'I was wandering around the UCLA library and discovered there was a typing room where you could rent a typewriter for 10 cents a half-hour. Ray Bradbury wrote “The Fireman” on a rented typewriter in a library basement.īradbury and wife Marguerite McClure had two young children, and he was in need of a quiet place to write but had no money for renting an office. But over the years, he would often speak about 'The Fireman' and Fahrenheit 451 interchangeably, which has caused some confusion. The author would later refer to the short story as 'the first version' of the eventual novel.

That story is wrong: It was the 25,000-word 'The Fireman' that he wrote in that time period. Ray Bradbury did not write Fahrenheit 451 in nine days.Ī popular apocryphal story is that Bradbury hammered out Fahrenheit 451 in just over a week. From there, Bradbury would expand the tale to create Fahrenheit 451. The following year, 'The Fireman' was published in Galaxy magazine. In 1950, Bradbury released a collection of short stories called The Martian Chronicles. Fahrenheit 451 was adapted from Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Fireman. Books can, however, ignite at temperatures between the 440s and 480s, depending on the density and type of paper. The title Fahrenheit 451 is misleading.Ī popular tagline for the book is 'the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns.' But 451☏ actually refers the auto-ignition point of paper, meaning the temperature at which paper will burn if not exposed to an external flame, like that from Montag's flamethrower. And if it could happen in Alexandria, if it could happen in Berlin, maybe it could happen somewhere up ahead, and my heroes would be killed.' 2. Since I'm self-educated, that means my educators-the libraries-are in danger. Then along the way I learned about the libraries in Alexandria burning 5000 years ago.

When I was 15, he burned the books in the streets of Berlin. In an interview with the National Endowment for the Arts, Bradbury explained how he came up with this concept: Adolf Hitler was Fahrenheit 451’s dark inspiration.įahrenheit 451 centers on Guy Montag, a fireman tormented by his job: Instead of putting out fires, he is expected to burn books. The novel remains full of surprises, contradictions, and misconceptions. The dystopian story of a man who burns books to prevent the dissemination of ideas-and then comes to realize the error of his choices-criticized censorship at the height of the Cold War. For more than 60 years, Ray Bradbury's science fiction classic Fahrenheit 451 has sparked imagination, debate, and rebellion.

Novel fahrenheit 451