About The Author: Fahrenheit 451

To learn more about Ray Bradbury I read his book Fahrenheit 451. I enjoyed this book but not as much as Brave New World.

Fahrenheit 451 is about a world where books are illegal to read or own, and firefighters set fire to any books which are found. I think it's a similar dystopian society as Brave New World. The people in this society aren't allowed to learn or do too much in fear that it will spoil their 'happiness'. In this book, the main character is a firefighter who decides he doesn't want to burn books anymore, he wants to save them and learn from them instead. The book follows his journey.

I'm not sure whether I'm interested in researching Ray Bradbury much further because while I enjoyed the story, I didn't like the writing style that much and found it difficult to picture things from the book. This would make it challenging to explore visually. However, I really like the sound of The Martian Chronicles, a science fiction selection of short stories. The Illustrated Man also sounds really good. Maybe I should focus on short stories instead.

About The Author: Brave New World

In order to establish which author I wanted to research further, I read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley to see if I liked his work.

The book is about a dystopian future where children are no longer born from parents, and are instead grown in laboratories and conditioned and grown in certain ways depending on the castes they are meant to go into when they grow up. For example, Alphas are the highest social class and so they are made the smartest and allowed to read and learn when they are older. The society Huxley describes is state-controlled, where the citizens are given something called "soma", a pill that makes them happy. All citizens are conditioned to be happy, to not want to be alone, and not question things. However, in different parts of the world there are things called reservations, where people are still born normally and aren't a part of the big state system because they're deemed to uncivilised. The book highlights the differences between the two types of society, and makes the reader think about what it means to be happy.

I really enjoyed reading this book, although I found it quite dense to get through sometimes because there were lots of technical terms in it and the different scenes throughout the book were difficult to follow as there weren't clear changes between them. However, there were lots of descriptive paragraphs which means it could be quite good to explore visually. I'm going to read some works by the other authors I was interested in first before I make a decision. 

About the Author: Further Research

By further researching the authors on the list, I am trying to narrow down the authors that I really want to focus on.

Italo Calvino’s short stories sound interesting, and from reading more about him I have found out that he is a strong supporter of communism. He lived through the Second World War and much of his work is based on his experiences from this time. Later in his life he wrote fairytales which I think would be more fun to illustrate, but I think I would prefer to focus on a different author to this one.

Kafka was someone that I was really interested in exploring during this project. I’ve learnt that a lot of his work revolves around the theme of a father-son conflict, and there are heavy themes of existentialism within his work. I wanted to read one of Kafka’s books because of their significance in literature, but I’m not sure if his work is what I want to use for this project.

I am a big fan of science fiction and dystopian novels. Aldous Huxley interested me because of his dystopian novel Brave New World. He has also written several short stories. I am keen on learning about Aldous Huxley and his work so as I am narrowing down the authors I am interested in I will read some of his work and see if I enjoy it.

I like the sound of Cormac McCarthy’s work for the same reason, as he has written a few post-apocalypse novels. However, I’m not very interested in the gothic or western stories so maybe I should focus on an author who’s work I am more likely to enjoy as a whole.

George Orwell is someone who’s work I am really interested in. I have read some of Animal Farm and I love the way the animals are used as a metaphor for society and the subtle themes within the book. I have also wanted to read 1984 for a long time, so although I think a lot of people will probably choose Orwell for their project I think his work could be really good to explore because I know I’ll enjoy reading it.

William Burroughs’ work appeals to me because of all the experiences that he has had in his life, such as travelling around, addiction, legal problems etc. His book Naked Lunch was written in a non-linear style which I think would be fun to explore visually, especially since narrative would play less of a role in this case. He has also written short stories, so exploring William Burroughs’ work would be good because there is so much variety.

I think I’m definitely going to read some of Ray Bradbury’s work. Fahrenheit 451 is about a future society where books are outlawed, and sounds quite dystopian. The Martian Chronicles are short stories about the colonization of Mars. Both of these genres really appeal to me and I like the variety of subjects within Ray Bradbury’s work.

Ursula LeGuin’s work is also within the science fiction genre, which is why I was initially interested. However, I wanted the three authors that I chose to research further to all be in different genres so I think I would pick Ray Bradbury’s work over LeGuin’s if I was choosing a science-fiction authors work.

