Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury

First of all, I have to get this out because it really pisses me off. HEY BOOKSTORES AND...more

First of all, I have to get this out because it really pisses me off. HEY BOOKSTORES AND LIBRARIES: THIS IS NOT REALLY SCIENCE FICTION, NOR IS MOST OF HIS WORK. PUT IT IN LITERATURE, OR CLASSICS. Really, sci-fi is fiction regarding technology and is done for its own sake—Star Trek is science fiction because the science/technology part is foremost in the show's purpose. Bradbury isn't like that. The Martian Chronicles takes place in the future (or in what was the future... the dates listed are actually about 1999 to 2007 or so), and portrays a people living with advanced technology, but neither of those are the purpose of the book. The futuristic setting was just a literary device Bradbury used to make a statement about [insert your own interpretations here]. Putting Bradbury in sci-fi sections is like putting Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls with your average Tom Clancy book. It's just silly. In the same way that Clancy wrote action and war for action and war's sake while Hemingway wrote action and war for deeper purposes, so separates real sci-fi from Bradbury's works. Oh yeah, and this was an amazing novel. Some hints of Farenheit 451 in there, as well as referencing events from stories in The Illustrated Man (there are probably more connections in Bradbury's works that I haven't yet read). Some of the stories/chapters seemed sort of empty or pointless, but that's probably just because I haven't figured them out yet. The last story absolutely blew me away. It alone is more important and more relevant and more meaningful than the life works of 99% of authors out there. It's probably the one story that makes the novel achieve ultimate greatness: the rest of the stories are good on their own, but the last one gives them meaning on a whole new level. Bradbury is a genius, and easily one of the best writers of the 20th century. Huxley was right about him.   hide

I think I must agree with the reviews in the section that refuse to simply lable this book as...more

I think I must agree with the reviews in the section that refuse to simply lable this book as "Science Fiction." Truly, this is one of the most fantastic books connected with science fiction ideas I have ever read and is indeed, or should be, classic literature. Ray Bradbury is an amazing writer who uses typical elements of sci-fi to discuss timeless human themes--While at first glance this book may seem to be nothing but a collection of vaguely related stories it is really about the humans who leave their home world in order to escape its pending distruction and yet can never really separate themselves. It is also about the nature of humans to crave adventure and a new, untamed world. Instead of the Old West, we have Mars. Every single story can stand well enough in its own right, and that is part of the appeal for me. It is a loose chronology of the colonization of Mars, from a few unsuccessful original missions to the humans completely devoted to making Mars their and their posterity's true home. Some are sad, some are hilariously funny, some are terrifying, but each one makes you think and that is the genius of Ray Bradbury. However, the real magic came when the stories were bound together in the volume known as "The Martian Chronicles." Through reoccuring characters and places and those that maybe only pop up once we see a multi-century journey of humans in a new world just as we have seen this journey on our own planet for eons.   hide

The Martian Chronicles describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars,...more

The Martian Chronicles describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, the constant thwarting of their efforts by the gentle, telepathic Martians, the eventual colonization, and finally the effect on the Martian settlers of a massive nuclear war on Earth. As much a work of social criticism as of science fiction, The Martian Chronicles is an allegory for the tragic moral blindness of mankind and also reflects some of the prevailing anxieties of America in the early atomic age of the 1950's: the fear of nuclear war, the longing for a simpler life, reactions against racism and censorship, and fear of foreign political powers. This is the second Bradbury book that I have read this year, the other being his more famous Farenheit 451 and I found this one to actually be more interesting. Not to take anything away from the other one, but I really loved his style where each chapter he was telling a different story that involved different people in different parts of the planet. I would definitely reccomend this. I may try and read Dandelion Wine by the end of this year too, but I didn't enjoy that one as much when I picked it up and read the first 50 pages.    hide

This book is unusual for me but only because it's one where I actually saw the tv series before I...more

This book is unusual for me but only because it's one where I actually saw the tv series before I read the book. That's because I was about seven, watching it on TV in a holiday cottage somewhere in the 1970s. The Martian chronicles are made up of a number of short, very different stories the earliest written in 1946 (perhaps significantly the year of the first recorded UFO sighting) and chronicling the colonisation of Mars from 1999 to 2026. Intruguing stories with wit and a lovely old fashioned style that reminds of the Flash Gordon era of rocket ships. At that young age I didn't understand the end of the series, when the settlers saw martians in the water. I was looking all over for little green men with phasers ... infact they were looking at their own reflections ... lovely stuff.    hide

A fantastic collection of short stories in a chronological order, telling of humanity's...more

A fantastic collection of short stories in a chronological order, telling of humanity's colonization and subsequent complete fuck-up of Mars. It's a very well written and thoroughly bleak outlook of humanity and our general stupidness. Though it's comforting that most of the book is set between 2000 and 2005, and in terms of society, things are a bit better than Bradbury predicted, though I guess we also haven't sent people to Mars.   hide