Fahrenheit 451
(Ray Bradbury)

Ray Bradbury (1920-) is a distinguished and prolific science fiction writer, probably best known for his futuristic novel Fahrenheit 451. The title refers to the temperature at which paper burns. Bradbury first wrote the short story The Fireman in 1951 for the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction. Bradbury expanded the story and published Fahrenheit 451 in 1953.

Scholars often link the novel to the historic backdrop of 1950s America. Some see the book, written soon after World War II, as a response to censorship practiced by the Nazi regime. Others cite Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into evidence of Communism among the creative elite. According to Bradbury, one must not look further than the rise of television for the true inspiration.

Bradbury has been vocal about the often-misinterpreted novel. He insists the novel is not about government censorship. Rather, the book’s moral warns of the dumbing down of people through television. Television and radio, according to Bradbury, informs its viewers of “factoids” rather than ideas.

Unlike other novels of the dystopian genre, the people willingly agree to live under such conditions. Bradbury envisions a society of minorities, so easily offended, that gradually all literary material is labeled as distasteful. The populace opts instead for inoffensive, vanilla television for entertainment. The people stop reading and only then does the government employ censorship. In addition, Bradbury added a coda to the 1979 paperback edition. The coda rants against editors and readers suggesting censorship of his novels in the name of political correctness.