The authors I think I am going to continue to research are Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, William Burroughs and Ray Bradbury. Once I have read some of their work and researched their lives more I will be able to choose which author I want to base this project on.

About the Author: Initial Research

These are some initial notes on the key features of all the authors on the list that I've made in order to try and narrow down which authors I would like to focus on.

Italo Calvino – Italian writer, short stories and novels. Fairy tale esque writing style, sometimes more realistic

Douglas Adams – most well known for hitchhikers guide to the galaxy trilogy, whimsical and non sensical writing style

Donna tartt – neo-romanticism inflected prose borrowing from the style of nineteenth century literature

Franz kafka – one of the major figures in 20^th century writing, characters often face surreal predicaments, well known for metamorphosis

Samuel beckett – wrote in English and French, books are quite bleak and involve black comedy

Agatha Christie – crime novelist, best selling novelist of all time

Aldous Huxley – best known for Brave New World (set in a dystopian future), and other non fiction works. Also wrote short stories and poetry

Edgar Allan Poe – poetry and short stories. His books focus on mystery and the macabre, credited with contributions to the science fiction genre

Shakespeare – English poet and playwright, mainly wrote tragedies and then later on in his career wrote tragedies that were also comedies

Margaret Atwood – novels, poems, short stories. Most well known for novels. Feminism is a strong theme within her work

Cormac Mccarthy – gothic, western and post-apocalyptic novels, 10 novels, some short fiction

Lin Yutang – chinese writer, inventor, linguist and translator. Witty and wise populiser of chinese philosophy

Naomi Klein – author and filmmaker. Books centre around globalization and capitalism

Susan Sontag – writer, filmmaker, political activist. Wrote about areas of conflict and struggles in the world

Haruki Murakami – Japanese writer, considered one of the most greatest living novelists. Work carries themes of melancholy and surrealism. Well known for 1Q84

Carl Sagan – astronomer, astrophysicist. Known for his research into extra terrestrial life. Assembled the first physical messages to be sent into space

Harper Lee – most well-known for To Kill A Mockingbird

Wole Soyinka – Nigerian poet and playwright. Politically active. Work often was about "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it"

Toni Morrison – novelist, editor, teacher. Works predominantly centre around race and feminism

George Orwell – most well known for 1984 (dystopian novel) and animal farm. Works focus on social injustice. Orwell opposed totalitarianism and supported democratic socialism

William Burroughs – big influence of the beat generation, work is semi-autobiographical, featuring subjects such as heroin addiction and his travels

Malcolm Gladwell – writes about social sciences

Leonora Carrington – Mexican artist, surrealist painter and novelist. Focused on femininity and sexuality

Angela Carter – known for feminist, magical realism and picaresque writings

Oliver Sacks – neurologist, naturalist, historian of science and author. Published books on neurological disorders

Rachel Carson – author, marine biologist and conservationist. Work was focused around marine life and the environmental movement

Ray Bradbury – sci-fi, horror, fantasy and mystery novels. Well known for Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles

Ursula LeGuin – sci-fi and fantasy novels. Also wrote childrens books and short stories. She has been described as the greatest living science fiction writer by The New York Times

There are quite a few authors that have interested me from this list. I have already read work by Douglas Adams, Haruki Murakami and George Orwell. I enjoyed all of them but I think I should perhaps try and focus on authors that I’m not as familiar with because this will be more exciting to explore and base my illustrations on. Although I love the stories written by Haruki Murakami, I find his writing style overly poetic and melancholic so I won’t be exploring his work further. I have only read half of animal farm which I really enjoyed so George Orwell is an author I might explore further, because I find some of the underlying political points in his books really interesting and very relevant to the world today.

I really enjoy science fiction and dystopian novels, so the other authors I am going to research further before I chose my three authors are Aldous Huxley, Cormac McCarthy, Carl Sagan (for his work on extra-terrestrial life), Ray Bradbury and Ursula LeGuin.

The other authors I am interested in are William Burroughs – I did a project on the Beat Generation for a project during my foundation and while I am familiar with the beatniks on a whole, I haven’t read much beat literature apart from On the Road by Kerouac. I find the Beat Generation and the subjects they explore really interesting though, so Burroughs is someone I will potentially research further.

There are a few more authors that I am going to look into a bit more and maybe read excerpts of their work before I make up my mind, but I think that these are the main authors I am going to look into.