The Martian Chronicles
Product ID: 1357501
The Martian Chronicles , a seminal work in Ray Bradbury's career, whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage, is available from Simon & Schuster for the first time. In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America’s preeminent storyteller, imagines 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 vanished, devastated civilization. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. In this classic work of fiction, Bradbury exposes our ambitions, weaknesses, and ignorance in a strange and breathtaking world where man does not belong. Review: Not the most unique alien race, but a haunting, memorable, and relevant collection. Enthusiastically recommended - Written as a number of short stories that build a coherent arc, The Martian Chronicles is the story of mankind's repeated attempts to colonize Mars. Before man, Mars is populated by a psychic race that is in some ways surprising similar to Earth's western civilizations, a suburban utopia of housewives, gardens, and jobs, but with more complex and ancient arts, histories, and literature. Earth's initially missions are all failures, but eventually the Martian race is wiped out and humans colonize the planet, destroying the old beauty that the Martians leave behind. When Earth begins to collapse in nuclear war, Mars is abandoned, left to a few stragglers and some new immigrants. The whole of the work is varied, and each chapter/short story is different: some expository, some humorous, some scientific, some bittersweet, some about Martians, some about humans. There is something haunting and memorable about the text, the last chapters specifically, and while The Martian Chronicles is not my favorite sci-fi work or even my favorite book about an alien race (that would be Asimov's The God's Themselves), it is classic Bradbury: surreal yet suburban, science-fiction but relevant, ironic, enjoyable, bittersweet, and all in all a good book. I recommend it. It is hard to discuss or summarize The Martian Chronicles because of the amount of variety from chapter to chapter in the text. Each chapter reads like an independent short story and could even stand alone. However, as a whole the text does build a definitive arc, creating a final product that is greater than the sum of its parts. As a result of this build up, the last chapters are definitely the best of the bunch--they are the ones that will stick with the reader and carry the most impact. They are also the most depressing, surreal, and haunting of the bunch--haunting is a world that I'll use a lot because it really is the best descriptor of the final effect of this book. While early sections are funny and some later sections truly ironic and cynical, the book ends with the remnants of an abandoned planet, creating a story of remorse, memories, and, in the very end, the possibility of hope. The Martian ghost town is an image that sticks with you. It's magical, unreal, and, yes, haunting. The Martian Chronicles is classic Bradbury in its relevance, however--while the book may end with an abandoned foreign planet, every event implies a lesson and every lesson can be carried over to our domestic culture on earth. Bradbury teaches cynicism, the ignorance and foolishness of humans, our weakness, our hubris (and with it our downfall), the fragility of all people on all planets, and, somehow, ultimately, the human/sentient ability to persevere. It may be about Mars, but this is a very human book. While taking the reader to a foreign landscape, Bradbury ultimately reminds him of his own backyard. There is a lot of good sci-fi out there, and there are better (more original, more unique) examples of alien races, but Bradbury's Martian Chronicles is still worth reading. It's easy to get into and addicting, a very interesting concept, delightfully ironic, a little bit religious, very spiritual, bittersweet and hopeful. I enjoy this book and have read it a few times myself. I recommend it to others, although there is other sci-fi worth reading too. Pick this one up if the idea interests you or if you like Bradbury's other books. Review: a book ultimately concerned with the ambivalent nature of man - I think I first read The Martian Chronicles in junior high. Around then, I’d read anything by Bradbury I could get my hands on. I was always rather grateful he’s so prolific. And I remember really liking The Martian Chronicles, but when I picked up a copy a couple of months ago I found I didn’t really remember anything concrete about it. Just that I liked it. On rereading it, I’ve found I still really like it, though probably not for the same