“It is good to renew one’s wonder,” said the philosopher. “Space travel has again made children of us all.”

First published in 1950, this episodic novel presents a Ray Bradbury that is still closer in spirit to the romantic flights of fancy of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Leigh Brackett than to the hard science brigade led by Asimov, Clarke or Heinlein. Bradbury is a dreamer first and a scientist second, more concerned with human emotions, aspirations and fears than with the correct geological, astronomical or biological laws. I would go so far as to argue that the novel is not really about the planet Mars: it’s a celebration of the power of imagination in it’s opening stories, it’s a thinly veiled critical look at the corruption of the American Dream in the colonization episodes and, finally, it’s a cautionary tale about the lack of a plan B in the event of a nuclear holocaust. The prose serves this purpose rather well, transitioning easily between lyrical passages and sharp social commentary. The whole arc of the human adventure on a livable planet Mars is bookmarked between two poems: “She walks in beauty, like the night” by Lord Byron ushering in the age of wonder, then “There will come soft rains” by Sara Teasdale, drawing the curtain on our failure to live up to the dream.

She didn’t watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon, like a torch burning.
She watched only the sky. [“Illa”]

The Martians, as imagined by Bradbury, are a very old race. So old, in fact, that they are fading away from reality and into ghost-like myth. But not so old yet that they cannot put up a few devious fights when the first conquering rockets land on the dusty, arid planet. The most striking aspect of their society is not the description of their impossibly queer technology, but the clone-like quality of their cities to a rural Midwestern ideal that seems lifted wholesale from a Norman Rockwell painting or a Frank Capra movie. (‘There was a big turkey dinner at night and time flowing on.’)

Around the rocket in four directions spread the little town, green and motionless in the Martian spring. There were white houses and red brick ones, and tall elm-trees blowing in the wind, and tall maples and horse chestnuts. And church steeples with golden bells silent in them.

There is an argument to be made here about aliens reading our minds and putting up a circus show to allay our fears, but I think the analogy goes deeper than the single story on telepathy [ “The Third Expedition”] and illustrates the kind of social interactions, family-centered and libertarian, that Bradbury dreams about in his future utopia. This is very much a late 40’s parochial (American-centric), mysoginistic and expansionist culture where the woman’s place is in the kitchen (‘I haven’t time,’ she said. ‘I’ve a lot of cooking today and there’s cleaning and sewing and all. You evidently wish to see Mr Ttt; he’s upstairs in his study.’) , men only need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps to succeed, and the natives should welcome the colonists with open arms. The Mars colonists are portrayed as the new pilgrims who once fled England for the promised land across the ocean, with the emptiness of deep space as a stand-in for the Atlantic. (‘Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves. Each wave was different, and each wave stronger.’)

He and thousands of others like him, if they had any sense, would go to Mars. See if they wouldn’t! To get away from wars and censorship and statism and conscription and government control of this and that, of art and science! You could have Earth! He was offering his good right hand, his heart, his head, for the opportunity to go to Mars! What did you have to do, what did you have to sign, whom did you have to know, to get on the rocket?

Yet, very soon after the first successful rocket landings and the first colonists, Bradbury takes a hard turn to the left and begins to decry the dangers of colonization in no ambiguous terms. The comparison with the plight of the Native American tribes is easy to made, even explicit in the words of a Cherokee man from the fourth expedition, when he mentions chicken-pox, land grab, cultural pillage. [“And the Moon Be Still as Bright”]

We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.

One spaceman, Spender, tries to stop the march of progress and the expected destruction of Mars environment and old cultural sites, but he is soon hunted down by the rest of the crew. His open question about our assumed ‘white’ superiority remains unanswered, for now : “What does your civilization offer?”

The racial conflict is even more explicit in the story about the former black slaves leaving the Deep South and a life of indentured servitude in order to search for a better chance among the stars [for some reason, “Way In The Middle of the Air” has been pulled out from more recent versions of the Martian Chronicles, to be replaced by a whimsical retelling of an Edgar Allan Poe horror story, despite the fact that some critics consider it "the single most incisive episode of black and white relations in science fiction by a white author." ]

Fear of the Other, racial prejudice and violence are central in two other stories, yet with a gentler, more hopeful conclusion. “The Fire Balloons” describes the Church following the settlers to Mars, there to hunt for sinners and to urge repentance. Two preachers illustrate the progressive and the dogmatic currents in modern religion, with the Old Ones from Mars already ascended to a higher plane of existence.

