The Martian Chronicles (Voyager Classics)

---

His observations on human nature are spot on and even though these stories were written back in the 40's and 50's, most of them are still relevant today. Classics are classics for a reason and this one is truly special. View all 11 comments. View all 7 comments. I've got what amounts to a religion now. It's learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how to hear music and how to read a book. What does your civilization offer?

Enter a book like this, a classic by an author who has given man several other timeless warnings. All made sense soon enough, so have a small amount of patience and all will be rewarded. When the final page is closed, what echoes and stands out is how beautifully unique this work is. There is not only one central story or one central theme, but a showcase of journeys and stories throughout different ages. As time passes, more worsens and less progresses. Pacing is no struggle at all once the beginning has eroded away. Each small story that shows a different view and time piece flies by, all leaving an impression without boring me.

Sometimes I had to pause between pieces to mentally fathom the emotional jabbing. There is no one larger-than-life lesson or story here, for the pieces are too varied and artistic to come together where it would only fit into one mere puzzle. I think what impressed me most is how the surreal feel and epic imagery with the talented writing made me picture certain scenes so clearly. The slow movements of the faces and the turning heads with the wine pouring over the lips was downright creepy.

The tragic face-changing finale of a particular tragic figure wanting to fit in and be loved is not forgettable. The haunting ending with the reflections — all shiver inducing stuff. I shall not forget it. Varied and tragic, clever and haunting, it definitely deserves the classic stamp.

Oh, and how nifty was that mini tribute to Edgar Allen Poe in one of the timelines? May the books never be burned. All down the way the sudden revealment, the flash of familiar eyes, the cry of an old, old name. Everyone leaping forward as, like an image reflected from ten thousand mirrors, ten thousand eyes, the running dream came and went, a different face to those ahead, those behind, those yet to be met, those unseen And here they all are now, at the boat, wanting the dream for their own.

View all 6 comments. I vividly remember reading this book. I was in 8th grade and I read it in Mrs. She was this bizarre ageless woman who wore her jet-black hair in a crusty bee-hive and had gobs of pastel green eye shadow on her eyelids. She also had a rusty voice-like an ex-smoker, and spoke really slowly. She could have been a character in Martian Chronicles. I still kind of wonder if she was human. Anyway, I read this book over and over. There was something so pristine about the world that Br I vividly remember reading this book. There was something so pristine about the world that Bradbury creates, and also incredibly odd and mysterious.

As a writer, he kind of reminds me of Edgar Allen Poe. Another thing about Bradbury, I heard him speak once in college and he said that he wrote this book from the UCLA library he wasn't a student there , he just liked to hide out in the basement. He was super eccentric. I liked him immediately. Jun 17, Timothy Urges rated it it was amazing. Wonder glazes the sky with sparks and lines of light, while dread permeates as an undercurrent. There is a touch of racism in one story. Other than that, this is beautiful.

Jun 04, Duane rated it really liked it Shelves: I've seen this referred to as a masterpiece of science fiction, but it's less about the science and more about the faults and failures of humanity, in this case Americans. He delivers a sharp slap to the face of American racial prejudice, aggressive colonization, wastefulness and disregard of the environment.

I think Bradbury would be shocked to see the same conditions existing in the 21st century. He would also be shocked to see we haven't sent any humans to Mars yet. This is a collection of sh. This is a collection of short stories that taken as a whole has the appearance of a novel. It very much reminds me of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio , which he credits with influencing the structure of Chronicles.

I'm sure many readers have avoided The Martian Chronicles because it is mid-twentith century science fiction, but Bradbury rises above the cliches' of the genre to offer a view of who we are and what we need to change before introducing ourselves to future "Martians". View all 4 comments. Jan 19, George rated it it was amazing Shelves: How wonderful, strange and poetic this book was. View all 3 comments. Jun 08, Owlseyes rated it it was amazing Recommended to Owlseyes by: NASA scientists have determined that a primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth's Arctic Ocean and that the Red Planet has lost 87 percent of that water to space.

