"Three years ago I wrote a short novel entitled 'The Fire Man' which told the story of a municipal department in the year 1999 that came to your house to start fires instead of to put them out."
--Ray Bradbury, 1953

Fahrenheit 451, the 1953 reincarnation of "The Fire Man," presents ideas that are far more complex than that brief description indicates. This novel is a soothsayer, warning of a future populated by non-readers and non-thinkers; a lost people with no sense of their history. At the same time it salutes those who dedicate their lives to the preservation and passing on of knowledge, and testifies to the quiet or passionate courage of the rebel with a cause. Fahrenheit also poses questions about the role(s) of government: Should it reflect the will of the people? Should government do the people's thinking for them?