How wonderful, strange and poetic this book was.

"Cronache marziane" è un caleidoscopio di colori, c'è il rosso, c'è il giallo, il verde, il violetto, il blu e tutti i colori possibili e poi tutte le sfumature possibili e le sfumature delle sfumature delle sfumature, fino a che non si ritorna ai colori originari. Questo romanzo, che in realtà non è un romanzo, ma una raccolta di racconti che ha come tema di fondo Marte e l'umanità, è un continuo tornare ed un continuo partire, che poi tornare e partire cos'hanno di differente? In fondo quando parti, può essere che torni e viceversa?
Bradbury, con una scrittura magnifica, multicolore, poetica, immaginifica, delicata, ma anche pronta ad accusare le brutture umane, ci racconta, come un mosaico composto da racconti, cosa potrebbe succedere all'umanità ed alla Terra, alla fine del XX secolo e l'inizio del XXI, ed una possibile colonizzazione di Marte.
Scritto nei primi anni 50, è quanto mai profetico e con uno stile incredibile ci fa riflettere su ciò che facciamo, che abbiamo fatto e potremmo fare in futuro, corroborato da quel sottile humor che rende il tutto un capolavoro, un classico della letteratura fantastica, anzi direi un classico della letteratura contemporanea!

La vita sulla Terra non s'è mai composta in qualcosa di veramente onesto e nobile. La scienza è corsa troppo innanzi agli uomini, e troppo presto, e gli uomini si sono smarriti in un deserto meccanizzato, come bambini che si passino di mano in mano congegni preziosi, che si balocchino con elicotteri, e astronavi a razzo; dando rilievo agli aspetti meno degni, dando valore alle macchine anzi che al modo di servirsi delle macchine. Le guerre, sempre più gigantesche, hanno finito per assassinare la Terra.

I enjoyed this short story collection a lot more than the famous Fahrenheit 451. I believe Ray Bradbury has an exceptional talent with writing short stories.

I was expecting the stories to be something different than what I read, a bit more Science Fiction. Yes, it does have a bit of space travel, some alien encounters, some "hi-tech"technologies but those details are totally not the point of these stories. I guess the main idea I got can be summarized by the following quote:

“We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.”

The Martian Chronicles are stories about destruction, in its many forms, caused by what humanity has worse to offer: war, censorship, ignorance, disrespect for other cultures, greed, fear etc.

The stories are beautiful, fascinating, but very disturbing and scary in the same time. It made me meditate on the future of humanity and for how long we will be able to survive as a race, doing what we are doing. Will we be condemned to destruction?

I leave you with some quotes below:

“There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time look like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, 100 billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight-Tomas shoved a hand into the wind outside the truck-tonight you could almost taste time.”

“I'm not anyone, I'm just myself; whatever I am, I am something, and now I'm something you can't help.”

“They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressure; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.”

“Ignorance is fatal.”

This one is truly amazing. You think of Bradbury and inmediately you are reminded of Farenheit 451. However, this set of short stories published in many years, includes many parts that can be related to the main content of Farenheit 451. Humans beings are a cancer, whatever we do and wherever we are; we diminish resources, we kill for fun, we don't value anything... but, somehow, there's a glimpse of hope, and that is the main reason that martians are shown reflected on water. The story takes place in Mars, and everything you know about Earth is that it is at the glimpse of war, if not already in it. Humans are leaving the planet, and many amazing things occur; every page of the book keeps you tied to it. It reminded me some parts of Malthus's Essay on population, and the reasons we can be considered as a virus.

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Update december 12th 2021

After reading some books on evolutionary psychology and David Livingstone Smith essay on the origins of war, I no longer consider human beings to be a virus. I am not a misanthropist. However, men, a human animal, is able to conceive war like no other species. We need to learn deeeply about our natural behavior in order to understand those roots and try to diminish the probability of critical danger.

I've just finished "The Martian Chronicles" by Bradbury, and I'm sitting here in my living room before my laptop with a big smile on my face and this wonderful feeling in my guts whispering to myself again and again: .. what an amazing reading, it has indeed blown me away..!!

To be honest friends, as I began to read the martian chronicles, I didn't know in what I would find myself involved, and that I would be up for a real and tasty treat!!

This conglomeration and bundle of short stories has been purposeful melted tightly together to form a wonderful, gripping, atmospheric world, loaded with heavy nostalgic feelings picturing dystopian societies situated and located on the planet Mars!!!

Actually the martian chronicles doesn't dealt so much with Mars itself as a planet..
Bradbury in his unique and poetic way of putting words together.. I call it magic!!.. in his narration or tale does uncover, expose and he achieve to lay bare the human nature or the machine which we use to call human beings!!
And this he does very well!!
Powerful and masterful..oh yes, sir!!!

A great study of the deeps of the human soul awaits you the reader..
Every single one of the short stories is the money worth paying for..