reasons I did back when I was twelve or so. It’s a book ultimately concerned with the ambivalent nature of man -- a deep-seated greediness married to a gentler, more altruistic side -- and the cyclical nature of change. It traces the settlement of Mars by humans, which results in the accidental genocide of the native Martians via chickenpox and the humans’ attempts to change Mars into a place more comfortable to them. They plant trees to increase the oxygen level in the planet’s atmosphere (a move which, though not directly addressed in the book, strikes me as the sort of thing that would have disastrous downstream consequences) and build towns that look just like the ones they left. Some even build hot dog stands. But when atomic war breaks out on Earth, the settlers go rushing back*, leaving a few isolated, lonely souls behind and Mars virtually uninhabited. The book ends with small clutches of escapees from Earth** touching down illicitly to start a new life there. They declare themselves Martians, and the cycle seems to start over again. That’s about as close to a plot as the book has. I think it’s technically considered a novel, but really it’s a collection of inter-related short stories. There are a handful of characters that make multiple appearances -- most notably, members of the Fourth Expedition to Mars, the first to survive landing there in no small part due to the fact that one of the previous three expeditions wiped out the Martians with chicken pox -- but this is not a character-driven book. Really, Bradbury’s focus seems to be on capturing the way life on Mars shifts as the humans take over the planet. And the flexibility of the book’s structure allows him to do that with a wider, more varied lens than he would’ve had if he’d tried to do it using a more traditionally novel-like framework. By making each chapter a discrete episode in an era, he’s able to explore many different reactions to Mars and many different ways of living there. The structure of the book, actually, is one of the few things I did remember about the book from the way back junior high times. And I’ve always been intrigued by it. It makes sense with Bradbury -- he’s a master of the short story. Through the interconnected short stories, The Martian Chronicles is able to give you a sense of what it would be like to live there at any point in the long process of settling, and gives you an understanding of the long process itself. The other thing that sticks with me is the tone. In story after story, Bradbury writes in simple, almost quaint language, but does so in a way that communicates to the reader his trepidation and distaste with the frontier mindset of the settlers. In each individual story, it’s a quiet, subtle thing, like a warning he’s sending out that he doesn’t really believe will be heeded. A subtext lurking in the background. But over the course of the 27 stories, you get the message loud and clear. But the tone, I think, is at its strongest and most powerful in “The Musicians”: Behind him would race six others, and the first boy there would be the Musician, playing the white xylophone bones beneath the black flake covering. A great skull would roll to view, like a snowball; they shouted! Ribs, like spider legs, plangent as a dull harp, and then the black flakes of mortality blowing all about them in their scuffling dance; the boys pushed and heaved and fell in the leaves, in the death that had turned the dead to flakes and dryness, into a game played by boys whose stomachs gurgled with orange pop. That sense of innocent, thoughtless disrespect for the lives of people and civilizations that came before resonates through Bradbury’s writing in story after story. Sometimes, like in “The Musicians”, this is the focus of the story. But as often as not, it isn’t, it just lurks in the background, coloring how the stories fit together. *This was about the only thing I found unbelievable about the book. I found it improbable that people would flee a safe planet to one in the throes of nuclear war rather than the other way around. I also wonder how feasible that is -- I mean, if s***’s blowing up all over, where are those rockets supposed to land again? But one gaping plot hole in a book this good I can overlook. **This last story, “The Million-Year Picnic,” kept reminding me of that episode of the Twilight Zone where a pair of families escape an impending world war by building rockets and striking out for a peaceful, livable planet in the dead of night. Of course in the episode, that peaceful, livable planet is....EARTH! So it’s inverted, I guess, here. But still, same sense of tension and the same basic plot points.