‘Should we go at all?’ whispered Father Peregrine. ‘Shouldn’t we solve our own sins on Earth? Aren’t we running from our lives here?’

Of the two opposite attitudes, I would rather debate Father Peregrine on the subject of salvation:

‘Father Peregrine, won’t you ever be serious?’
‘Not until the good Lord is. Oh, don’t look so terribly shocked, please. The Lord is not serious. In fact, it’s a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humour, doesn’t it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn’t that true? And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge-bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humour.’

... but I’m afraid Father Stone is more representative of our modern clergy:

‘They’re not human. They haven’t the eyes or ears or bodies like ours.’

In the “Off Season” story, one of the first spacemen to land on Mars considers that the place is his by virtue of conquest and is ready to defend his manifest destiny thesis at gunpoint:

You Martians are a couple of dozen left, got not cities, you wander around in the hills, no leaders, no laws, and now you come to tell me about this land. Well, the old got to give way to the new. That’s the law of give and take. I got a gun here.

As I said before, the social commentary is strong in this collection, but for me the most memorable episodes are either beauty or sadness. Bradbury the dreamer knows it is not enough to point out the shortcomings of our culture, but to think of ways to overcome them. One such moment is in a short transition sketch about a man alone, planting the seeds of a future forest:

There were so many things a tree could do: add colour, provide shade, drop fruit, or become a children’s playground, a whole sky universe to climb and hang from; an architecture of food and pleasure, that was a tree.

Another one is about old people who retired to the old planet to forget about the past and to find peace. They find instead another lost soul (“The Martian”)

‘Who is this, he thought, in need of love as much as we?’

[ This short story in particular made me wonder who, among the current crop of SF writers, still carries the torch of Bradbury’s compassionate humanism and evocative prose? I would venture to nominate Eric Brown to the position. ]

In the end, the path to the future may end in tears or in a new beginning. The very best story in the collection is about the tears, a nuclear doom that many of us millenials believe is past us, if you are not taking into consideration the rise of madmen to power. I would argue that the slow-motion devastation of a climate upheaval is just as dangerous:

The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.
The five spots of paint – the man, the woman, the children, the ball – remained. The rest was a thin charcoal layer.
The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

>>><<<>>><<<

I was a fan of Ray Bradbury well before reading “The Martian Chronicles” , yet I believe I would still have become one if this was my first contact with his works. My favorite quote of Bradbury is not one from his stories, but from an interview where he says he writes because he wants to change the future, not to predict more of the same troubles we experience today. This is why I believe he will never go out of fashion, as long as people are still able to dream of the stars.

That way of life proved itself wrong and strangled itself with its own hands. You’re young. I’ll tell you this again every day until it sinks in.

Now, go plant a tree!

¿Quién no querría ser Marciano?

¡Qué idea tan brillantemente ejecutada! Esta obra, construida como una colección de historias independientes (“crónicas”) es de hecho una novela que, gracias a esta creativa estructura, consigue resumir en doscientas y pico páginas lo que "en la realidad" podrían ser cientos, ¿miles?, de años del proceso de colonización y destrucción de ¡dos planetas! . Estas crónicas abarcan un periodo de 26 años, lo que no es sino otro de los aspectos satíricos.

No se puede ser más sintético. Y no se puede escribir con mayor expresividad y enfoque.

El proceso está perfectamente delineado: una primera parte en que se habla de los primeros y fracasados intentos humanos de colonización. En esta parte es donde tenemos un atisbo de la civilización marciana y, aunque es sólo un atisbo, es más que de sobra para abjurar de nuestra “humanidad”:

“Los marcianos sabían cómo unir el arte y la vida. El arte fue siempre algo extraño entre nosotros. Lo guardamos en el cuarto del loco de la familia. O lo tomamos en dosis dominicales, tal vez mezclado con religión. Bueno, estos marcianos tenían arte, religión y todo.”

“Renunciaron a empeñarse en destruirlo todo, humillarlo todo. Combinaron religión arte y ciencia, pues en verdad la ciencia no es más que la investigación de un milagro inexplicable, y el arte, la interpretación de ese milagro. No permitieron que la ciencia aplastara la belleza."

