Fahrenheit 451 - If Not Science Fiction

I was flipping through a few lists and I came across an interesting comment on the Best Science Fiction Novels list:
https://www.librarything.com/list/1/Best-Science-Fiction-Novels

Fahrenheit 451 had at least two people downvote it as not Science Fiction.
In modern times, I admit it can feel rather like modern fiction. What with the focus on visual media, wall sized screens, and selfish behavior. (Not to mention the book burning.)

But at the time of its creation, it very much fell into the science fiction realm. (I noted another comment on a different book saying just because something was in the future didn't make it science fiction, but that's for another discussion.)

My big discussion question becomes -- If you had just received Fahrenheit 451 from the publisher as a new book today what genre would you shelve it under?

>1 gilroy: If you've got a spot in your shelves reserved for speculative fiction that resists classification as science-fiction, fantasy, or weird contemporary/historical fiction, then that might be a good place for it.

Think I'd still leave it in science-fiction tho', personally.

It was written as science fiction by an author known for writing science fiction. I see absolutely no reason to disqualify it.

Even in the thought-experiment where it is a new 2026 novel that involves no technological speculation, it still depicts a counterfactual society (as a way of contemplating the hazards and possibilities of our own).

There have been plenty of instances where non-sf novels by science fiction authors have been treated by their publishers as science fiction. Perhaps the best examples I can think of are James Blish's Doctor Mirabilis; Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and his Cryptonomicon.

So I see no reason not to repay the compliment.

I think a lot would also depend on how the publisher saw the author and their own relationship to sf. Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize winner Orbital could easily have been published as sf if either the author or the publisher had been comfortable with that label.

>4 RobertDay: There have been plenty of instances where non-sf novels by science fiction authors have been treated by their publishers as science fiction.

True, but Fahrenheit 451 is plainly not such a case.

>5 paradoxosalpha: Granted: I was merely suggesting an inversion.

>1 gilroy: I think the problem is that the branding label "science fiction" is now assumed to mean a particular sort of story: a planetary romance, a space opera, or a dystopia with specifically sfnal apparatus, such as aliens or robots.

To many people, anything that doesn't tick these boxes isn't science fiction.

Many of us who have been reading sf for a while have a more inclusive idea of what the genre embraces.

>7 RobertDay: The difficulty is that science fiction, like fantasy, has developed so many subgenres to it that limiting it would hurt a lot of writing.
Space Opera, Sci Fi Romance, and Dystopia are all subgenres of science fiction, as is Hard Science Fiction (of which someone here on LT feels is the only true books in the genre) and psychological science fiction.

(Yeah, I'm in the realm of reading it for a long time too. Which was part of what triggered my amusement/boggled mind.)

>8 gilroy: I think cosmically detached amusement is perhaps the best way to handle people getting too precious over their genre labels.

Supposing I travel into the future and discover the world is precisely as described in some science fiction classic, I'm still going to call that novel science fiction. I'll only add "very prophetic".

I'm stunned that someone thinks Fahrenheit 451 is not SF.

I would still classify Fahrenheit 451 as SF. If I could, I'd upvote that one on the scifi list.

I would call Fahrenheit 451 dystopian SF. Some of Bradbury's stuff is clearly fantasy, but I'd put Fahrenheit and The Martian Chronicles as SF. Someone who disqualifies them might be stuck in a limited, mechanistic mode about SF. The huge diversity of SF subgenres is a sign of strength, in my opinion.

This example specifically I would describe as science fiction because of the elements of technology that did not exist in the real world at time of publishing. I can't remember off the top of my head every piece of technology which existed within the books, but I find it hard to believe every single technological item Ray Bradbury put in the book has come to pass, therefore even if it were published today it would still be science fiction.

This is a question I've often wondered, however — if you were to read a novel about a counterfactual society which contains absolutely NO technology which does not already exist, no nuclear fallout as a backdrop to the story, etc — in other words, a story which invents a fake society that hypothetically exists in our real life world... Would you still consider this science fiction? I would not. Speculative fiction, sure, but not science fiction.

Thoughts?

I haven't read this recently, isn't it set in the future, so wouldn't that count as being Sci-Fi?

>14 GraceCollection:, sounds like Islandia, which plunks a non-existant continent in the Pacific. I tagged it as fantasy.

I don't know if this might be a case, but I've run into people saying in effect "this book is good/important, therefore it can't be sf".

>17 AndreasJ: Bonkers POV IMHO. I can only assume that those holding that POV assume that SF cannot be literature. Which is… arrogant and ignorant.

Hmpf! I didn’t realize I had strong feelings about this! 😀

>17 AndreasJ:, >18 Neil_Luvs_Books:
Apropos of this premise and @elenchus reading Roadside Picnic this month, I was surprised to learn from the front matter of my copy of that book (Chicago Review Press edition) that the Strugatskys had trouble with their Soviet editors because of the reigning assumptions that sf needed to be upbeat in tone and escapist in function.

