The martian chronicles

Clearly Bradbury had a certain vision of the Mars in which these stories areset, a fantasy world based far more on Edgar Rice Burroughs novels (APrincess of Mars and its many sequels) than on contemporary science. Bradbury returned to this fantasy Mars in other stories not included in thisvolume (The Exiles, The Fire Balloons and TheOther Foot in The Illustrated Man, Night Call, Collect and The Lost City of Mars in I Sing the BodyElectric,; and Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed in AMedicine for Melancholy). To a certain degree, Bradbury is also writingto counteract the image of a menacing Mars as portrayed first in H. G. Wells War of the Worlds. In this work humans from Earth play the roleof invaders from outer space. The Martian Chronicles is best read as a collection of linked shortstories rather than as a novel. Although such collections are unusual inmainstream fiction they are common in science fiction. Bradbury hasalways been more of a short story writer than a novelist, and most of thestories can be read separately from their present context. When that fact isrealized, some of the inconsistencies and contradictions in The MartianChronicles diminish in importance. The tone of the stories variesmarkedly. Some are very much in the mode of the horror tales which he had atfirst specialized in (collected in The October Country), andothers are earnest parables of human folly. The Martians sometimes behave likemonsters and sometimes like saints. A collection-novel such as this is oftencalled a fix-up in SF, and Bradbury has clearly tried to fix thisone up by adding connective bits between the main stories to smooth the joins; but that this smoothing-out process was not entirely successful is made clearby the fact that when the television miniseries was created the scriptwritersfelt the need to impose far more unity on the stories than Bradbury had. But ifthe stories are considered as variations on a theme rather than as chapters ofa unified novel, these variations should cease to be troubling.

One striking feature of many of these stories is the progressive politicalvalues which they embrace. Written during the height of the Cold Waranti-Communist hysteria, they criticize imperialism, racism, environmentalpollution, censorship, and the nuclear arms race.

Bradbury was not alone. Several SF writers critiqued smug assumptions about the superiority of Americanvalues during that period. But that such a volume could become the single mostwidely-read SF book during the fifties is a tribute to the charm of Bradburysstyle, a compound of sentimental nostalgia, idealism, and above all delight inthe pleasures of the senses. Note how often colors, textures, smells, and soundsare used in these stories to bring a scene to life.

But the qualities which made Bradbury Americas most beloved SF writer concealother qualities more often associated with horror fiction: deep cynicism aboutfamily life, pessimism about progress, and disdain for ...