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says about Bradbury: "A wonderful storyteller..Nearly everything he has written is sheer poetry."
I join gladly with my heart and soul to this statement and message..

Please, let me say it clearly enough for everybody to understand..
"The Martian Chronicles" by Bradbury is a winner, friends!!!

Bradburys vision of humankind coupled with his unique wit and poetry will let you amazed, stunned, and hungry..
Hungry for much more by Bradbury and his dense and atmospheric worlds full of nostalgia and magic born out of an imagination in love with life, and retaining its youngfulness and frehness!!


Well, a five stars recommendation to all my goodreads friends!!
Happy reading..
Dean;)

Reread July 2020. Everything I said below is still true.

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Ray Bradbury has suddenly secured his spot at the top of my list of favorite authors. He’s the LeBron of writing. The G.O.A.T.

And Scott Brick has suddenly secured his spot at the top of my list of favorite audiobook narrators. He is the Tom Brady of narrating. Also, G.O.A.T.

So what happens when you mix the two together? Something magical. There isn’t even a word or an amazingly alliterative animalistic acronym to describe what happens. But, man, if you want to take your Bradbury experience to the next level, let Scott Brick read his books to you. It’s just beautiful.

The Martian Chronicles is something I just jumped into. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t read the synopsis. I didn’t Wikipedia it. I just dove right on into the celestial waters and listened to it for a few days. I could read Bradbury describe the weather or what it feels like to watch paint dry or how to change a car battery or how to fry an egg and I would savor every bit of it. This guy writes poetry and stretches it out into a novel (or in this case several short stories that kinda mesh together into a novel).

It would be tough to call this science fiction. I mean it takes place on Mars, there are Martians, there is time travel, but all of those things exist in Ray’s stories to paint something much more metaphoric and brilliant than rockets and aliens. Each story on its own is just a delight to read, and when you tie everything together it just creates a wonderful book that is fun to read, but it also makes you stop and think and consider life and humanity and deeper stuff like that.

I had a blast listening to this, and I couldn’t recommend it more to you. Find the audiobook if you can. Read everything this guy has written. That’s what I’m gonna do.

ENGLISH / SPANISH!!!

This book is an acid and crude satire on human nature and constitutes a warning about how we could end up if we keep going the way we are.

The book is comprised by a series of interconnected stories about the colonization of Mars, starting off by a couple of failed missions and spanning a mass invasion and a subsequent return to Earth.

In this book you won't find any technical details about space travel or how can humans walk and breath on the surface of the Red Planet without further ado, which to be honest I found highly bewildering in the beginning, to the point of having even considered to abandon the book. Luckily for me though, I decided to read the book as fantasy and quite simply accept what the author was telling me as a fact.

And well, I must say some stories I found utterly ridiculous and they made me laugh out loud thanks to the absurdity of the presented situations, whereas other tales really made me ponder a lot of things. When comparing what Mr. Bradbury wrote 75 years ago with our current reality I couldn't help getting goosebumps when noticing the parallels: it's true that space travel is still very far of what is depicted in the book, but other than that the rest sounds quite familiar: the scientific and technological advances, the destruction of our planet, censorship, selfishness and egocentrism, lulling of the masses, the disregard towards nature, etc.

In short, I think that in order to enjoy this jewel of a book one needs to read it with an open mind and also keep in consideration that this was written three quarters of a century ago.

PS. If you like Allan Poe you're going to love the story "Usher II", my favourite in the whole lot.

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Este libro es una sátira ácida y cruda sobre la naturaleza humana y una advertencia sobre cual podría ser el fin de la humanidad si seguimos como vamos.

El libro se compone de una serie de relatos interconectados sobre la colonización de Marte comenzando con un par de misiones fracasadas hasta una invasión en masa y un subsecuente regreso a la Tierra.

Aquí no hay detalles técnicos sobre viajes espaciales o cómo pueden los seres humanos andar y respirar como si nada en la superficie del Planeta Rojo, lo cual en un principio me desconcertó al punto de haber considerado abandonar el libro.

Pero afortunadamente decidí leerlo como un libro de fantasía y simplemente aceptar como hecho lo que el autor me estaba narrando. Y bueno, debo decir que algunos relatos me parecieron totalmente absurdos y me hicieron reír a carcajadas por lo irrisorio de las situaciones presentadas, mientras que otros me dieron mucho qué pensar. Al comparar lo que este señor escribio hace 75 años con la realidad actual me dieron hasta escalofríos al ver los paralelos existentes: si bien es verdad que los viajes en cohete están muy alejados de lo descrito en el libro lo demás resulta bastante familiar: los avances científicos y tecnológicos, la destrucción del planeta, la censura, el egoísmo, la enajenación, el menosprecio a la naturaleza, etc.

