It’s sometime in the future. The government has taken over everyone’s life. People are programmed to have fun, the government’s way. They aren’t supposed to think for themselves. They’re supposed to spend their time watching TV on huge interactive screens that cover all four walls of a room. Books are banned. They lead to free thinking. Firemen are no longer needed to put out fires since everything is fireproof. It is now their job to burn books and the houses the books are found in. Guy Montag is a fireman. He burns the books without paying much attention to what he’s doing. Life goes on. Then Guy meets Clarisse, the 17-year-old next-door neighbor. She enjoys life. Instead of watching TV, she wanders around looking at clouds and flowers. She gets Guy thinking about life. He goes home to his wife, Mildred and finds her unconscious, an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the floor. He calls the emergency room, but they just send over a couple guys whose job it is to pump out stomachs of people who attempt suicide. They make several stops each night. In the morning, Mildred remembers nothing. Guy keeps thinking and talking to Clarisse. They one day she disappears, supposedly run over by a car. That night Guy goes on a call. He steals a book at random which turns out to be the Bible. He reads several pages. His boss, Beatty, finds out about it and warns him to turn it in. Guy does, but he has other books hidden. He talks to Faber, an old professor who encourages him to rebel. But Mildred turns him in. That night, Beatty takes Guy to his own house and makes him burn it, then puts Guy under arrest. Guy turns the flame-thrower in Beatty, killing him, then flees to Faber’s house. Guy gets a change of clothes, then dashes for the river, barely reaching it before he is attacked by a mechanical hound that the police have set on his trail. Guy wanders until he joins a group of hoboes, all ex-professors and such. They tell him of their scheme. All around the country they have located people who have portions of books memorized. Guy had read Ecclesiastes, and they can recover it from his mind. That night war is declared and all the cities are destroyed. The band of hoboes set out to help whoever is left. They plan on reprinting books and starting over. Whatever happens, man rebounds and goes on …

Pretty good. I liked some of the philosophy on why books are important; not so much because of what they teach you, but because they teach you to think. The concept of government controlling its people by force-feeding them entertainment is frighteningly plausible. I also like the bit about the group who were keeping books alive in their minds. The ending was a bit weak and sudden, but overall it was thought-provoking and suspenseful.