Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves… Each wave different, and each wave stronger.
The Martian Chronicles
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, … 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.
Bradbury’s Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor-of crystal pillars and fossil seas-where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn -first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars … and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster once again enthralls, delights and challenges us with his vision and his heart-starkly and stunningly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our poignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
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In anticipation of book club! I started this a few days ago, and it’s wonderfully weird and kinda scary… This is my kind of Martian book (Sorry Matt Damon). I won’t say too much because I wanna save the big feels for our discussion, but I’m really digging the way it’s broken up.
strange
The best book I’ve ever read. Literally.
Recently read The Martian Chronicles. Such a cool collection of connected shorts. Wondering if @doug has started it yet!
One of the “must-read” novels in the canon of the Science Fiction genre.
This is a timeless piece of writing by one of the best Sci-fi writers the world has ever seen. A tale of colonisation by humans to Mars that sees our war-like nature set against the gentle, intelligent Martians. With brute force the earthlings wipe out indigenous beings to begin a new life that is anything but perfect. Spooky, funny, tragic and …
I love this volume more each time I read it! What strikes me so much about these stories is, actually, what isn’t there. I think Bradbury’s use of understatement is fantastic, throughout, and it really sort of adds an extra layer of spooky to the whole arc. What do I mean? Well, you know you are reading a story about Martian colonization, so what …
One of my favorite of Bradbury’s stories. Well written and quite imaginative and yet manages to stay relevant to some philosophical questions which humans have been asking since the dawn of time (ok maybe not that early). Like much of his work Bradbury manages to sprinkle just enough humor to make it a welcome interlude in his story telling.
One of the great Ray Bradbury’s tales. A must read for science fiction writers and readers.
Great book. Read it as The Silver Locusts way back.
The only reason I will not give 5 stars is because,ironically, it had a chapter removed so to not offend.
This Bradbury classic takes the reader on a serial type landscape of what being a Martian means and sets each short story woven through this novel as being distinct yet having a common thread: how does each iteration encompass the Martian landscape and change it over time. You will be drawn in and feel compelled to turn the pages to define or …
Bradbury was amazing – a story teller who evoked wonder, the inner child and a few nightmare. Not as much science-y as magical, mystical. Must read.
Ray Bradbury at his best. A collection of Martian stories that reveal the human condition.
Many (many) years ago, when I first tried to read this, I couldn’t make sense of it. Years later, I tried again, and it just all came together for me. And I loved it!
years ago, but I remember it being awesome. n given what I knew at the time thought it totally plausible. if you don’t know his name this might be a great starter. you’d be doing yourself a favor. this might have been the one that got his name to stick in my head. it only took a few of his or less before I grabbed everything I saw with his name on …
This is a great book. Though dated, it stems from one of sci-fi’s great writers. This book touches on social, cultural, and racial issues that are difficult to read in modern times, but the stories are window into the views of what a future would look like.
Existing reviews are better than any I can write. I read it sixty years ago, as a teenager, and still remember the haunting and poetical atmosphere. Some authors, some books, cannot be compared to any other. This is one of them.
It is all the more real, because it does not try to be.
Although bookstores generally shelve Bradbury’s works in the science fiction department, most of his works are not “science fiction.” Bradbury rejected the label.
Martian Chronicles is a perfect example. This is a drama of one ‘human’ civilization come to occupy a “new” world which was far from new. We see the arrival, conquest and claiming of …
A classic.