I used to receive, at home, their magazine. I always took notice of that name: Ray Bradbury, among the long list of other famous names as board of directors and Advisory Council members: Maybe I knew one day I would read the Martian Chronicles. And now I had the chance. For some time I still held in my mind the names of the missions to Mars and the photos of TPS magazines: Bradbury told this story once. He told the students: Christopher Isherwood told him: In an interview he explained how, when he was 29 years old, he went to New York: The Martian Chronicles were a collection of separate short stories, but they got together in a tapestry that is the present book first published in The Martian Chronicles The book is a collection of short stories that cover the period of about 60 years of Mars colonization by men, starting in A place with Blue Mountains,… golden fruits and houses with crystal columns.

People Martians with gold yellow eyes and brown skin, capable of telepathy of understanding other languages … who read on metallic books with salient hieroglyphs. Planet Mars has a Dead Sea…and violet water canals…and twin white Moons. Children play with golden spiders. From their planet they see Earth as green. This was a story of hallucinations.

In the end 16 men are dead. Yes, planet Mars harbors a dead civilization. Hathaway, a geologist, concludes: Martians fuse Art and life: When Benjamin Driscoll arrived to Mars there were no trees: By year , 90, people arrived …rockets arrived like grasshoppers. I must forget earth; I have a lot of fun with the weather here: Martians look like blue spheres. Stone is having a conversation with a priest.

Stone had been saved in an avalanche of stones, by the blue lights; the priest says: We need to get back. Sam got a territory from the Martians the size of half of Mars. He receives a message from Earth: Hathaway, a former State governor, says Earth science went ahead of us: The governor wants to start a new life on Mars. Hathaway and family are fishing in the Mars canals; and the kids want so badly to see a Martian.

Father tells them to look at the image reflected on the waters. The Bradbury chronicles tell little about Martians, but a lot about humans. View all 14 comments. Pronti per un nuovo pianeta da distruggere? Fantascienza che diventa poesia; sci-fi che si tramuta, quasi impercettibilmente, in una sorta di fiaba dalla morale semplice e diretta.

Ma Pronti per un nuovo pianeta da distruggere? Oct 16, Jonathan Ashleigh rated it it was amazing Shelves: I wish there were more books that told a story though many short stories the way this book does or just more that I were privy to. I guess that book is more widely read because it is focused for children and they apparently read more.

Everyone should read The Martian Chronicles, not just those who like science fiction. My husband ruined reading Ray Bradbury for me when he showed me this video: When that happens I oft 4 and a half stars. When that happens I often wonder who had the heart to sell these books off… while simultaneously being very grateful because I now have them on my shelf.

This book is a collection of related vignettes chronicling the colonization of Mars by humans in the 21st century and it is poetic, nostalgic and heartbreaking. Would moving to a whole new planet fix the problems we have left behind on Earth? Or would we take the dark side of human nature along with us everywhere? The wish for a better world is universal and timeless, so no matter how dated some elements of those stories can seem to a modern eye, their spirit still resonates very strongly. Maybe we are much, much more alike than we can imagine… Lyrical, sad, haunting and lovely.

No other works of this genre that I have read so far feels quite the way this one does. A must-read for sci-fi fans and fans of good writing in general. Jun 26, Susan Budd rated it it was amazing Shelves: 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. This unique book is a collection of short stories connected by a series of vignettes which link the stories, advance the plot, and se The Martian Chronicles is a book in a class all by itself. 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.

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.

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. 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. Spender predicted as much. 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.

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. And his sister would not talk to anyone.

The Martian Chronicles

Bradbury makes a subtle statement against racism with these characters, but he also makes more direct statements. A Klansman watches the exodus helplessly, clinging to his illusion of racial superiority. The Martian people have brown skin and golden eyes. 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.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (Paperback, 2001)

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 passes his hand over the hieroglyphs and the metal book sings its tales.

Insect imagery is used elsewhere in The Martian Chronicles. 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.

Title: The Martian Chronicles

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. 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. 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: Fruit grows from the crystal walls. A stream trickles through the rooms. A fine mist rains down from the pillars. In contrast, the human house is automated by technology. The two houses symbolize two different approaches to living in the world. The other is artificial. 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. The dream is strange but pleasant. Especially pleasant because Ylla is lonely. 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: 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. The houses and furniture and music remind them all of their childhood homes.

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. Despite all the differences between humans and Martians, we are more alike than different. We all need love. 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.