| Best Sellers Rank | #540,604 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #19 in Science Fiction Short Stories #371 in Classic Literature & Fiction #7,903 in Short Stories (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 7,911 Reviews |
J**A
Not the most unique alien race, but a haunting, memorable, and relevant collection. Enthusiastically recommended
Written as a number of short stories that build a coherent arc, The Martian Chronicles is the story of mankind's repeated attempts to colonize Mars. Before man, Mars is populated by a psychic race that is in some ways surprising similar to Earth's western civilizations, a suburban utopia of housewives, gardens, and jobs, but with more complex and ancient arts, histories, and literature. Earth's initially missions are all failures, but eventually the Martian race is wiped out and humans colonize the planet, destroying the old beauty that the Martians leave behind. When Earth begins to collapse in nuclear war, Mars is abandoned, left to a few stragglers and some new immigrants. The whole of the work is varied, and each chapter/short story is different: some expository, some humorous, some scientific, some bittersweet, some about Martians, some about humans. There is something haunting and memorable about the text, the last chapters specifically, and while The Martian Chronicles is not my favorite sci-fi work or even my favorite book about an alien race (that would be Asimov's The God's Themselves), it is classic Bradbury: surreal yet suburban, science-fiction but relevant, ironic, enjoyable, bittersweet, and all in all a good book. I recommend it. It is hard to discuss or summarize The Martian Chronicles because of the amount of variety from chapter to chapter in the text. Each chapter reads like an independent short story and could even stand alone. However, as a whole the text does build a definitive arc, creating a final product that is greater than the sum of its parts. As a result of this build up, the last chapters are definitely the best of the bunch--they are the ones that will stick with the reader and carry the most impact. They are also the most depressing, surreal, and haunting of the bunch--haunting is a world that I'll use a lot because it really is the best descriptor of the final effect of this book. While early sections are funny and some later sections truly ironic and cynical, the book ends with the remnants of an abandoned planet, creating a story of remorse, memories, and, in the very end, the possibility of hope. The Martian ghost town is an image that sticks with you. It's magical, unreal, and, yes, haunting. The Martian Chronicles is classic Bradbury in its relevance, however--while the book may end with an abandoned foreign planet, every event implies a lesson and every lesson can be carried over to our domestic culture on earth. Bradbury teaches cynicism, the ignorance and foolishness of humans, our weakness, our hubris (and with it our downfall), the fragility of all people on all planets, and, somehow, ultimately, the human/sentient ability to persevere. It may be about Mars, but this is a very human book. While taking the reader to a foreign landscape, Bradbury ultimately reminds him of his own backyard. There is a lot of good sci-fi out there, and there are better (more original, more unique) examples of alien races, but Bradbury's Martian Chronicles is still worth reading. It's easy to get into and addicting, a very interesting concept, delightfully ironic, a little bit religious, very spiritual, bittersweet and hopeful. I enjoy this book and have read it a few times myself. I recommend it to others, although there is other sci-fi worth reading too. Pick this one up if the idea interests you or if you like Bradbury's other books.
B**S
a book ultimately concerned with the ambivalent nature of man
I think I first read The Martian Chronicles in junior high. Around then, I’d read anything by Bradbury I could get my hands on. I was always rather grateful he’s so prolific. And I remember really liking The Martian Chronicles, but when I picked up a copy a couple of months ago I found I didn’t really remember anything concrete about it. Just that I liked it. On rereading it, I’ve found I still really like it, though probably not for the same reasons I did back when I was twelve or so. It’s a book ultimately concerned with the ambivalent nature of man -- a deep-seated greediness married to a gentler, more altruistic side -- and the cyclical nature of change. It traces the settlement of Mars by humans, which results in the accidental genocide of the native Martians via chickenpox and the humans’ attempts to change Mars into a place more comfortable to them. They plant trees to increase the oxygen level in the planet’s atmosphere (a move which, though not directly addressed in the book, strikes me as the sort of thing that would have disastrous downstream consequences) and build towns that look just like the ones they left. Some even build hot dog stands. But when atomic war breaks out on Earth, the settlers go rushing back*, leaving a few isolated, lonely souls behind and Mars virtually uninhabited. The book ends with small clutches of escapees from Earth** touching down illicitly to start a new life there. They declare themselves Martians, and the cycle seems to start over again. That’s about as close to a plot as the book has. I think it’s technically considered a novel, but really it’s a collection of inter-related short stories. There are a handful of characters that make multiple appearances -- most notably, members of the Fourth Expedition to Mars, the first to survive landing there in no small part due to the fact that one of the previous three expeditions wiped out the Martians with chicken pox -- but this is not a character-driven book. Really, Bradbury’s focus seems to be on capturing the way life on Mars shifts as the humans take over the planet. And the flexibility of the book’s structure allows him to do that with a wider, more varied lens than he would’ve had if he’d tried to do it using a more traditionally novel-like framework. By making each chapter a discrete episode in an era, he’s able to explore many different reactions to Mars and many different ways of living there. The structure of the book, actually, is one of the few things I did remember about the book from the way back junior