Before Fahrenheit 451 , there was a carnival of madness, a pillar of fire, and a world where the dead walked. There was a future where the last books of Poe and Lovecraft were burned, and a solitary librarian stood as the final guardian of imagination. Here, in this essential classic science fiction collection, are the sixteen vintage stories and novellas that Ray Bradbury forged into his dystopian masterpiece. This volume charts the thrilling genesis of Bradbury’s most iconic ideas. Witness the lonely pedestrian arrested for the crime of walking in a society glued to its screens. Meet the firemen whose job is not to stop fires but to start them. Travel to a haunted Mars where literary legends wage a final war against censorship, and stand with the last man on Earth to defy a world that would rather burn history than read it. These are the tales of terror and wonder that lit the match of a revolution. “All 16 pieces in the collection explore the hazards befalling mankind when society contrives to restrain the imagination. An indispensable companion to Bradbury’s most celebrated novel.” - Booklist “An essential addition to the bookshelf of every Bradbury fan, the collection is also accessible to curious readers with a taste for the dark, the strange and the macabre.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review) Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 is an enduring masterwork of twentieth-century American literature—a chilling vision of a dystopian future built on the foundations of ignorance, censorship, and brutal repression. The origins and evolution of Bradbury’s darkly magnificent tale are explored in A Pleasure to Burn , a collection of sixteen selected shorter works that prefigure the grand master’s landmark novel. Classic, thematically interrelated stories alongside many crucial lesser-known ones—including, at the collection’s heart, the novellas “Long After Midnight” and “The Fireman”— A Pleasure to Burn is an indispensable companion to the most powerful work of America’s preeminent storyteller, a wondrous confirmation of the inimitable Bradbury’s brilliance, magic . . . and fire. In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include  Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine , and  Something Wicked This Way Comes . An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay  The Halloween Tree  and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.