En breve, creo que para disfrutar y apreciar esta joya de libro hay que abrir la mente un poco y recordar además que esto fue escrito hace tres cuartos de siglo.

PS. Si les gusta Allan Poe van a amar el relato Usher II, mi favorito de todo el libro.

Un libro precioso. Este libro no es para nada lo que me esperaba, es mejor. Con ese título y habiendo leído Fahrenheit 451 , me podía esperar alguna especie de dístopia en Marte o algo a lo Philip K Dick. Pero no señores, lo que Bradbury escribió hace 40 años es lo que realmente pasaría si en Marte hubiese una civilización y el ser humano fuese allí: nos la cargaríamos.
El libro es un conjunto de relatos donde se ve una evolución en el planeta: desde un sitio lleno de paz hasta la llegada de los humanos y como el planeta se va degradando. Los relatos son variados: hay ciencia ficción, terror, humor y ternura según el que se lea.
La idea de comercialización del planeta ya se ha visto con los que compraron los derechos del agua de la luna y barbaridades semejantes y que Bradbury escribiese esta crítica hace ya 40 años denota el ingenio del autor.
Mi relato favorito fué el de "Usher II" porque es un homenaje a Poe fantástico, pero la verdad es que casi todos son buenísimos.
Un libro impresionante y un escritor maravilloso.

Wow, that was exceptional and strange and brilliant. It was a collection of interlinked short stories centered around the colonization of planet Mars by Earth people. But it wasn’t really about that at all. It was more about people and their fears, prejudices, dreams and ignorance. It was about human nature who never felt content, who always wanted more and more, but never actually knew what they wanted. It’s the question of ‘Why live at all?’
The Martian Chronicles was extremely rich. It was full of tenderness, handled delicately. But it was also dripping in anger, disappointment and even sinisterness. The description was vivid, immersive and so intense. The prose was simply beautiful. It was melanholic and sad with dream like quality. It was serene and haunting. But at times it was chilling and creepy. It was also sardonic and served as a critic toward people, society, and its way of life. This book was a monumental experience.

n   “There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And, going further, what did Time look like? Time look like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, 100 billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded. And tonight-Tomas shoved a hand into the wind outside the truck-tonight you could almost taste time.”n

I am not sure that I am in the best position to judge this short story collection, since the circumstances of my reading it were far from optimal. I downloaded the audio version to pass the time on a long drive, and I decided on the Spanish translation since my co-pilot would have fallen asleep otherwise. I soon discovered that listening to a foreign-language book while navigating mountain roads is not conducive to careful appreciation (or careful driving).

This is much closer to a short-story collection than to a conventional novel, but Bradbury blurred the lines a bit by adding some connecting passages to his stories (originally published separately). It is really only the setting and a vague sense of chronology that connects the separate chapters. And despite his post-facto additions, Bradbury did not achieve full consistency in his Martian world. This is not a problem, however, since I think the inconsistency adds to the stories rather than detracts. The final effect is much like an episodic TV show, which can invent itself anew with each iteration.

Bradbury has become known as a science-fiction writer; and yet these stories may be more accurately described as “anti-science fiction.” He has little interest in the details of technology, cosmology, or space travel, and even less interest in making his stories plausible or realistic. Indeed, Bradbury is not merely uninterested, but positively worried about what the future may bring. For Bradbury, Mars is not the fourth planet from the sun—with its own moons, its unique geology, its practical challenges—but a kind of parallel world where his fears can play out. Much like The Twilight Zone, these stories have one consistent message: “Be careful what you wish for.” Where other people saw the dawning of the space age, Bradbury saw only an extension of human idiocy beyond the clouds.

Arguably, this is quite a conservative message—anti-science, anti-technology, anti-change—but it also resonated with me. I remember being a little kid and contemplating the wonders that the future would bring: flying cars, tourism to the moon, miracle cures. Nowadays, this mood of optimism seems very distant. New technologies, rather than filling us with wonder, are prompting second-thoughts: automation that reduces job opportunities, face-recognition technology that only extends the surveillance state, or the unknown threat of artificial intelligence. And when I think of space travel, rather than imagining the next glorious phase of humanity’s ascent, two buffoons come to mind: Elon Musk (with his SpaceX) and Donald Trump (with his Space Force).

Well, I do not want to get too gloomy in a book review. My point is that Bradbury’s stories may indeed contain a valuable lesson: be careful what you wish for.

He had written some stories set on Mars and then he read The Grapes of Wrath and the penny dropped – he could write little bridging chapters between the longer stories, like Steinbeck does, and make “a book of stories pretending to be a novel” as he described it.

ULTRA SHORT HISTORY OF MARS

Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian astronomer, kicked off the idea of canals on Mars. With his state of the art telescope he discovered a series of crisscross lines on the surface and called them “channels” – mistranslated in English as “canals”. The Victorians ran with the idea – Life on Mars? Yes! Probably! Then came Percival Lowell, American astronomer who amped up the canal concept in 1895 with maps showing waterways and oases which he said could only have been created by intelligent beings. H G Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in the same year – his Martians weren’t very nice at all.



