Fahrenheit 451
Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires...
The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning... along with the houses in which they were hidden.
Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.
Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think... and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do!
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (1920-2012) was an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th and 21st century American writers of speculative fiction.
Book Reviews
I reread this recently, having read it years ago in my teens. It still chills me to the bone for many reasons. There is a robotic creature in it that is the stuff of nightmares. "The Terminator" is cute and cuddly in comparison. I used to think this scenario could never happen, like 1984 and Brave New World, but now I'm not so sure...