Bradbury Still Thinks Internet Is Meaningless

Have you ever read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? In the book, Bradbury imagines a world where technological progress murders books--and with it, all deep thought and thinking. It’s understandable, then, that he has been a bit of a holdout when it comes to ebooks. None of his novels have been available in digital form... Until now.

During a renegotiation with his publisher, Simon & Schuster, Ray Bradbury finally gave into pressure to have his book digitised and sold online. Soon, the famous novel about censorship will finally be able to be bought digitally, albeit for a pricey $9.99.

Ray Bradbury Doesn’t Like the Internet

Ray Bradbury has been quite outspoken about the internet. On several occasions he has ranted against it, calling it a “big distraction” and useless. His problem with it? “It's not real. It's in the air somewhere." In other words, it isn’t physical. It’s all about the information, much like books. Those quotes came from an interview where he was defending public libraries. In the same interview, he relayed a story where Yahoo asked his for rights to republish his novel online. His response? "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet."

His fairly obvious hatred of the internet makes his decision to let his books be published digitally fairly interesting. At 93, it is unlikely that Simon and Shuster was able to offer enough money to buy him off; Fahrenheit 451 alone has sold 10 million copies, and Ray Bradbury is quite rich. That leaves me wondering what they offered to convince him to publish digitally. Could they have convinced this man, who is clearly dead-set against the digital, unreal medium, that there is some value in the internet?

Regardless, Bradbury’s seminal work of fiction is now available digitally, and you can read it now on your favorite device.

Photo by : Brennan Degan