silver

In my mind, I've always grouped science-fiction as "future" and fantasy as "past" (in really general terms--like the aliens & elves dichotomy) so it was surprising to see how much science fiction drew from the past, even if it wasn't acknowledged in the same way like fantasy (eg consulting books as ultimate repositories of knowledge.) I guess another way of saying it is that no one is able to escape from the grasp of history :P

No, no, Young Geoffrey! Don't read you personal political views into my work! Farenheit 451 was not an attack on McCarthyism, but an attack on Stalin and the Soviet Union!
This is a case where Death of the Author really comes into play, I think. Maybe he intended it that way and justified it that way (then and later), but given the time period he wrote it in, I think it's impossible not to draw links to the Red Scare.

I think it is Faber who talks about the top-down/bottom-up thing, though unfortunately I returned the book weeks ago so I can't check. Alas, I'm not really a political science sort of person, so I don't have anything to add to the conservatism/neo-liberal/liberal discussion.

I'm glad you liked it! I figure that Fahrenheit 451 has been reviewed a million times, so it's not really necessary to do the summary song and dance this time. (The summarization is the worst part of reviewing. It never feels quite adequate.)