They're both frequently banned books in elementary, middle and high schools across America. The banning is usually done by a heavily religious, generally evangelical, majority group involved in PTAs across the nation's plains states.

This puts me in mind of Bradbury's "Usher II," in which a future society which has heavily censored all even moderately objectionable reading material. Inspection agents are then touring the house of a man who has secreted away banned manuscripts and end up ensnared by traps that they should easily recognize (from Edgar Allan Poe stories), but fail to because they haven't had the chance to read the verboten books. The inspectors are all killed. The story appears in Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and is a brilliant and subversive work.

That the backwards text on Year Zero sites would be banned novels fits perfectly.

EDIT: If this seems off-topic, it shouldn't be too far off. I posted only because of several suppositions in other threads that there must be some reason these books are turning up.

______________________________________________
EDIT (03-12-07):
Someone in another thread requested a complete list of banned books cited by the game so far. Here it is.

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.(artisresistance.com, uswiretap.com)
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman.
Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (securebroadcastinformatics.net)
Areopagitica, by John Milton (securebroadcastinformatics.net)
The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin. (thewaterturnedtoblood.net)
Howl, by Allen Ginsberg. (judsonogram.net)
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. (operationswamp0000.net)
Obedience To Authority , by Stanley Milgram. (operationchipsweep.net)
1984, by George Orwell. (mailstrom.com)
Nickel and Dimed[i], by Eherenreich (mailstrom.com/gasoline_uuu891)
[i]The Communist Manifesto, by Marx. (judsonogram.net...6455da04)
Ulysses, by Joyce. (judsonogram.net...6455da04)

If anyone wants to help me sort out which sites these were from--I don't recall exactly--I'll update this post.

I have read the hobbit. However, I haven't read SH-5. What is it about?

War and its aftermath. Vonnegut was and is America's premiere satirist. Google it. Or check Amazon for a summary.

It may be a little off-topic, but I'm interested. Why would the Hobbit be banned in schools? I'd never heard of that.

The same reason they ban Harry Potter. Evangelical near-psychotic reaction to anything involving magic or dragons. Obviously, The Hobbit lures children into Satanic cults which abuse drugs and have exclusively homosexual relations.

I've never heard of The Hobbit being banned. Got any links? I don't necessarily doubt it, but I've just never heard of that.

EDIT: Here's a link

http://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/wordpress/?p=7


And Slaughterhouse-Five is number 69 on the all-time 100 list.

Assuming you aren't hallucinating, that seems pretty appropriate...

Perhaps the resistance groups/members are using banned books as a way to send coded information to eachother...

Also, fwiw, The Hobbit and LotR might be appropriate "banned books" in this context because of the anti-industrialization/war-mongering messages that the books convey.

Kurt Vonnegut and J.R.R. Tolkien are both combat veterans. I think THAT is another key commonality between them.

Ooh. Well played. I'd forgotten about Tolkien's war.

For a pretty good plot summary of Slaughterhouse-Five:
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/slaughter/summary.html

I would also like to know if there is more than a thematic connection between those two books that would lead to more clues. We thought that Tolkien was quoted because of the similarities between names, but what about Slaughterhouse-Five.
There was time traveling in Slaughterhouse-Five and I thought that might be a good connection to the current narrative as it takes place in the future....

WTF? Do they not realize that Tolkien was a devout Catholic? They've even got C.S. Lewis on the banned book list for 2006, and he was another devout Christian known for his religious works. Sheesh, they've even got Flowers for Algernon on one of those lists. I'm starting to think that the banned book list should be required reading.

Real Christians hate books, don'tcha know? If Tolkien and Lewis were so "devout" they probably shouldn't have been writing so many books! The only book they're allowed to like is the Bible, and even then they probably don't read much of it.

(That's all jokes and sarcasm, before anyone gets mad at me!)

a bit of irony....
in different parts of the world at different times in history the bible has been a banned book too.

also: are they available in public school libraries?
i really have no idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_books

Taking all bets for the next book to be featured!

I havent read that book by Bradbury, sounds good, I think I might pick that up when I've finished the book I'm reading now. It obviously takes place in the same time/setting as Fahrenheit 451?

Well, this arg has metioned evangelical groups, so I don't see why the link between those books couldn't be evangelical types banning them. I'm surprised they haven't tried banning all math textbooks too... with their "science proves NOTHING!!!" attitude. Science is a form of magic, and therefore, must be heresy.

Yeah...it's crazy Christians who are banning the books! Blame the Christians!

Which is why the Bible has been banned before. Huh? Oh, that's right, it has little to do with Christians. More books are banned because they are against the "state" than anything else.

True, Christian parents seem to try and ban lots of books at their kids' schools they think are inappropriate, but I'm guessing if the link IS banned books, it's for its relationship to anti-establishment.

Sick.

It's weird, because I was just thinking of SL5 the other day.




I guess that's all I have to say for now. Sorry.

Weird how these books are banned in a lot of places. I've been required to read a few of them in school.

Edit: It's not weird, actually.