Fahrenheit 451

So I just finished this Ray Bradbury's book, the first I read from him.

Guy Montag is a fireman, the person in charge of burn the outlawed books. One day, he's returning to his home and met a girl, his neighbor named Clarisse McClellan. He and she develop a weird relation (for the world they live) in which they pass the time talking, smelling, watching and listening the world around them, and she encourage him to question all the things... in others words she tell him to think (apparently the first time in his life).
A day, she doesn't appear like she's used to, and he start noticing something is missing... is not only the girl, but he feel like there's a hole in his life.
A few days later, while the firemen attend to a call, they have to burn the whole house (like they usually do) but with a woman inside... she insists on let her burn with the books, but before this happen, Guy take a book with him.
Then we acknowledge that he's been taking books with him since a time ago and have his own collection in home.
Then start a search to know if the books have some value or they are just like the government say they are.
Read it yourself.

Guy Montag is the normal fireman in this society. Enjoys his work and the time with his coworkers. Then he met Clarisse, a little girl who start talking to him, but not like he's used to, but talking about the nature, the things that people do, the what if, and more... Then, he start to feel different, he now has the need for knowledge and start acting weird, till the point he read some books. At the end of the story, he is something like a rebel, been a fugitive and conserving the information obtained from books. He start living a new life, with a new purpose, wait till the moment is correct and share the knowledge.

In this world we can see helicopters transform into land vehicles, the same land vehicles also can travel at really high speed, there's mechanic dogs, some kind of TV that covers the whole wall (TV wall, whatever) and other things. But apparently, the house that are fire proof tends to be similar to what is today. There's no mention of big buildings and in the outside of the city remain the country. So the people like today, prefer to live in the cities, this small concrete jungle points.


The human kind has left aside the books and now prefer the TV, which is very similar to our days, in which we can see that everyday people is reading less while spending more time watching TV and playing games in the computer or entertainment devices.

Can human kind be saved from stupidity? Can we hope to save the knowledge, the culture, the lessons? In the book that's the question planted. Can we?

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

The book

[spoiler]We place ourselves in a catastrophic world, the year is 1992 where the Earth has result devastated product of the “World War Terminus”, a war so big that has spread the radiation all over the world, killing all the living things on it. The humans can still live there, but with the years the healthy is deteriorating. Also, the humans have emigrated to different planets all over the solar system, one of them is Mars. The only ones still on Earth are the ones too old to travel, the “specials” (dummy people) and others who don’t want to or are kind of obligated to stay and work, like Rick Deckard.

He is a bounty hunter in charge of retire the “Andys”, smart androids (physically are equal to humans because they were created with organic materials, but they have no empathy) that in the colonies help the human kind, but are forbidden on Earth, so they are fugitive and must be captured.

On Earth, just as in the colonies, and because of the radioactive war, the animals are almost extinct, and the humans wants to possess them because of the status that provide, and because of the fascination that living creatures produce (it's another way to express the empathy).

In this world, there is something called “empathy box” and when humans get connected to it, can choose to feel all the human emotions (from the other humans) and feel and see their leader, Wilbur Mercer, or can choose a feeling, like love, happiness, even sadness, and feel that way. [\spoiler] 

This future world, at least on Earth, it looks really similar to what is Earth today, because it was abandoned, with the difference that exist flying vehicles, laser beams, and the empathy box. All the rest is the normal world, but worn out (at least, that's what the author tell us).

In the other hand we can ask ourselves “what is a human?”, because the androids physically are equal to humans, because of the organic materials that were used to be created. Nonetheless, they don’t have the capacity to feel empathy for others. But, all humans feel empathy for others? Or is it only a "machine" thing? Like I said, they're not machines.

We also can ask ourselves “do we want to choose our emotional states?” or do we want to take what it comes and do the best we can, learning from the mistakes and not simply just ignoring them. That’s what the empathy box, and the social thoughts tells you, to use the box and choose how you want or how you have to.

The movie

Here, the Earth was not a devastated place, and in terms of technology it was a very prosper place. There's no Isidore, no Mercer, no Buster, no Deckard's wife, etc. You can see a prosper but dark Earth, and of course, the "World War Terminus" never happened. There's no mention of the electric animals but in the androids industry, where Pris says the owl is artificial. The androids, as it's said in the introduction of the movie, are stronger than humans, but their intellectual capacities are similar to the engineers who created them. 

I prefer not to speak more of the movie, I just didn't like it, at least not after reading the book.

Translation or Betrayal

Well, we could say that the movie adopts very much from the book, following the mission that Deckard has in the book, but in a way completely different. Also, the state of Earth is kind of advance, apparently there was not a war in here. There's no mention of the empathy box, nor Wilbur Mercer nor Buster Friendly. Deckard is the top "Blade Runner" (yes, he is not a bounty hunter but part of the police), a special police force. 

The characters don't get to develop themselves very well, and by the way, yes, there are flying vehicles but no laser beams, just guns like the ones we know. The  Voigt-Kampff test looks more like the Boneli test, and of course, this is not mentioned as very much details from the book. So, the movie is a translation very poor, and the authors do whatever they wanted on it. 

This is not betrayal, is murder, at least to me.