La segunda parte, que podemos pensar que se inicia con el cuento “Aunque siga brillando la Luna”, nos habla ya de un Marte en manos terráqueas. Ninguno de estos cambios está narrado de manera realista con todo lujo de detalles sobre causas y explicaciones. Aparecemos en mitad de distinto tipo de situaciones, muchas de ellas reminiscentes de un proceso de colonización “a la americana”.

“En todos sitios donde los hombres de los cohetes quemaban el suelo con calderos ardientes, quedaban como cenizas los nombres. Y, naturalmente, había una colina Spender y una ciudad Nathaniel York...”

La ironía y la sátira están continuamente presentes, incluso con guiños plenamente literarios como “Usher II”. Aquí se habla ya de la evolución en la propia Tierra:

“Allí ardieron Poe y Lovecraft y Hawthorne y Ambroce Bierce, y todos los cuentos de miedo, de fantasía y de horror, y con ellos los cuentos del futuro.”

La última parte, breve cómo la primera, describe con apuntes como aguadas, el abandono de Marte y el retorno a la tierra de los humanos, que no pueden evitar acudir a la destrucción de su propio planeta madre, llamados por unos vínculos de sangre inalienables. La situación en el planeta se describe sucinta y poéticamente a través de la descripción de una casa abandonada con todos los avances mecánicos, de los que seguramente nos enorgullecíamos, replicando incesantemente y hasta el absurdo sus inútiles tareas.

Curiosamente, el segundo cuento del libro incluye una gran parte de descripción de una casa marciana, también con notable tecnología, pero el contraste no puede ser más revelador.

Como digo al principio ¿Quién no querría ser marciano?

.

I've seen this referred to as a masterpiece of science fiction, but it's less about the science and more about the faults and failures of humanity, in this case Americans. He delivers a sharp slap to the face of American racial prejudice, aggressive colonization, wastefulness and disregard of the environment. I think Bradbury would be shocked to see the same conditions existing in the 21st century. He would also be shocked to see we haven't sent any humans to Mars yet.

This is a collection of short stories that taken as a whole has the appearance of a novel. It very much reminds me of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which he credits with influencing the structure of Chronicles.

I'm sure many readers have avoided The Martian Chronicles because it is mid-twentith century science fiction, but Bradbury rises above the cliches' of the genre to offer a view of who we are and what we need to change before introducing ourselves to future "Martians".

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury.

The strange and wonderful tale of man’s experiences on Mars, filled with intense images and astonishing visions.

Ray Bradbury is a storyteller without peer, a poet of the possible, and, indisputably, one of America's most beloved authors.

In a much celebrated literary career that has spanned six decades, he has produced an astonishing body of work: unforgettable novels, including Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes; essays, theatrical works, screenplays and teleplays; The Illustrated Mein, Dandelion Wine, The October Country, and numerous other superb short story collections.

But of all the dazzling stars in the vast Bradbury universe, none shines more luminous than these masterful chronicles of Earth's settlement of the fourth world from the sun.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «حکایتهای مریخ»؛ «حکایتهای مریخی»؛ نویسنده: ری برادبری (بردبری)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دهم ماه آوریل سال2013میلادی

عنوان: حکایتهای مریخ؛ نویسنده: ری برادبری (بردبری)؛ مترجم: مهدی بنواری؛ تهران، پریان؛ سال1391؛ در352ص؛ شابک9786009306763؛ موضوع: داستانهای کوتاه از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

عنوان: حکایتهای مریخی؛ نویسنده: ری برادبری (بردبری)؛ مترجم: علی شیعه علی؛ تهران، سبزان؛ سال1392؛ در328ص؛ شابک9786001170751؛

