The Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury

May 2013 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

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, including Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes; essays, theatrical works, screenplays and teleplays; The Illustrated Man, 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.

Ratings and reviews

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles to some, may seem deceiving at first glance. When I first discovered this book, I thought it would be nothing more than just another outdated formulaic sci-fi story from the golden age; more spectacle than substance. But, when I opened the book and got my first taste of Bradbury's mesmerizing prose, before I knew it, I was on the very last page, desperately wishing for a thousand more. The Martian Chronicles, although about Mars, is more a story about humanity. From Religion to Colonialism to Isolation, Bradbury tackles a wide range of themes in a way that simultaneously forces the reader to not only look outwards and asses his reality, but to also look inwards and imagine themselves in these situations. The book in my opinion is in its own genre. I attribute this to how Bradbury doesn't work with absolutes when telling his story. The book is neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the future and the majority of characters in the book are neither "good" nor are they "bad". The Martian Chronicles takes the reader on a journey consisting of a variety of emotions, situations, and outcomes, starkly separating it from the various one note optimistic sci-fi stories coming out at the time, and making the story a truly timeless classic.

Bradbury and I don't usually get along. I listen to books often when I'm out working in the field. Some I love, some I delete a few chapters in. This one was a decent listen. I wasn't impressed but I wasn't disappointed. It was a casual story with occasional depth. Overall, I'd recommend it.

I have always loved the mixture of hope coupled with despair in his stories. but don't linger on the despair; cling to the hope.

About the author

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.