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The Martian Chronicles is a book in a class all by itself. It is a work of visionary science fiction, a Winesbergian short story cycle, and a mythopoeic masterpiece. Ray Bradbury has created and peopled a Martian landscape that neither NASA nor the most brilliant science fiction writers of the future will ever supplant. Mars, to me, will always be Bradbury’s Mars.

This unique book is a collection of short stories connected by a series of vignettes which link the stories, advance the plot, and set the mood. The first two establish a balance that is carefully and seemingly effortlessly maintained throughout the book. “Rocket Summer�� and “The Summer Night�� depict Earth and Mars respectively. The people of Earth are beginning the next chapter in the history of their species as they set off to explore and colonize a new world, while the people of Mars are at the end of their story.

As with so much science fiction, The Martian Chronicles says more about humans than aliens. The people who leave Earth to start new lives on Mars are trying to escape from ��politics, the atom bomb, war, pressure groups, prejudice, laws�� (132). This is the true subject of the book. The Martians mainly serve as a counterpoint. A notable pattern is that the few humans who are sympathetic to the Martians and their way of life represent the best of our species and our civilization, while the rest represent us at our violent and ignorant worst.


The Only Hot Dog Stand on Mars

The story of the fourth expedition to Mars, “—And the Moon Be Still as Bright,�� establishes the theme of the book by presenting the two attitudes people take toward Mars. Spender feels reverence for the ��dead, dreaming world�� (49). He wants his crew mates to be quiet and respectful, but instead they get loud and drunk. He is especially ashamed of Biggs, a vulgar man who wantonly throws his empty wine bottles in the Martian canal, mocks the dead city, and then throws up all over the mosaics of the cobbled street.

Another crewman, Sam Parkill, is just as bad as Biggs. He shoots out the crystal windows of the beautiful Martian city for target practice. Later, in “The Off Season,�� he will use fragments of broken glass to adorn the hot dog stand he builds on Mars.

Spender predicted as much. In a conversation with Captain Wilder he laments the way people destroy cultures they don’t understand. He tells the captain that the only reason no one ever built a hot dog stand at the Egyptian temple of Karnak is that the location would not have made it profitable. Parkhill would later decide that a hot dog stand on Mars would be very profitable.


Dark They Were . . .

The evils of colonialism and the evils of racism often go hand in hand. In speaking to the captain of the destruction humans will do to the remains of the Martian civilization, Spender references Cortez and his conquest of Mexico.

He also tells the story of visiting Mexico with his family when he was a boy. Just as he was ashamed of his crew mates for their crass behavior, so was he was ashamed of his father, mother, and sister in Mexico. His father acted ��loud and big�� (65). His mother disliked the people’s dark skin. And his sister would not talk to anyone.

Bradbury’s Martians are also brown-skinned and it is no coincidence that among those who are sympathetic to the Martians are people of color:

In “—And the Moon Be Still as Bright,�� Cheroke, who is part Native American, is able to relate to the Martians. ��If there’s a Martian around,�� says Cheroke, ��I’m all for him�� (59).

In “Night Meeting,�� Tomás Gomez, whose name and complexion suggest his Mexican ancestry, meets a Martian, and instead of seeking dominance over the native, he seeks understanding.

Bradbury makes a subtle statement against racism with these characters, but he also makes more direct statements. In “The Off Season,�� when Parkhill encounters a Martian and threatens to give him “the disease,�� it’s impossible not to think of the Native Americans who were given smallpox-infected blankets.

In “Way in the Middle of the Air,�� the black residents of the Jim Crow south pool their resources to buy rockets so they can finally be free from racism. A Klansman watches the exodus helplessly, clinging to his illusion of racial superiority.


. . . and Golden Eyed

My favorite story in the volume is “Ylla.�� This is the story of the first expedition to Mars, but the beauty of the story is in its depiction of the Martian way of life before the arrival of humans.

The Martian people have brown skin and golden eyes. They are telepathic. Sometimes they wear masks of different colors, masks with different expressions. Their planet is a desert with dead empty seas and ancient cities that look like bone. Their civilization has been dying for a long time, but it is dying naturally and the Martian people live serenely among the ruins of their former glory.