حکایت‌های مریخ اثری از «ری بردبری»، نویسنده ی «آمریکایی» است، که آنرا یکی از کلاسیک‌ها در سبک علمی-تخیلی، می‌دانند؛ کتاب، نخستین بار در سال1950میلادی، به چاپ رسیده، و پس از آن، چندین و چند بار، تجدید چاپ شده‌ است؛ «حکایت‌های مریخ»، تاکنون به چند زبان، برگردان شده‌ است؛ جالب آنکه، بر چاپ «اسپانیولی» آن، «خورخه لوییس بورخس»، شاعر و خیال‌پرداز نامدار «اسپانیولی‌» زبان، مقدمه‌ ای بنگاشته‌ اند؛ نکته ی جالب دیگر، در مورد این کتاب، در باره ی علمی-تخیلی بودن، یا نبودن آن است؛ خود «بردبری» نگارنده ی کتاب، در گویشی اعلام می‌کنند، که (این کتاب علمی-تخیلی نیست، و امید است که همچون اسطوره‌ ها، مانا باشد؛ علمی-تخیلی نگارشی از توصیف واقعیت، و خیال‌پردازی، نگارشی خیال‌پردازانه است؛ از این روست، که «حکایت‌های مریخ»، علمی-تخیلی نیست، خیال‌پردازی است؛ معلوم است که ممکن نیست، چنان رخدادهایی، روی دهد؛ به همین دلیل است، که اثری ماندگار خواهد بود، همچون و همانند اساطیر «یونان» است، و اسطوره‌ ها مانا هستند.)؛ فضای وهم‌ آلود کتاب نیز، خود به خوانشگر چنین می‌گوید؛ اما این کتاب، چنانکه در سطر نخست آمد، علمی-تخیلی خوانده می‌شود، و در زیر مجموعه ی همین عنوان، هم چاپ می‌شود؛ کتاب مجموعه ای از چند داستان است، که با میان‌ پرده‌ هایی، به هم گره خورده‌ اند، و تاریخ آینده را، از دیدگاه نویسندگان سالهای دهه پنجاه، از سده ی بیست میلادی، بیان می‌کنند؛

عنوانهای داستانهای کتاب: «ژانویه 1999میلادی: تابستان موشکی»؛ «فوریه 1999میلادی: ییللا»؛ «اوت 1999میلادی: شب تابستانی»؛ «اوت 1999میلادی: زمینی‌ها»؛ «مارس 2000میلادی: مالیات‌ دهنده»؛ «آوریل 2000میلادی: هیأت سوم»؛ «ژوئن 2001میلادی: ...؛هم‌چنان دل عاشق است و ماه تابان»؛ «اوت 2001میلادی: مهاجران»؛ «دسامبر 2001میلادی: بامداد سبز»؛ «فوریه 2002میلادی: ملخ‌ها»؛ «اوت 2002میلادی: ملاقات شبانه»؛ «اکتبر 2002میلادی: ساحل»؛ «فوریه 2003میلادی: گذر»؛ «آوریل 2003میلادی: نغمه‌ پردازان»؛ «ژوئن 2003میلادی: راهی در میان آسمان»؛ «2004میلادی تا 2005میلادی: نامیدن نامها»؛ «آوریل 2005میلادی: آشر دو»؛ «اوت 2005میلادی: مردمان سالخورده»؛ «سپتامبر 2005میلادی: مریخی»؛ «نوامبر 2005میلادی: چمدان‌ فروشی»؛ «نوامبر 2005میلادی: فصل تعطیلی»؛ «نوامبر 2005میلادی: تماشاگران»؛ «دسامبر 2005میلادی: شهرهای خاموش»؛ «آوریل 2026میلادی: سالهای دراز»؛ «اوت 2026میلادی: نم‌ نم باران‌ها خواهند آمد»؛ «اکتبر 2026میلادی: گردش هزارهزار ساله»؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 08/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 26/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

"Is this heaven?"
"Nonsense, no. It's a world and we get a second chance. Nobody told us why, but no one told us why we were on earth either... other earth, I mean. How do we know there wasn't another one before that one?"


Bradbury's brilliance on display! After he passed in 2012, I told myself I need to go through his works and catch up. It took me 4 years get to it, and I am so glad I finally did. This was amazing... can't think of any other way to describe it. Bradbury's writing captures a moment in time - the beginning of the space exploration, red scare, nuclear armament, and post-WWII psyche, and the wonder of the unknown.

This is a collection of stories loosely threaded together, most taking place in Martian colonies, and others on Earth in the 2030s. Earth has sent a succession of space craft to the red planet, never to be heard from again. What is happening?

...well, we find out. And sometimes it's pretty violent (Tarantino-esque, even!), sometimes silly humor (Martians can't be bothered with earthlings... they're just too busy!). I really enjoyed the descriptions and projections of the "new" and the "old" Martians. I enjoyed the small domestic stories, as well as the larger mission stories.

