface|page=9|quote=For many years I've told people that ''Fahrenheit 451'' was the result of my story 'The Pedestrian' continuing itself in my life. It turns out that this is a misunderstanding of my own past. Long before 'The Pedestrian' I did all the stories that you'll find in this book and forgot about them.}}</ref> The full genealogy of ''Fahrenheit 451'' given in ''Match to Flame'' is involved. The following covers the most salient aspects.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451|last=Bradbury|first=Ray|publisher=Gauntlet Pr|year=2007|isbn=978-1887368865|location=USA}}</ref>

Between 1947 and 1948,<ref>{{cite journal|date=May 1963|journal=The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction|publisher=Mercury|volume=24|page=23|quote=''Ray Bradbury calls this story, the first of the tandem, 'a curiosity. I wrote it [he says] back in 1947–48 and it remained in my files over the years, going out only a few times to quality markets like'' [[Harper's Bazaar]] ''or'' [[The Atlantic Monthly]], ''where it was dismissed. It lay in my files and collected about it many ideas. These ideas grew large and became&nbsp;...'' |title=FAHRENHEIT 451|issue=5}}</ref> Bradbury wrote the short story "Bright Phoenix" (not published until the May 1963 issue of ''[[The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction]]''<ref>{{cite journal|last=Bradbury|first=Ray|author-link=Ray Bradbury|title=Bright Phoenix|date=May 1963|journal=The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction|publisher=Mercury|volume=24|pages=23–29|issue=5}}</ref><ref name=big>{{cite web|url=http://www.ebr.lib.la.us/circ/advisory/onebook/aboutthebookF451.htm |title=About the Book: Fahrenheit 451 |work=The Big Read |publisher=[[National Endowment for the Arts]] |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120511040857/http://www.ebr.lib.la.us/circ/advisory/onebook/aboutthebookF451.htm |archive-date=May 11, 2012 |df=mdy }}</ref>) about a librarian who confronts a book-burning "Chief Censor" named Jonathan Barnes.

In late 1949,<ref>{{cite book|last=Eller|first=Jon|editor1-last=Albright|editor1-first=Donn|editor2-last=Eller|editor2-first=Jon|chapter=Writing by Degrees: The Family Tree of Fahrenheit 451|title=Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451|year=2006|publisher=Gauntlet Publications|location=Colorado Springs, CO|isbn=1-887368-86-8|edition=1st|page=68|quote=The specific incident that sparked 'The Pedestrian' involved a similar late-night walk with a friend along Wilshire Boulevard near Western Avenue sometime in late 1949.}}</ref> Bradbury was stopped and questioned by a police officer while walking late one night.<ref name=bigread>{{cite AV media|title=Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 audio guide|work=The Big Read|url=https://www.arts.gov/initiatives/nea-big-read/fahrenheit-451|at=14:18–14:54|quote=When I came out of a restaurant when I was thirty years old, and I went walking along [[Wilshire Boulevard]] with a friend, and a police car pulled up and the policeman got up and came up to us and said, 'What are you doing?'. I said, 'Putting one foot in front of the other' and that was the wrong answer but he kept saying, you know, 'Look in this direction and that direction: there are no pedestrians' but that give me the idea for 'The Pedestrian' and 'The Pedestrian' turned into Montag! So the police officer is responsible for the writing of ''Fahrenheit 451''.}}</ref><ref name=koster_p26>{{cite book|editor-last=De Koster|editor-first=Katie|title=Readings on Fahrenheit 451|url=https://archive.org/details/readingsonfahren00deko|url-access=registration|year=2000|series=Literary Companion Series|publisher=Greenhaven Press|location=San Diego, CA|isbn=1-56510-857-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/readingsonfahren00deko/page/26 26]}}</ref> When asked "What are you doing?", Bradbury wisecracked, "Putting one foot in front of another."<ref name=bigread/><ref name=koster_p26/> This incident inspired Bradbury to write the 1951 short story "The Pedestrian".<ref group=note>"The Pedestrian" would go on to be published in ''[[The Reporter (magazine)|The Reporter]]'' magazine on August 7, 1951, that is, after the publication in February 1951 of its inspired work "The Fireman".</ref><ref name=bigread/><ref name=koster_p26/>

In "The Pedestrian", Leonard Mead is harassed and detained by the city's only remotely operated police cruiser for taking nighttime walks, something that has become extremely rare in this future-based setting, as everybody else stays inside and watches television ("viewing screens"). Alone and without an [[alibi]], Mead is taken to the "Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies" for his peculiar habit. ''Fahrenheit 451'' echoed this theme of an [[Authoritarianism|authoritarian]] society distracted by [[broadcast media]].{{cn|date=October 2023}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Alam |first=Mohammad Farogh |date=November 2024 |title=Censorship and the Suppression of Knowledge in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 |url=https://theacademic.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/10.pdf |journal=The Academic: International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research |volume=2 |issue=11}}</ref>