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. Spender laments how humans have segregated art from life and replaced religion with the theories of Darwin, Huxley, and Freud. 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. But the Martians found a solution. And so can we. Its message is gentle but powerful. My appreciation for it has grown with every rereading. But more than his lyricism, it is his storytelling that I love. The poetic descriptions, the metaphors, the mellifluous sentences, are music to my ears, but the stories are what touch my heart. Mar 20, Werner rated it liked it Recommends it for: I edited this just now to correct a minor typo. Though the 16 stories that comprise this collection are fitted into a super-imposed chronological framework, and are joined by some short units of bridging material, they were originally composed as stand-alones, not part of any larger unity.

Bradbury was primarily a writer of short fiction, the main medium for his characteristic supernatural and science fiction in the era when he started writing; this book simply collects most o Note, Nov. Bradbury was primarily a writer of short fiction, the main medium for his characteristic supernatural and science fiction in the era when he started writing; this book simply collects most of the stories he composed in the s set on, or related to, Mars.

Several of them have totally conflicting or contradictory premises and features, and they vary wildly in tone and effect. They're uneven in quality as well, as noted below. But that said, there are certain recurrent themes that bind them. Bradbury envisioned Mars colonization as a kind of re-enactment of the settling of the American frontier, a new New World with the same pitfalls and the same potential promise.

He also was haunted, as were most post-World War II SF writers working in the long shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the threat of nuclear war, and that concern is reflected in a number of the stories. Some reviewers, both on and off of Goodreads, have faulted Bradbury for a drastic lack of scientific accuracy in his portrayal of Mars, which he pictures as much more hospitable to humanoid life than it actually is.

His ascription to his Martians of psi powers --the possibility of which, to say the least, is undemonstrated-- also doesn't please hard SF purists. To a degree, those criticisms miss the point, however: Bradbury isn't trying to write scientifically accurate, hard SF, and failing at it; rather, he's writing from the standpoint of the genre's "soft" tradition of which he was always an exponent, even in the days when the U. He simply posited the kind of Mars he wanted for the kind of stories he wanted to tell, knowing full well that it was fictional and invented; if we take his "Mars" on those terms, the stories work as he intended.

Criticism has also been directed at these stories on the grounds of an alleged anti-American agenda. South of the s. And several of the stories posit a nuclear war on Earth, with the penultimate story, "There Will Come Soft Rains," graphically portraying the wanton total destruction of life and negation of human science and achievement that such a war would entail. These features, however, do not add up to or prove a root-and-branch essential hostility to America and its values. Bradbury is actually a product of a small-town America that he often evokes with an affectionate nostalgia that's obviously genuine.

The parallel between the fate of Bradbury's Martians and our Indians is real and historically grounded; you can't re-tell American frontier history without facing it --and at least here, the Martians die only of unintentionally-borne disease; they aren't victims of deliberate genocide. It could also be questioned whether the portrayal of Martian attitudes is intended as glowingly positive --Yll, as his wife recognizes, is a cold-blooded xenophobe and murderer.

See a Problem?

But the promise of the frontier as a place of new beginnings, new possibilities and a second chance is also evoked here; one could view that as a positive take on the meaning of the American experience. Criticism of the treatment by some Americans of blacks who are also Americans isn't in itself anti-American; it echoes the sentiment of the song "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," where it says, "God mend thine every flaw.

The only one with any religious message, "Fire Balloons," is simply a wooden preaching of the "gospel" according to Gnosticism: The apostles Paul and John, judging from their letters, would have puked over it. IMO, the poorest story in the group is "The Silent Towns," which showcases the sexism of Bradbury's generation at its worst; it has no message, except ridicule of overweight females and an attempt to generate "humor" at their expense. Overall, though, I liked this collection; obviously, some stories are better than others, but I thought that most worked artistically.

For me, Bradbury's style is a plus; it's lyrical and evocative, and full of appeals to all of the senses. Este libro no es para nada lo que me esperaba, es mejor. Los relatos son variados: Un libro impresionante y un escritor maravilloso. Un punto para Ray Bradbury. What a marvellous book. Well as a book it certainly lived up to my expectations. I don't normally say much about the contents or stories of books I review as I leave that up to the back cover or others to read themselves, but I will say this about The Martian Chronicles or Silver Locusts ; it is a won What a marvellous book.