Ylla and her husband live in a house of crystal pillars and crystal walls. Mist rains down from the pillars to cool the hot Martian day. Golden fruits grow from the crystal walls. Ylla harvests the fruits. Cool streams wind through the house. Ylla cleans the house with magnetic dust and cooks meat in silver lava on a fire table. She sleeps on a bed of fog that melts as the sun rises.

Her husband, Yll, reads a book of ancient times. He reads of battles where men fought using ��metal insects and electric spiders�� (2). He passes his hand over the hieroglyphs and the metal book sings its tales. When the first Earth men arrive, he greets them wearing an expressionless silver mask and wielding a weapon that shoots ��golden bees�� (11).

Insect imagery is used elsewhere in The Martian Chronicles. In “The Earth Men,�� children play with golden spider toys. The woman who greets the Earth Men is described as ��quick as an insect�� with a voice that was ��metallic and sharp�� (18). And the Martian Tomás Gomez meets in “Night Meeting�� rides ��a machine like a jade-green insect, a praying mantis�� with ��six legs�� and ��multifaceted eyes�� (81).

Bradbury’s Mars is wonderfully strange and beautiful. I want to read the same ten thousand year old book of Martian philosophy that Spender finds in the moonlit ruins. I want to decipher the black and gold hieroglyphs hand-painted on the thin silver pages. I want to swim in the canals after the wine trees have filled them with green wine. I want to fly through the blue Martian sky, cradled in a white canopy with green ribbons, borne aloft by a flame bird. I want to see the blue-sailed sand ships and the two Martian moons shining on white towers that look like chess pieces.

(My copy of The Martian Chronicles is the Grand Master Edition with Michael Whelan’s cover art. Whelan’s painting wraps around the paperback, depicting a red Mars with bright blue canals and a bright blue sky overheard. The moons are barely visible. Two Martians with bronze skin and golden hair sit by a canal overlooking a bone-white city. One removes his mask and looks up at the sky where a comet, or perhaps a rocket from Earth, descends into the mountains. The artwork enhances the text and complements the image of Mars that exists in my imagination.)


Smart Houses, Dumb People

The Martian civilization had been dying for thousands of years, a death with dignity. Earth civilization, in contrast, was committing violent suicide.

So many of the people who want to go to Mars are trying to escape something. The taxpayer, in the story of the same name, wants to escape the prospect of war. The black people in “Way in the Middle of the Air,�� want to escape prejudice. Stendahl, in “Usher II,�� wants to escape, or if not escape, get revenge against, the political correctness that led first to censorship and finally to book burning.

But there was no escape. The book burners came to Mars. Prejudice came too, although the victims of it were Martians. And the war that the colonists hoped to escape was so devastating that the explosions could be seen from Mars.

When I first read this book, the dates of the stories were still far enough in the future to seem futuristic. And the technology in “There Will Come Soft Rains�� was still science fiction. It’s almost amusing to think that most of the technology that powers the house in that story already exists.

I say it’s almost amusing because there’s nothing amusing about this story and there’s nothing amusing about Bradbury’s predictions coming true, for he predicts, not only smart houses, but also a war that decimates Earth. “There Will Come Soft Rains�� is a powerful cautionary tale and I believe it is all the more powerful now that its futuristic house is science fact rather than science fiction. It is a reminder of what can happen when progress in science and technology outpaces moral progress.

In his praise of the Martian civilization, Spender tells Captain Wilder: ��They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn’t try too hard to be all men and no animal�� (66). This can be seen in Ylla’s house. Fruit grows from the crystal walls. A stream trickles through the rooms. A fine mist rains down from the pillars. And the house itself turns, ��flower-like�� (2) to face the sun. In contrast, the human house is automated by technology. ��Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes�� (167). The two houses symbolize two different approaches to living in the world. One is natural. The other is artificial.

The house in “There Will Come Soft Rains�� is a travesty of human desires. It does everything for its occupants. It cooks their meals, cleans their messes, and amuses their children. It reminds them of their appointments in the morning and reads them poetry at night. But it does all this for people who no longer exist, people who were so advanced technologically that they could build houses to meet all their needs but were so morally backwards that they destroyed themselves through war.


The Last Woman on Mars

This is a novel of dreams, nostalgia, and loneliness. It begins with Ylla’s dream of the first Earth man. The dream is strange but pleasant. Especially pleasant because Ylla is lonely. She’s a married woman, but her husband has grown distant. He rarely takes her to entertainments anymore. He reads his books. She tends her house. Everything is lovely, but loveliness is no substitute for love.