Standout stories for me: Mission that discovers the quaint American town full of deceased relatives... on Mars!, the Martian and the Earthling discussion/telepathy, the Fall of the House of Usher (major foreshadowing for Fahrenheit 451 here), and the last story of the return from Jupiter to the Martian colony.

The BEST one though? The missionaries on Mars, hands down. Major questions on belief, hubris, skepticism, and privilege in this one. I saw this story as the inspiration for later books like Russell's The Sparrow and Faber's The Book of Strange New Things.


They'll be flopping their filthy atom bombs up here, fighting for bases to have wars.
Isn't it enough that they ruined one planet without ruining another?
Do they have to foul someone else's manger?
Simple-minded windbags!

Wow. Just...wow. Why have I never read this before? Ray Bradbury has written an amazing, lyrical, spooky-as-hell set of pieces that all add up to something much more. Some are very brief, mere sketches of events. Others are full-length short stories.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

4 1/2
If you want to read a great review of The Martian Chronicles, skip this one and go directly to mark monday’s. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

If you’re still here, I will try to keep you entertained for a while by talking about myself, about my reading (and not reading) Ray Bradbury and other SF, about Ray Bradbury himself and his writing, and even a little (near the end) about this book.

For references, see bottom of review.


Me the SF fan

This summer I decided to re-read the Martian Chronicles (MC). But guess what?

It wasn’t a re-read. Nope. Seems, I now believe, that what I’ve been thinking were vague memories of MC must have been vague memories of some other story connected with Mars in some way. See “Oh yes …” at the bottom.

I’d always thought of myself as a science fiction fan. Yet, since joining Goodreads a few years ago, hooking up with an ever-growing number of friends, and finding an ever-growing number of SF novels that yes certainly I’ve heard of this probably read it long ago well maybe not but …

… I’ve come to realize that, like most things in my life, I do not have now, and never have had, a real fan’s deep knowledge of SF. I’m just not that kind of person. My interests are wide (I like to think and hope) but my knowledge in any area is shallow (I generally have to admit). Thus with sf. I was reading it as a pre-teen, then as a teen, was a member of an sf book club, subscribed to Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF - the magazine) … then as I transitioned from high school to college, it gradually got left behind for other reading interests, more interesting to a young person beginning to learn about real life.



Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury was born in 1920 in Waukegan Illinois. Until he was thirteen his family lived there and in Tucson, moving “back and forth” between the two places (Wiki). In 1934 they move to Los Angeles.

Bradbury never went to college, due to lack of money. Other than his public school education, he spent major portions of his young life reading in libraries, both in Waukegan and in the LA area. He has said

I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school. (Paris)

And what did Bradley read in these thousands of hours spent in libraries? Science Fiction by Clarke, Asimov, Van Vogt, Heinlein – but his greatest loves in this genre were Jules Verne and H.G. Wells; writers such as Steinbeck, Sherwood Anderson, Huxley, Thomas Wolfe, Thomas Mann; women writers like Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, and Edith Wharton; and poetry – Shakespeare, Hopkins, Frost, Yeats.

MC was published three years after Bradbury “graduated”. By this time (1950) his first book (Dark Carnival, a short story collection) had been published in 1947 by Arkham House. Bradbury had also published almost 150 short stories in such magazines as Weird Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Planet Stories. His first three stories (unpaid) were published in 1938, two of them prior to his eighteenth birthday. He continued writing during the war years (his bad eyesight prevented him from serving), with 11 stories published in 1943, 19 in ‘44 and 13 in ‘45. From 1946 until the end of the ‘40s between 17 and 20 stories were published yearly. In the second half of the 1940s Bradbury had several stories appear in mainstream magazines: Mademoiselle, Charm, Seventeen, Colliers, Harpers, The New Yorker, and Macleans. (The first three were women’s and girls’ magazines, Macleans was a Canadian news magazine, and the other three were very well-known “culture” magazines, two of them (Colliers and Harpers) founded in the nineteenth century. Most of these magazines are still being published.


Bradbury’s fiction (my version)

Following is a list of Bradbury’s books that I knew well (by reputation) at the time in my life when I was sailing away from contact with the shores of SF.





1950. Bradbury’s first novel.





1951, short story collection





1953 short story collection
The title is of course from W. B. Yeats' poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus" (1899):
“Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.”





The 1953 classic.





