Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian science fiction novel by the American writer Ray Bradbury, published in 1953 and set in a future American society where books are outlawed and firemen, rather than extinguishing fires, are tasked with burning any books that are found, at the ignition temperature of paper the title names. The novel follows fireman Guy Montag, whose growing doubts about his work are sparked by his young neighbor Clarisse McClellan and his wife Mildred's numb absorption in wall-sized television entertainment, and who eventually breaks with his role, hides forbidden books, and flees the city to join a community of exiles who each memorize an entire book to preserve it for a future that might read again. Bradbury wrote the novel partly as a response to American censorship pressures and to what he saw as television and mass media's erosion of reading and independent thought, casting state censorship and a public grown incurious as mutually reinforcing causes of the books' destruction. Fahrenheit 451 has remained one of the most widely read and taught works of American science fiction and a touchstone reference in debates over censorship, book banning and the cultural effects of mass media.