by Ray Bradbury

When Ray Bradbury (1920-) graduated from high school, he was already committed to a writing career in science fiction. From the beginning his short stories and novels showed a personal concern about what Bradbury perceived as the dehumanizing effect of the rapid growth of technology. Themes of evil, or at least misused technology, and victory of the human spirit are the focus of Fahrenheit 451.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

An uncertain era. Bradbury wrote the story that would grow into Fahrenheit 451 in 1950, a time when relations between the world's two most powerful nations were uneasy. In what would come to be known as the Cold War, the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States-essentially a battle between capitalism and communism-were played out on numerous economic, political, and...