1955 collection of macabre short stories





1957 “fix-up” novel.
(see following section for “fix-up” novels)





1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes Ray Bradbury
Fantasy/horror. Stephen King was fifteen. King has stated "without Ray Bradbury, there is no Stephen King."





1969 book of short stories
The title of the book (and a short story within) is from the poem of the same name in Walt Whitman’s magnum opus Leaves of Grass.

Of course Bradley didn’t stop writing in 1969. I just lost touch.

After letting my F&SF subscription lapse in the 60s sometime, I saw (in the 90s!) that it was still being published, and resubscribed for a few years. I was surprised to see Bradbury stories still appearing in the mag. When he died in 2012 he had published 27 novels, around fifty collections of his hundreds of short stories, over 20 plays, dozens of teleplays and screenplays (including the screenplay for John Huston’s 1956 movie Moby Dick) and several children’s book.


The Chronicles of Mars

The Martian Chronicles (1950) was Bradbury’s second published book. If one wants to be technical, it is a “fix-up” novel. According to Wiki, a “fix-up” novel is “a novel created from short fiction that may or may not have been initially related or previously published.”

Wiki has a little story about how the book came about, which makes this clear.

In 1949, Bradbury and his wife were expecting their first child. He took a Greyhound bus to New York and checked into a room at the YMCA for fifty cents a night. He took his short stories to a dozen publishers and no one wanted them. … Bradbury had dinner with an editor at Doubleday. When Bradbury recounted that everyone wanted a novel and he didn't have one, the editor … asked if the short stories might be tied together into a book length collection. The title was the editor's idea: … "The Martian Chronicles." Bradbury liked the idea and recalled making notes in 1944 to do a book set on Mars. That evening, he stayed up all night at the YMCA and typed out an outline. He took it to the Doubleday editor the next morning, who read it and wrote Bradbury a check for  here Wiki says “ten thousand dollars”; but the interview cited as the source of the story (ref. Paris) says “seven hundred fifty dollars” – maybe the Wiki writer thought they’d be cute by adjusting it for inflation? When Bradbury returned to Los Angeles, he connected all the short stories and that became The Martian Chronicles.

MC has 26 chapters. Each has a name preceded by a date. For example, the first chapter is “January 1999 : Rocket Summer” and the last is “October 2026 : The Million Year Picnic”. Of these chapters, the copyrights of five (in my edition) are credited to magazine publishers, thus presumably are essentially unedited versions of short stories previously published by Bradbury (1948-1950). Two other chapters are revised versions of previous stories. Altogether these account for about half the Chronicles (by page count).

These seven stories have been masterfully worked into a history of man’s colonization of Mars, a satirical story with shifting moods ranging from elegiac, to poignant, to terrifying, to depressing – illustrating mankind’s human, all too human nature. The chronicles are filled with characters who voice the varying human outlooks on everything from interaction with the natives (yes, there are natives), to the idea of remaking Mars in the image of the earth.

Beyond this I don’t want to go. It would spoil things for new readers. It’s a short work, which I recommend to almost everyone.


*** Oh yes … that Martian story …

My memories of the story I had thought was part of the Chronicles were pretty clear, albeit scant. I felt it had been about a lone man lost and wandering on Mars. So I started hunting through collections of SF short fiction that I still had from long ago. It didn’t take too long to find it, in a book of short stories by A.E. Van Vogt called Destination Universe. When I saw the title The Enchanted Village I knew I had it. It was a story about a man shipwrecked in the Martian desert when the expedition rocket from earth crashes, leaving him as the only survivor. He finds a technologically marvelous, deserted village which seems able to be commanded to produce whatever beings in the village desire. The story draws out the man’s increasingly desperate attempts to make the village understand what he needs. Finally he succeeds … though not quite as he anticipated. Great story. No wonder I kept pieces of it packed in my neurons for half a century and more!


References

Bradbury’s Wiki article (_Wiki_)
Bradbury’s bibliography on Wiki (_ biblio_)
2010 Paris Review interview with Bradbury (_Paris_)

Take the time to figure out this puzzle! It's worth it!

As the paranoia and fear of the early stages of the Cold War escalated and the prospect of global destruction in an atomic war crystallized into a terrifying possibility, a pioneering trip to a more placid Mars must have seemed welcoming. As early successes with the development of technology such as "Sputnik" made a an exploration of this magnitude a likely technological achievement within the next few decades, manned exploration and the colonization of Mars no doubt evolved into a sexy and exciting dream, indeed.