Only one other story features a woman character: Genevieve from “The Silent Towns.�� She may be the last woman on Mars. Walter may be the last man. Everyone else returned to Earth when the war started. Walter was lonely even before everyone left for earth and now he is lonelier still, so when he finds Genevieve he is elated. But not for long.

Genevieve is crass and obnoxious. When Walter first sees her, she is in a beauty salon eating a box of cream chocolates. When he prepares a romantic dinner with her, she complains about the filet mignon and wants to watch a Clark Gable film over and over again. While Walter was left behind accidentally, Genevieve stayed behind on purpose so she could gorge herself on candy and perfume and movies. Genevieve is a caricature of what the American consumer has become and she makes a striking contrast to the sensitive and elegant Ylla.

Bradbury’s trademark nostalgia is featured in “The Third Expedition�� where the astronauts land on Mars, but find themselves in what appears to be a small town in Ohio. It’s the kind of small town that feels familiar to the men, whether they come from Grinnell, Iowa or Green Bluff, Illinois. The houses and furniture and music remind them all of their childhood homes.

In “The Long Years,�� another man left behind on Mars after the other colonists returned to Earth must find a way to bear his profound loneliness. Hathaway was another member of the fourth expedition. He settled on Mars with his wife and children. When his old friend Captain Wilder arrives on Mars, the secret of how Hathaway coped with twenty years of loneliness is revealed.

But the most moving tale of loneliness is about a Martian. This poor soul is alone. For all he knows, he could be the last Martian on Mars. Like everyone else, he needs love and home and family. So he takes on the appearance of an old couple’s deceased son. LaFarge knows that the being he is calling his son cannot really be his son and he muses about the Martian’s predicament.

��Who is this, he thought, in need of love as much as we? Who is he and what is he that, out of loneliness, he comes into the alien camp and assumes the voice and face of memory and stands among us, accepted and happy at last�� (124)?

“The Martian�� also reinforces Bradbury’s message about racism. Despite all the differences between humans and Martians, we are more alike than different. We all need love.


A Dead, Dreaming World

Whatever the Martians had, it was beautiful. We know it was beautiful because even half dead it’s still beautiful.

Where once there had been festivals with slim boats and canals of lavender wine, where once, four thousand years ago, there had been carnival lights and fire flowers and love-making, there was now a desert with the ruins of ancient towers that shine like silver under the light of two moons. There were now sand ships that sailed the empty Martian seas, their blue sails ��like blue ghosts, like blue smoke�� (136).

But the beauty of the Martian civilization is not only aesthetic. It is spiritual and philosophical as well. As Spender eulogizes the dead civilization of Mars, he also criticizes the civilization of Earth. On Mars, art wasn’t separate from everyday life. Religion wasn’t separate from science. Spender laments how humans have segregated art from life and replaced religion with the theories of Darwin, Huxley, and Freud.

Spender’s critique is Bradbury’s critique. It is both a lamentation and an invitation. Bradbury laments what human greed has done to the Earth, to civilization, and to the hearts and souls of men and women. He laments the subordination of art and religion to a science and technology which purport to make our lives better but leave us emptier than ever. He laments the war that will destroy us all because of the hate we bear toward one another. But he also invites us to change our direction and change our fate.

The Martian civilization that Spender so admires also faced a crisis. ��Man had become too much man and not enough animal on Mars too�� (67). But the Martians found a solution. They learned to love life for life’s sake. And so can we. Bradbury offers hope for the human race in the final story, “The Million-Year Picnic.��


The Martian Chronicles is a beautiful book. Its message is gentle but powerful. And it’s the most literary and philosophical of all the Bradbury novels and stories I’ve read. My appreciation for it has grown with every rereading.

Bradbury’s writing style is often called ‘lyrical�� and nowhere is that adjective more appropriate than here. But more than his lyricism, it is his storytelling that I love. He’s like an oral storyteller. When I read Bradbury, all I hear is Bradbury’s voice, not the voice of his creations, but his voice, the storyteller’s voice. That’s where the beauty is ~ in his storytelling. The poetic descriptions, the metaphors, the mellifluous sentences, are music to my ears, but the stories are what touch my heart.