I don't normally say much about the contents or stories of books I review as I leave that up to the back cover or others to read themselves, but I will say this about The Martian Chronicles or Silver Locusts ; it is a wonderful s and 50s social commentary and as such it is like looking back into history given the dates of when the book is set, most of it is now set in the past anyway.

The racial bigotry that existed during the time comes across very clearly in the book, as well as how Bradbury viewed mans ability for self destruction and disregard of the environment. All things that are still unfortunately very visible in todays world. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the book and can see me reading it again sooner than 40 years time I'm thinking. I've now read 2 Bradbury books in the last 6 months and know why as a teenager I read an awful lot more, I think as well as my challenges that should also be a focus of my reading.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys SF, it is not "hard" or military or opera or any of the other genres, it's just a very good book, well written, enjoy! I had read a lot about The Martian Chronicles before I read this book - and I must say that for a change, the hype was justified. This is an absolutely fantastic piece of literature. I am a bit lenient with the stars in genre fiction - I don't hold them to the exacting standards that I do with literature.

So in SF, if the concept is unusual, it tends to gather five stars. But in case of this book, the five stars have nothing to do with genre. It's purely for the literary merit. There are two write I had read a lot about The Martian Chronicles before I read this book - and I must say that for a change, the hype was justified. There are two writers whose stories grew with me - Roald Dahl and Ray Bradbury.

I first enjoyed their stories as a pre-teen, right through my teens and youth: They are about mankind, its infinite need to expand and push the boundaries: It is about exploration, the meeting between alien races who interact and destroy one another without meaning to, most of the time. It is about the casual disrespect of an uppity race and their callous disregard for a centuries-old culture they cannot understand.

It is about man, who thinks might is right and that most disputes can be settled with firearms. Ultimately, it is about man who looks on the ruins of his own world, brought about by his own hands, and dreams of building another civilisation on top of it. Reading Ray Bradbury is the sheer, unalloyed pleasure of losing oneself among the pages of a book: Mars is just a prop: These stories skirt the thin boundary between hard SF and fantasy, and do it masterfully.

But ultimately they address human concerns, as all good literature does. The Martian Chronicles 14 13 Nov 24, The Martian Chronicles 18 85 Nov 24, The Martian Chronicles discussion 8 15 Nov 24, August group read - The Martian Chronicles 53 47 Nov 23, Ray Douglas Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L. He became a full-time writer in , and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in , which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences.

Next came The Illustrated Man and then, in , Fahrenheit , which many consider to be Bradbury's masterpiece, a scathing indictment of censorship set in a future world where the written word is forbidden. In an attempt to salvage their history and culture, a group of rebels memorize entire works of literature and philosophy as their books are burned by the totalitarian state. In all, Bradbury has published more than thirty books, close to short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays.

His short stories have appeared in more than 1, school curriculum "recommended reading" anthologies. He has been awarded the O. Ray Bradbury has never confined his vision to the purely literary. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's Ray Bradbury Theater. In he created the interior metaphors for the Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center, Disney World, and later contributed to the conception of the Orbitron space ride at Euro-Disney, France.

Married since , Mr. Bradbury and his wife Maggie lived in Los Angeles with their numerous cats. Together, they raised four daughters and had eight grandchildren. Sadly, Maggie passed away in November of On the occasion of his 80th birthday in August , Bradbury said, "The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me.

If you create a free account and sign in, you will be able to customize what is displayed. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. The Martian Chronicles Webpages: If you have a copy of a Bantam edition then please update Author: The later Folio printings add Jacques Chambon as translator revisions? Gumus Cekirgeler Gumush Chekirgeler. This collection follows the English edition from which had been revised by the author by adding the stories "The fire balloons" and "The wilderness" and by changing the date of all stories.

Used for all hardbacks of any size. Typically 7" by 4. Any softcover book which is at least 7. The publication record was created from a secondary source and the publication format is unknown. The Complete Series, Vol. The Best Novels , reprinted in: Copyright c Al von Ruff.

• sokogashiritaizatsudannokotsuwakaruhanaserutsukaminojyugobyohousoku (Japanese Edition)
• Dinosaurs & Whiskey (August Summers Book 1)
• A Green Bay Tree
• Out Of Line
• Little Black Book of Economic Development, 2nd Edition (Economic Development Practitioner)
• Energy Speaks
• Hormones, Estrogen, and Menopause (Alternative Medicine Book 12)