Fahrenheit 451 - Signed - Ray Bradbury 1953 - Ballantine Books, New York - First edition One of the Most Desirable Rarities in Modern Science Fiction.

First edition, one of 200 copies, of which this is number 36, signed by Bradbury and bound in ‘
an asbestos material with exceptional resistance to pyrolysis’.

An outstanding, tight and bright copy, whose magnificently named binding material ‘Johns-Manville Quinterra’, a fireproof asbestos material, is prone to crumbling, staining, and soiling.

‘Frightening in its implications.’ -
New York Times.
  ‘It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.’ - Fahrenheit 451

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.’ - Ray Bradbury, late 1950’s.

Ray Bradbury previously claimed electronic books ‘
smell like burned fuel’, but in November 2011, after being quoted in 2009 as saying ‘They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the internet. It's distracting; it's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere’ , Bradbury aged 91 finally gave in and agreed for Schuster & Schuster to ‘publish’ Fahrenheit 451 as an ebook. Apparently without ebook rights a renewed publishing contract would not have been possible.

References: New York Times. BBC. Barron,
Anatomy of Wonder (1987), 4-99. Currey, Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors, 44.

Octavo (book size 20.3x14.4cm), pp. [8] 199 [2 (’About Ray Bradbury’)] [1 (’About Ballantine Books’)]. In publisher’s binding of cream ‘Johns-Manville Quinterra’, spine and upper board lettered in red.
  Condition: Fine, but for some light soiling, and rubing to corners at head of spine.   Ref: 111092   Price: HK$ 187,000