Bradbury's series of loosely connected vignettes set against the backdrop of America's first landing on Mars, the false starts and failures of several expeditions and the spread of disease resulting in the elimination of a planet's entire population, actually constitute a scathing critique of what he saw as the worst failings of the social fabric of 1950s America - imperialism, bigotry and racial prejudice, xenophobia, guns, environmental pollution, waste, foreign policy, censorship, and the untrammeled growth of technology all wrapped up in the unfailing smug sense of superiority that the American way is the only way!

The Martian Chronicles is not a straightforward read. In the opening chapters, a light and fluffy approach borders on inane as the reader is left wondering precisely what is happening. It's only perseverance that will lead the reader to a more profound understanding and appreciation of Bradbury's intention. Way in the Middle of the Air, for instance, is perhaps the most moving single piece of writing I have ever experienced - extraordinary in its simplicity and yet blistering in its condemnation of the treatment of blacks in the American south in the 50s. Finally, the reader will be rewarded with the warm, optimistic closing of The Million Year Picnic. This is perhaps the only story in the entire collection in which I believe Bradbury really is talking about the future and the possible colonization of another planet. It is his simple suggestion that these efforts would be doomed to an extended and painful failure if Americans attempt to shape another planet into the mould of their US-centric terrestrial expectations. Only through adaptation and the re-formulation of society according to what the planet will allow, would such colonization be expected to prosper.

Everyone who reads to the end of this story will wonder whether it should be considered as science fiction at all but nobody will harbour the smallest doubt that the term Classic is richly deserved.

Paul Weiss

The Martian Chronicles is a science fiction book but it demonstrates intensity and imagery of the best poetry.

They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.

And although all the events are taking place on the faraway Mars we can recognize in these tales ourselves: our childhood and our adulthood…

They biked in summer, autumn, or winter. Autumn was most fun, because then they imagined, like on Earth, they were scuttering through autumn leaves.
They would come like a scatter of jackstones on the marble flats beside the canals, the candy-cheeked boys with blue-agate eyes, panting onion-tainted commands to each other. For now that they had reached the dead, forbidden town it was no longer a matter of ‘Last one there’s a girl!’ or ‘First one gets to play Musician!’ Now the dead town’s doors lay wide and they thought they could hear the faintest crackle, like autumn leaves, from inside. They would hush themselves forward, by each other’s elbows, carrying sticks, remembering their parents had told them, ‘Not there! No, to none of the old towns! Watch where you hike. You’ll get the beating of your life when you come home. We’ll check your shoes!’

So foremost The Martian Chronicles is a monument to our troublesome life here on Earth.

Meh.

I've always considered myself to be a fan of Bradbury's work, and his short story "All Summer In A Day" is one of my all-time favorites. But this just did not work for me. I can understand and appreciate what he was going for, but it just kind of dragged and ended up being overly message-y for my tastes. I am all for humanity NOT ruining everything it touches, but this was just so heavy-handed and preachy that it just soured the whole thing for me.

Also, it seems so strange to me that a science fiction writer should ignore actual science that was available at the time of his writing, and that he should be so anti-technology, but that's apparently what we have here. I can't even truly call this "science fiction" because there's no science in it. It's strictly fantasy set on Mars.

So much of the stories were just illogical - sending manned missions again and again and again when the previous ones kept disappearing? Uhhh.. No. Mars having a breathable, Earthlike atmosphere? Nope. That this was not the case had been known for over 50 years when this book was written - in 1894 it was observed that Mars had an atmosphere closer to that of the Moon - IE: none. Being able to see Earth's continents from Mars with the naked eye? What? No. The trip from Earth to Mars being every few months, and just happening to have multiple ships available as throwaways? Sure! Why not... This is all make-believe anyway. The thing that REALLY got me is one of the characters was sent to Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, spent 20 years there apparently, and then came back, circled Mars a few times, and found the ONLY TWO PEOPLE STILL LIVING on the entire planet. Because, you know, it's just a hop skip and a jump from the outer planets back to Mars, and then just no time at all from Mars to Earth!

Seriously, it's 48,678,219 miles from Earth to Mars. Current NASA estimates are that it would take 6 months, one way, to reach Mars from Earth.

