Fire Starters

Ray Bradbury’s spookily prescient novel gets a 21st century update

- Ray Bradbury

Even in 1953, Ray Bradbury knew what was up. That was the year his now seminal dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, was published positing a future America where firemen burn books to keep the populace mindless and easily controlled. Sixty-five years later, Fahrenheit 451 might as well have been a road map to where we are today with humanity’s global obsession with smartphones that reduce much of life into likes, selfies and swipes.

Starring Black Panther’s Michael B Jordan as fireman Montag, and Michael Shannon as Captain Beatty, HBO’s film adaptation brings the story into the technological age. Set in a near-future Ohio, Yuxie Systems (think Alexa on steroids) run everything in your home; books and digital books are forbidden; and the internet is a headline only wasteland.