Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury · 1953
A love letter to books disguised as their eulogy. Bradbury's fireman Montag turns from burning books to preserving them, and the result is the most passionate argument literature has made for its own necessity.
The case against
Bradbury preaches. Beatty's monologues carry the ideas, Montag's wife is a cautionary cardboard cutout, and Clarisse exists to be luminous and disappear. The prose runs purple in bursts, the book-memorizing hobos at the end are a sentimental fantasy of salvation, and Bradbury spent his later years insisting the book was about television, not censorship, which the text itself cannot settle.
Science Fiction & Fantasy · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
