Ray Bradbury "A Pleasure To Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories" Signed First Edition [Very Fine]

Personally signed by Ray Bradbury, one of its great storytellers who, through his explorations of science and space, has illuminated the human condition.

Subterranean Press (March 31, 2010) Ray Bradbury "A Pleasure To Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories". Deluxe Hardcover Edition. Limited Edition. Signed by the author directly onto the special title page. Volume editor: Donn Albright. Textual Editor: Jon Eller. "First Edition" as stated on the copyright page. Hardcover book with dust-jacket. Mylar archival acid-free protection. Dust jacket by Joseph Mugnaini.

Sixteen vintage stories and novellas show the evolution of the images, ideas, and social concerns to be found in the author's classic of modern science fiction, "Fahrenheit 451."

Table of Contents

The Reincarnate
Pillar of Fire
The Library
Bright Phoenix
The Mad Wizards of Mars
Carnival of Madness
Bonfire
The Cricket on the Hearth
The Pedestrian
The Garbage Collector
The Smile
Long After Midnight
The Fireman

Bonus Stories

Dragon
Sometime Before Dawn
To the Future

A Pleasure To Burn

A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories is a collection of short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury, first published August 17, 2010. A companion to novel Fahrenheit 451, it was later released under the Harper Perennial imprint of HarperCollins publishing was in 2011.

Portions of A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories were previously published in the collection Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451 and the chapbook The Dragon Who Ate His Tail.

The origins and evolution of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 are explored this collection of 16 selected shorter works that prefigure Bradbury's novel. Classic, thematically interrelated stories alongside many crucial lesser-known ones, including, at the collection's heart, the novellas Long After Midnight and The Fireman.

From Booklist

First published in 1953, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 quickly joined the ranks of dystopian classics alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World. Bradbury’s vision of a future in which books are rooted out and burned retains its unsettling power, especially given continued efforts to ban library materials moralistic minorities find offensive. For this book, Bradbury culls from his archives all the stories that either prefigured Fahrenheit 451 or belong to its futuristic, antiliterary world. Fans will recognize such signature tales as “The Pedestrian,” about the sorry fate that befalls a man in a soulless world who just wants to take an evening stroll, while other stories will be obscure to many—“Bright Phoenix,” for instance, which recounts the determined reactions of library patrons to censorship. “Long After Midnight” and “The Fireman” feature the novel’s protagonist, Montag; the latter is the novella that Bradbury expanded into the novel. All 16 pieces in the collection explore the hazards befalling mankind when society contrives to restrain the imagination. An indispensable companion to Bradbury’s most celebrated novel. --Carl Hays

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury ( August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).

The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".