high times. And I’ve always been intrigued by it. It makes sense with Bradbury -- he’s a master of the short story. Through the interconnected short stories, The Martian Chronicles is able to give you a sense of what it would be like to live there at any point in the long process of settling, and gives you an understanding of the long process itself. The other thing that sticks with me is the tone. In story after story, Bradbury writes in simple, almost quaint language, but does so in a way that communicates to the reader his trepidation and distaste with the frontier mindset of the settlers. In each individual story, it’s a quiet, subtle thing, like a warning he’s sending out that he doesn’t really believe will be heeded. A subtext lurking in the background. But over the course of the 27 stories, you get the message loud and clear. But the tone, I think, is at its strongest and most powerful in “The Musicians”: Behind him would race six others, and the first boy there would be the Musician, playing the white xylophone bones beneath the black flake covering. A great skull would roll to view, like a snowball; they shouted! Ribs, like spider legs, plangent as a dull harp, and then the black flakes of mortality blowing all about them in their scuffling dance; the boys pushed and heaved and fell in the leaves, in the death that had turned the dead to flakes and dryness, into a game played by boys whose stomachs gurgled with orange pop. That sense of innocent, thoughtless disrespect for the lives of people and civilizations that came before resonates through Bradbury’s writing in story after story. Sometimes, like in “The Musicians”, this is the focus of the story. But as often as not, it isn’t, it just lurks in the background, coloring how the stories fit together. *This was about the only thing I found unbelievable about the book. I found it improbable that people would flee a safe planet to one in the throes of nuclear war rather than the other way around. I also wonder how feasible that is -- I mean, if s***’s blowing up all over, where are those rockets supposed to land again? But one gaping plot hole in a book this good I can overlook. **This last story, “The Million-Year Picnic,” kept reminding me of that episode of the Twilight Zone where a pair of families escape an impending world war by building rockets and striking out for a peaceful, livable planet in the dead of night. Of course in the episode, that peaceful, livable planet is....EARTH! So it’s inverted, I guess, here. But still, same sense of tension and the same basic plot points.
J**L
Good, GREAT, EXCELLENT!!! FAVORITE BOOK! Highly Recommend!
I just bought another Ray Bradbury book I already own! Owning two versions of THIS book is an easy YES! Since I've read this book at least 10-times, and I've earned my personal Highest Honors BA in English Lit., I feel zero need to over analyze TMC because my days of in-depth lit analysis are over! Ray Bradbury did write Sci Fi. Bradbury also wrote speculative fiction, and he was always asking himself: What If? This collections of short stories tells an overall story that continues Bradbury's endless quest to find another What If topics that will potentially lead to his next novel idea for a novel. The Martian Chronicles is meant to transport the reader to Mars, and I've lived on Mars many times thanks to Bradbury's innovative writing style that never fails to take me from Earth straight into alien territory. It's been over two or three-decades since I've visited Mars, so I'm eager to get back. I'm confident nothing has changed. **Our arrival on Mars, is challenging. The first missions are a bit confusion and somewhat hard to understand, at first. As our missions fail, we meet friendly new friends who are also somewhat confused, and they struggle to understand. Fear not, Reader! Hang in there! Bradbury purposely obfuscates of our very alien arrival with friendly natives uncertain reception. The seemingly loosely connected short stories come together to tell a very cohesive story. My first read of TMC was at 13-yo, and I promptly fell in LOVE with Ray Bradbury's EVERYTHING! Here I am 40-years later, still buying multiple copies of books I own IRL just because I want digital versions, too! Read on, my fellow book readers! Word up!
S**R
Fantastic! A book for the To Be Re-Read pile!
"Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans everything but humanity." Ray Bradbury's classic, The Martian Chronicles, is a collection of Mars stories written by the author over the course of a few years that he compiled and threaded together (wonderfully, I might add) in this beautiful piece of fiction. The stories take us to Mars and its inhabitants. Their chameleon-like species that wears our look and copies our perceived actions, but often times lacks our free will, inhibitions, and fiery emotions. This begs the question: Is our humanity our best and worst asset? There's so many great stories to be found in these ages, too many for me to go through. I'll just point to a few of my favorites: Ylla- A Martian's romantic dream of a fascinating man from New York named Nathaniel York arriving in a rocket ship. This one was a highlight for me. LOVED it! The Earth Men- Another expedition to Mars delivers three astronauts to the red planet and finds them unable to elicit excitement of their arrival to any of the planets inhabitants. We eventually find out why they receive such a ho-hum welcome and it is fantastic. The Martian- The story of a Martian who makes himself look like the departed loved ones of anyone he comes in the vicinity of...he longs to be loved and accepted. Unfortunately, his costumes bring too much attention. And the Moon Be Still as Bright- A man named Spender sees the shape of things to come. How our humanity that has led to wars and the downfall of Earth will eventually bring the same to this beautiful, untapped planet. One of my favorites! Usher II- This one is for the horror lover in us all. When humans finally bring their rules and regulations, their awful government and unwarranted censorships to the red planet , one man and his sidekick strike back in entertaining and apropos fashion. LOVED IT! Horror fans will eat this one up. The Martian Chronicles is a fun and inventive read and a wonderful trip through the imagination of one of the best in the business. I give it 5 Stars!
