Fahrenheit 451: The Graphic Novel

I admit to not knowing how he would respond to this.

In the past, Ray Bradbury has demonstrated somewhat mixed reactions to adaptions of his famed novel. I’ve heard of more than one instance in which he has blasted the 1966 film adaptation (and I’ve never been a huge fan of it, other than the clever opening credit sequence, which is read aloud), and yet he hopes Mel Gibson gets around to making a version of it someday. He’s refused to allow it to be condensed into simplistic digests, and was livid when Michael Moore ripped off the name for a political film.

Now there’s the graphic novel version of the classic Fahrenheit 451, and Bradbury has given his approval:

Fifty-six years after Ray Bradbury wrote the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 in nine days — it came like an “explosion” of words, he says — his science-fiction classic is being reissued today as a graphic novel.

“It’s beautiful,” says Bradbury, who turns 89 on Aug. 22, and harbors hopes that a new movie version will be made in his lifetime of a future in which literature is banned and firemen burn books.

In the same article he defends comics and graphic novels, saying that they helped suck him into the world of reading when he was little. He hopes this one will do the same.

I hope it does as well, and I hope it keeps the theme of the original: It’s a future where screens fill up sides of walls, people treat actors and hosts on the wall as friends, and lives and most conversations revolve around what those people on those screens are doing.

The best science fiction is the prophetic kind.