Bradbury expanded the book-burning premise of "Bright Phoenix"<ref name=koster_p158>{{cite book|editor-last=De Koster|editor-first=Katie|title=Readings on Fahrenheit 451|url=https://archive.org/details/readingsonfahren00deko|url-access=registration|year=2000|series=Literary Companion Series|publisher=Greenhaven Press|location=San Diego, CA|isbn=1-56510-857-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/readingsonfahren00deko/page/158 158]|quote=He writes '{{sic|The Phoenix|expected=Bright Phoenix}},' which he will later develop into the short story 'The Fireman,' which will eventually become ''Fahrenheit 451''.}}</ref> and the [[totalitarian]] future of "The Pedestrian"<ref>{{cite book|last=Eller|first=Jon|editor1-last=Albright|editor1-first=Donn|editor2-last=Eller|editor2-first=Jon|chapter=Writing by Degrees: The Family Tree of Fahrenheit 451|title=Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451|year=2006|publisher=Gauntlet Publications|location=Colorado Springs, CO|isbn=1-887368-86-8|edition=1st|page=68|quote=As Bradbury has often noted, 'The Pedestrian' marks the true flashpoint that exploded into 'The Fireman' and ''Fahrenheit 451''.}}</ref> into "The Fireman", a [[novella]] published in the February 1951 issue of ''[[Galaxy Science Fiction]]''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Bradbury|first=Ray|author-link=Ray Bradbury|title=The Fireman|journal=Galaxy Science Fiction|date=February 1951|volume=15|series=5|issue=1|pages=4–61}}</ref><ref name=koster_p164_1>{{cite book|editor-last=De Koster|editor-first=Katie|title=Readings on Fahrenheit 451|url=https://archive.org/details/readingsonfahren00deko|url-access=registration|year=2000|series=Literary Companion Series|publisher=Greenhaven Press|location=San Diego, CA|isbn=1-56510-857-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/readingsonfahren00deko/page/164 164]|quote=The short story which Bradbury later expanded into the novel ''Fahrenheit 451'', was originally published in ''Galaxy Science Fiction'', vol. 1, no. 5 (February 1951), under the title 'The Fireman.'}}</ref> "The Fireman" was written in the basement of [[University of California, Los Angeles|UCLA]]'s [[Powell Library]] on a typewriter that he rented for a fee of ten cents per half hour.<ref name=eller_p57>{{cite book|last=Eller|first=Jon|editor1-last=Albright|editor1-first=Donn|editor2-last=Eller|editor2-first=Jon|chapter=Writing by Degrees: The Family Tree of Fahrenheit 451|title=Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451|year=2006|publisher=Gauntlet Publications|location=Colorado Springs, CO|isbn=1-887368-86-8|edition=1st|page=57|quote=In 1950 Ray Bradbury composed his 25,000-word novella 'The Fireman' in just this way, and three years later he returned to the same subterranean typing room for another nine-day stint to expand this cautionary tale into the 50,000-word novel ''Fahrenheit 451''.}}</ref> The first draft was 25,000 words long and was completed in nine days.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bradbury|first=Ray|author-link=Ray Bradbury|title=Fahrenheit 451|year=2003|publisher=Ballantine Books|location=New York, NY|isbn=0-345-34296-8|pages=167–68|edition=50th anniversary}}</ref>

Urged by a publisher at [[Ballantine Books]] to double the length of his story to make a novel, Bradbury returned to the same typing room and made the story 25,000 words longer, again taking nine days.<ref name=eller_p57/> The title "Fahrenheit 451" came to him on January 22. The final manuscript was ready in mid-August, 1953.<ref>{{cite book|last=Weller|first=Sam|title=Bradbury Chronicles}}</ref> The resulting novel, which some considered as a [[fix-up]]<ref name="liptak20130805">{{Cite magazine |last=Liptak |first=Andrew |date=2013-08-05 |title=A.E. van Vogt and the Fix-Up Novel |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/e-van-vogt-and-fix-novel/ |magazine=Kirkus Reviews |access-date=January 12, 2018 |archive-date=January 12, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180112101140/https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/e-van-vogt-and-fix-novel/ |url-status=live }}</ref> (despite being an expanded rewrite of one single novella), was published by Ballantine in 1953.<ref>{{cite book|last=Baxter|first=John|title=A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict|date=2005|publisher=Macmillan|isbn=9781466839892|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TF9_cwQsL_IC&q=%22When+it+published+the+first+edition+in+1953%2C+Ballantine+also+produced+200+signed+and+numbered+copies+bound+in+Johns-Manville+Quintera%2C+a+form+of+asbestos.%22&pg=PA393|page=393|quote=When it published the first edition in 1953, Ballantine also produced 200 signed and numbered copies bound in Johns-Manville Quintera, a form of asbestos.}}</ref>

===Supplementary material===

Bradbury has supplemented the novel with various [[Front matter|front]] and [[back matter]], including a 1979 coda,<ref name="coda">{{cite book|last=Brier|first=Evan|title=A Novel Marketplace: Mass Culture, the Book Trade, and Postwar American Fiction|date=2011|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|isbn=9780812201444|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ygke3pOSL8gC&q=%22Bradbury+closes+his+1979+Coda+to+Fahrenheit+451%2C+one+of+numerous+comments+on+the+novel+he+has+published+since+1953%2C%22&pg=PA65|page=65|quote=Bradbury closes his 1979 'Coda' to ''Fahrenheit 451'', one of numerous comments on the novel he has published since 1953, ...|access-date=November 11, 2020|archive-date=November 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211117115852/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ygke3pOSL8gC&q=%22Bradbury+closes+his+1979+Coda+to+Fahrenheit+451%2C+one+of+numerous+comments+on+the+novel+he+has+published+since+1953%2C%22&pg=PA65|url-status=live}}</ref> a 1982 [[afterword]],<ref name=reidafterward>{{cite book|last=Reid|first=Robin Anne|title=Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion|series=Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers|year=2000|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Westport, CT|isbn=0-313-30901-9|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wvMEoM8gu74C&q=%22In+a+1982+afterword%22&pg=PA53|page=53|quote=In a 1982 afterword...|access-date=November 11, 2020|archive-date=November 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211117115914/https://books.google.com/books?id=wvMEoM8gu74C&q=%22In+a+1982+afterword%22&pg=PA53|url-status=live}}</ref> a 1993 [[foreword]], and several [[introduction (essay)|introductions]].