G**R
Great Story
This is a classic. Bradbury was a pioneer of science fiction along with Asimov, Clark and some others. Not as clinical as Asimov, who was a physicist, but a good story teller. I think this is his best work.
K**N
Charming and whimsical, but oh so dated
I'd heard virtually my entire life that THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES was a great book. After a buildup like that, it's not surprising that I was disappointed. I was expecting a novel, but it's really a lot of vignettes that are loosely related in that they take place on Mars in the early 21st Century. Time has not been kind to THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES. It may have seemed fresh and original when it was written, but after hundreds of viewings of The Twilight Zone episodes, most of it looks pretty hackneyed today. There is more than a little whimsy and a considerable amount of preaching. What may have seemed like cutting edge technology in the 1950s is laughably clunky today. (Watches still tick on 21st Century Mars.) The setting may be the Twenty-first Century Mars, but the sensibilities are 1950s American. These characters never experienced the sexual revolution, womens' liberation, the civil rights movement, or 9/11. They seem so naïve, like Howdy Doody and Jack Paar. It has a certain charm, and one of the episodes, about the last man on the planet meeting the last woman on the planet, I found truly hilarious. Nostalgia fans will probably like it more than science fiction fans. Three stars.
Z**E
Amazing book! No so great shipping
I LOVE this book so much so I just HAD to get the anniversary edition!! Only reason I give it four stars is because the bottom left corner of the book came slightly damaged!
H**N
Magnificent
Ray Bradbury is truly a poet. The language he uses is so evocative, the voices of each character so human, so real. The book may sound dated in places, but it's not. It's timeless. It should be required reading for middle school or high school students, to learn about the best and the worst of humanity from a gentle voice.
R**L
Gran historia
Excelente libro, muy entretenido y de lectura ligera. El tipo de papel es el que no te lastima para nada la vista y el tamaño de letra es adecuado. 10/10
D**.
Perfect condition
Arrived quickly and in perfect condition. Very happy with my purchase!
J**S
A wonder !
I love this book ! It's dreamy and scary and makes our travel !
S**Y
Lyrical and evocative
This is not hard science fiction: no technical explanations of space travel, planetary astrophysics, etc. This is a mixture of fantasy; lyrical, almost poetic descriptions; penetrative character studies. Some of the chapters / stories follow unexpected paths: prepare to be surprised. Themes? - take your pick: historical determinism, difficulties of communication between cultures, the emotional darkness than can overcome and distort. Above all, beautifully written.
W**S
Highly recommended
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury is an interconnected thread of short stories written in the form of a novel. Though it is categorised as Science fiction, having dealt with space travel, telepathy, high-end technologies, alien encounter, it is more than just that! After it's release in 1950, when Aldous Huxley read this book, he insisted Bradbury that this book is more poetic than Sci-fi. And that's what most of the readers who read it felt, including me. Such an astounding and magnificent read it is! . Each of the short stories has depicted well about human's attempt to colonize the red planet, Mars. A few expeditions failed, while some did succeed which in turn lead to other mishaps. Bradbury brilliantly describes human tendency of wanting to gain power and dominate the other race, written in a strange and poetic manner. The writing is so whimsical that it makes you question over human existence... Spellbinding! ✨ The whole point of the novel sums up in these quotes ⤵ "We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things." “Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness, like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets; emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth. That!” "They'll be flopping their filthy atom bombs 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!" I enjoyed this novel much more than his Fahrenheit 451 and I'm looking forward to read more of his works. Highly recommend this novel to all of you who are reading this!
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