Astronomers finally got better telescopes and rubbished the whole thing in 1925 – no canals, no channels, no atmosphere to speak of, no water, no nothing. Is there life on Mars? NO! Awwww sorry peeps!

Twenty years after that, Bradbury so doesn’t care what the killjoy scientists said. His Mars has canals full of sparkling waters stretching as far as the golden Martian eye can see. Oh yes, sure there are Martians, and Martian towns, bet your ass.

And this is why he was not welcomed into the science fiction community. Gaah! They said. All those dopes reading him! He’s filling their heads with nonsense! You wouldn’t get Heinlein, Asimov and Arthur Clarke writing The Grossly Unscientific Martian Chronicles!

Well, he was writing parables and fables of course, as he always did, using science fictiony bricabrac to do it because people like Mars and time machines and dinosaurs and whatnot. He was right. The people don’t want to know about the real Mars. Move over, Rover, and let Ray Bradbury take over.

And I should say that this Mars is an entirely American affair. Don't look for any Chinese or French. Not even a Canadian. All-American Mars!

SOMETIMES CLAWS

For a parable type of Bradbury story look no further than the slightly jaw dropping story here called “Way in the Middle of the Air”. It’s set in the Jim Crow south, back on Earth, and one day in a Southern town all the black people have packed up and they’re leaving! Streaming out of the town without a goodbye! They’re going to Mars!

Samuel Teece wouldn’t believe it. “Why, hell, where’d they get the transportation? How they goin’ to get to Mars?”
“Rockets,” said grandpa Quartermain.
“All the damn fool things. Where’d they get rockets?”
“Saved their money and built them….seems these [n word] kept it secret, worked on the rockets all by themselves, don’t know where – in Africa, maybe.”

You’d have to agree, a fairly unlikely scenario, even for the year 2003 in which it’s set. Interplanetary travel? It’s easy, you just knock a rocket up in your shed on the weekend. But it’s a great parable – and with a sting in the tail. The lad who works for Samuel Teece has a parting shot : “What you goin’ to do nights, Mr Teece?” Takes him a while to realise the kid was referring to house burnings and lynchings.

So Bradbury isn’t all sweet tender nostalgia in space, although he does ladle that on too thick at times, but he has claws too.

When you read these stories you discover quickly that his version of Mars in not consistent – each story slightly or totally reinvents Mars and its Martians. And also, he’s the poet of loneliness and waiting a long time for something. I liked that. I liked the whole thing.

I kinda sorta recommend this for people who want to explore an 80 year old vision of 50 years in the future which by now, of course, is 25 years ago. The future isn’t what it used to be.

“Science and machines can kill each other off or be replaced. Myth, seen in mirrors, incapable of being touched, stays on. If it is not immortal, it almost seems such.” From Ray Bradbury’s introduction to the 1997 edition.

At Goodreads friend Cynda’s suggestion, I listened to the audiobook of this collection, as well as reading my library hardback. Both were marvelous. The audio was well done and dramatic, and included a wonderful introduction by Bradbury.

My hardback was the original 1949 version. The audio was the 1997 version that moved the years that are part of each story title ahead 31 years. For this, I preferred the older version. Changing the years seemed false to me, because the stories themselves were of a time. You can’t separate yourself from the 1949 thinking when reading, so having the dates changed put me a little off-kilter.

But what a collection. It is just that: a collection of stories Bradbury concocted from his musings about Mars: what it might be like, but even more, what the idea of it might mean to us on Earth. But he put these stories together like pieces of a puzzle, and in the end we have a whole--an experience of Mars, a relationship with Mars, and, of course, a warning about ourselves. Unsurprisingly, looking at Mars has a way of revealing human nature.

Each story also stands alone, however, with plentiful variety. My favorite remains There Will Come Soft Rains, but other highlights for me were Usher II (a tribute to Poe and book banning revenge story) and The Martian (where he employs a haunting magical realism).

I loved so much about this, but mostly Bradbury’s voice. He tells a tale like a father to his children--luring us in with humor and relatable characters, but leaving our heads full of things to think about. It is a collection to read and re-read over time, for new aspects to enjoy and learn from.

In the last story, a family goes on a vacation that isn’t a vacation. You see what unfolds from the oldest child Timothy’s point of view, as he tries to uncover what exactly has gone wrong.

“Vacation. Just behind the veil of the vacation was not a soft face of laughter, but something hard and bony and perhaps terrifying.”

That is how this book felt to me. Something terrifying, under the veil of Bradbury’s brilliant, soft, storytelling voice.

“It fills me with such feelings that I don't know whether to laugh or cry.”