>15 AnishaInkspill: It totally depends on what definition of 'scifi' we are using, but usually that's not the only criteria. I think there has to be at least a little advanced tech involved.

Here's one to test genre criteria:

The Lester Del Rey story "The Day Is Done" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1939. It has been abundantly reprinted in volumes that are expressly "science fiction" collections. It concerns the demise of one of the last homo neanderthalensis, who has been adopted by his sapiens neighbors. There's no time travel, no speculative technology, hardly even any imaginative supplement to what conventional archaeology and anthropology supposed about human origins at the time the story was written.

It looks like sf to me, but I favor a very expansive definition.

Fahrenheit 451 is clearly science fiction.

I have a large collection of original science fiction (or as labeled in some of the very early books 'scientifiction'). Books from the 40s, 50s, and early 60s. There are subgenres such as 'social science fiction', and 'humor science fiction', and they fall under the larger science fiction umbrella. They can not, like Pluto, be cast out of their heritage based on the opinions of today. If they were embraced by science fiction for decades -- they are science fiction.

BTW, I do believe many of Bradbury's and much of Theodore Sturgeon's wonderful works are 'social science fiction'. Not all social science fiction need by dystopian, that is just the trend the past few decades.

-Shawn

I would not classify it as SF; it fails the classic definition. There is no technology extant in F451 that does not exist that is integral to the story.

>23 HugoNebula: "the classic definition"

Citation needed.

I’ve heard a bunch of definitions of sf over the years, but I don’t recall hearing that one before. I suppose it’d exclude quite a few stories where blasters could have been replaced by revolvers without changing much?

In a book club meeting discussion Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, a book about an artificial human being used as a substitute daughter after a couples real daughter died, I happened to pass the remark that I was surprised the group had picked a science fiction book to read. One of the members immediately went into a rage and shouted at me, "This is not a science fiction book. It is a book about ethics. It has no space ships or ray guns."

I calmly said it could be both a book about ethics and a science fiction book.

"Not it couldn't. You don't know what you are talking about. It is an ethics book."

I was not going to loose my cool so I just muttered something about a closed mind and kept quiet while he expounded on his views on the book.

I have no great liking for categorising books. So many of the books I like either defy categorisation into a given genre or could be assigned into a number of genres and still be a good book. The categories serve their purposes for various ends such as marketing, assigning to library sections, placing in specialist areas in bookshops, finding another book that is like one you just read, etc... However, I do not care how a book is categorised.

When at school I was in a class when we were being taught about existentialism. One of the things we were told was that existentialists do not like things being categorised. I immediately thought, "Ah! I must be an existentialist!"

The next thing we were told was that existentialists would never allow themselves to be categorised. That put paid to my existentialist existence. :-(

>28 pgmcc: Way too philosophical for me, but a great story!

>25 AndreasJ: Indeed. Its funny you used that specific example. When I was in Uni my instructor said "If your Orcs can be Indians, without the story changing, it isn't SF."

>28 pgmcc: 🤣

>22 sdawson: "BTW, I do believe many of Bradbury's and much of Theodore Sturgeon's wonderful works are 'social science fiction'. Not all social science fiction need by dystopian, that is just the trend the past few decades."

Exactly! There's always been a subgenre of SF based on the social sciences, including some prominent SF authors (Ursula Le Guin and Cordwainer Smith come to mind immediately). That's always been more relevant to me than stories speculating about technological inventions.

>20 Karlstar: I always thought science fiction had a broad reach, where tech / invention was a part of it but this was optional, where it was more about a story that challenges the world that is familiar to us. F451 is not the only novel / story that has a 'what if' sceanario and is classified as science fiction Never Let Me Go, Kindred, The Ones Who Walked Away from Omela are just a few examples.

>30 HugoNebula: Well, he'd be right. Orcs are Fantasy.

>34 gilroy: Well, he'd be right. Orcs are Fantasy.

Nice and I agree.

>30 HugoNebula: That's superficially clever, but it doesn't work for me. For it to work, the Indians would have to be vicious, subhuman, & evil. Perhaps I'm missing something?

>34 gilroy: Warhammer 40K would like a word :)

>19 paradoxosalpha:

I also remarked that story of the Strugatsky's encounter with editors, not that I was surprised but that it was such a specifically narrow conception of the genre. I'm reading from the Gollancz edition which uses the same translation and at least similar content in the foreward / afterward if not identical.

>33 AnishaInkspill: "I always thought science fiction had a broad reach, where tech / invention was a part of it but this was optional, where it was more about a story that challenges the world that is familiar to us."

It definitely does, your quote immediately reminds me of Nineteen Eighty-Four.