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.
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 territorial fronts around the world, but primarily in Europe. The end of World War II five years earlier and the resulting disagreements about how to divide the spoils of war in a devastated Europe, and which system would win out there, had launched the Cold War. A scramble for spheres of influence, beginning with Germany, divided Europe and set in motion a world competition that was to last through the century.
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