It's a further 342,012,346 miles from Mars to Jupiter. That's more than six and a half times as far as Earth to Mars, but apparently Bradbury thinks that any and all space travel is just a matter of days.

Could you just swing by Saturn and pick up some ice? My drink is getting warm. Thanks!

The make-up of Mars, the people, the travel time, the telepathy... everything about it is pure fantasy. I wouldn't keep harping on this, except for the fact that it's marketed as science fiction. Something that irks me, because again... no science. Just setting it in Mars and having spaceships doesn't make something science fiction. Gah!

Plus it was just... boring and dated. For being one of the best loved "science fiction" books in the world... I was pretty disappointed with this. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt for trying to say something meaningful, even if it went about it in the wrong way.

Meh. The end.

The Men of Earth came to Mars. They came because they were afraid or unafraid, because they were happy or unhappy, because they felt like Pilgrims or did not feel like Pilgrims. There was a reason for each man. They were leaving bad wives or bad towns; they were coming to find something or leave something or get something, to dig up something or bury something or leave something alone. They were coming with small dreams or large dreams or none at all.
…
We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.

The Martian Chronicles was not what I expected. It is a collection of short stories (very) loosely connected by a larger story; in fact, many of the stories had previously been published by Mr. Bradbury, and he reworked them and wrote some connective sections to flesh out this book.

The writing in The Martian Chronicles is good, often poetic in places. The first plot twist comes straight out of HG Wells, and the second reverses the story’s gears. And the story has some interesting themes, especially about colonization. But the stories themselves are rather hit-or-miss. Too many of them just aren’t very interesting as stories. I’m not sorry I read it, but I don’t think I’d read it again.

I was so surprised by this book because I was expecting something like a fantasy about life on Mars whereas what I got was an apocalyptic dystopia where humans destroy both Earth and Mars over a period of years that rest both in the past (1999) and the future (2060).

Bradbury's writing includes poetry and excellent, precise descriptive language that is such a distinct pleasure to read:
The city was gray and high and motionless. The men's
faces were turned in the light.
"For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself must rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon."
Without a word the Earth Men stood in the center of
the city. It was a clear night. There was not a sound ex-
cept the wind. At their feet lay a tile court worked into
the shapes of ancient animals and peoples. They looked
down upon it.
Biggs made a sick noise in his throat. His eyes were
dull. His hands went to his mouth; he choked, shut his
eyes, bent, and a thick rush of fluid filled his mouth,
spilled out, fell to splash on the tiles, covering the designs.
Biggs did this twice. A sharp winy stench filled the cool air.

He does some clever referencing to his previous masterpiece Fahrenheit 451:
He looked at the autumn sky. Somewhere above, be-
yond, far off, was the sun. Somewhere it was the month
of April on the planet Mars, a yellow month with a blue
sky. Somewhere above, the rockets burned down to civi-
lize a beautifully dead planet. The sound of their scream-
ing passage was muffled by this dim, soundproofed
world, this ancient autumn world.
"Now that my job's done," said Mr. Bigelow uneasily,
"I feel free to ask what you're going to do with all this"
"With Usher? Haven't you guessed?"
"No.?
"Does the name Usher mean nothing to you?"
"Nothing."
"Well, what about this name: Edgar Allan Poe?"
Mr. Bigelow shook his head.
"Of course."
Stendahl snorted delicately, a combina-
tion of dismay and contempt. "How could I expect you
to know blessed Mr. Poe? He died a long while ago, be-
fore Lincoln. All of his books were burned in the Great
Fire. That's thirty years ago--1975

Lastly, there was this observation about physicists:
"There are physicists," Lauger explained, "who claim to understand
this the same way they understand what stones and cupboards are. What
they understand, in fact, is only that a theory agrees with the experi-
mental results, with measurements. Physics, my friend, is a narrow path
drawn across a gulf that the human imagination cannot grasp. It is a
set of answers to certain questions that we put to the world, and the
world supplies the answers on the condition that we will not then ask
it other questions, questions shouted out by common sense. And com-
mon sense? It is that which is understood by an intelligence using senses
no different from those of a baboon. Such an intelligence wishes to
know the world in terms that apply to its terrestrial, biological niche.
But the world- -outside that niche, that incubator of sapient apes-has
properties that one cannot take in hand, see, sniff, gnaw, listen to, and
in this way appropriate.

An absolute classic and must read for anyone that enjoys sci-fi!