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Fahrenheit 451 and Harrison Bergeron, a la Shmoop.

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One of life's simple pleasures is to read a book by a roaring fire. Afterward, you might

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enjoy a nice mug of hot cocoa.

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Chances are, you probably won't follow it up by tossing your book into the fire.

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Not unless you're a Nazi, a character in Fahrenheit 451... or really unhappy with The Casual Vacancy.

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Book burning was popular in real-life dystopias

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like Nazi Germany, where they burned books written by...well, anyone they disagreed with.

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Which included... a lot of people. It may have inspired Ray Bradbury to create

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Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, a world where firemen don't fight fires...

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...they start them. In Bradbury's vision of the future, all

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books are banned, and whenever one is found the firemen are sent in like pyromaniac-exterminators

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to deal with the problem.

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When one fireman named Guy Montag starts questioning whether it's really such a good idea to incinerate every book out there, he's

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in for a world of trouble...

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A world of trouble that includes vicious, mechanical dogs.

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Though many assume that Fahrenheit 451 is about censorship...

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There's actually some debate on the subject.

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On one side is its author, Ray Bradbury, who says the book is actually about the evils

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of television sapping our attention spans.

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On the other side is...just about everyone else.

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Um...what were we talking about again?

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Oh, yeah...TV. And books. That's right.

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Maybe Bradbury's right, and TV has corrupted our attention span.

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Another story about the dystopia that television has wrought is Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron."

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In case you didn't guess it from the title of the story, the main character is named Harrison Bergeron.

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... a kid who was born with the terrible curse of being tall, athletic, and handsome.

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In most places these traits would be awesome, but in Harrison's world, being exceptional

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is forbidden by law.

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Everyone has to be equal, so anyone who is smart, strong, attractive, or... in any way

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awesome... is weighed down so that they become as common as everyone else.

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When Harrison tries to rebel and let his awesomeness shine, he faces a fate worse than mechanical dogs.

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What's a person to do when exceptional people

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like Harrison aren't allowed to shine?

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Sit around and watch TV, of course.

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Unfortunately the TV is pretty boring, too. The comedy isn't funny.

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The soap operas don't have any hot people.

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And people sing worse than the last batch of rejects on Bulgerian Idol.

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Imagine it: nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to do.

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Eternal boredom.

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Maybe you can get a job as an accountant to... liven up your life.

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