Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)

In an unspecified future, when someone reports that a house is abook, the fire department will arrive to burn them.

Book Review: Fahrenheit 451 is a book about burning books. For a book lover this has to be the quintessential horror novel, being burned alive surrounded by our precious. But here it's not fascists randomly building bonfires, it's an arm of the government doing its legal duty. But in the social media era, literary suppression no longer comes from the government banning or burning books (or melting Kindles into goo), but from public shaming. There are no books written that worry the government, and those in power attack their foes on Twitter. The literary works that get attacked by vicious but sheep-like hordes are those that fail to meet some popular consensus of what is acceptable. There's something in us that wants to mob together to attack the defenseless under the guise of doing good. Issues like slavery, sex trafficking, and a proto-fascist government can be comfortably ignored when we can band together in smug, self-righteous fury to harass writers who don't write as we think they should. There's no need to burn books or beat people in the streets any longer, social media allows us, in our anonymous mobs, to publicly shame the hapless into oblivion. I'd always thought that Fahrenheit 451 was related in some way to the McCarthy and HUAC hearings, but according to Bradbury it had more to do with lack of education, television, and the numbing of the American mind. All of which can lead to situations such as McCarthyism and the HUAC hearings. Or where we are today. As our government knows, the shallowly educated populace will immobilize itself over popular trends, while those in power get richer, more powerful, and can safely proceed with their war on women, sexual orientation, and those with disabilities (what do you think a preexisting condition is?). I read this as a young teenager and remember it having a strong effect on me, worrying about a future in which this could happen. I've also seen the 1966 movie with Oscar Werner and Julie Christie, which though different than the novel, still created dread and apprehension. To me this is more a message book, than a pure work of art. Bradbury is a fine writer and can make anything into novelized poetry, but it seems his main purpose is more to convey his message than tell some elemental story. Fahrenheit 451 is a classic because it conveys a universal warning, tells us to be alert to the dangers of a government that destroys knowledge, that is afraid of learning, that denies history, that discredits science. This kind of dystopian book warns us that overreacting is only common sense, given the alternative. An important book. [4★]