The Martian Chronicles

Book review – The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury Every small New England town should have a good library, a used books store, and a craft brewery. My small slice of suburbia has all three. I try to patronize each with my pitiful bourgeoise largess. The modern incarnation of the small-town craft brewery is akin to the coffee houses of the enlightenment. There gather the town’s philosophers, folk singers, gamers and other restless, intellectual tipplers. So naturally I find myself ensconced there on a weekly basis. To avoid being that weird duck sitting in a corner nursing a well-drawn ESB and reading a book I try to interact. This is how we get back to Ray Bradbury and his Martian Chronicles. While dissipating myself at the brewery I noticed that there was a book club that met there on occasion. I inquired and asked to join. Because I am at that ‘tired warrior’ phase of my life and career where I have the time and the small spots of calm water to do things like write novels and join book clubs. I was accepted. The only catch was that they would meet in two weeks and at that meeting they would be reviewing The Martian Chronicles. I quickly navigated to ThriftBooks and ordered a copy. It would be a tight thing to get a copy and read it in the time frame allocated for the task, but, hey, if there is anything I’m good at, it’s reading old sci-fi novels. And ‘old sci-fi novel’ it was. When it showed up it was a fragile mass market paperback from, I’m guessing 1969 or ’70. A thing that someone would have stuffed into their pocket as they strolled Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love. The yellowing pages were flaky and dim, densely packed with that hard to read typewriter font. Not the easiest thing to navigate for my old warrior eyes, but somehow fitting to the purpose, the time and the place of the novel and writer. I thought I had read The Martian Chronicles. Maybe sometime in my youth? But, now, having read, or re-read, I’m not so sure. I know my kids were involved in a theater production of it in prep school. It felt generally familiar but not specifically. Bradbury was a story writer. Bradbury started writing stories at a young age and kept up a consistent output throughout his life resulting in these opportunities to ‘novelize’ sets of stories around themes. In this case the theme was Mars. He is probably best known for Fahrenheit 451, his great paean against the book burners. Which began as a short story called “The Fireman”. The Martian Chronicles, released in 1950 as a published novelization of Mars stories, predates the publication of Fahrenheit 451 in 1953. It is one of, if not the, earliest of his novels. I have read other Bradbury. I enjoyed The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes. These are also collections of stories that have been loosely strung together into novels. But, tying this review back to the opening theme, as authors sometimes do…Did I finish reading my old, crunchy, copy of Martian Chronicles in time for my first foray into local brewery book club? Of course I did. Did I love it? It did not make me sit up and wag my tail, but I appreciated it for what it was. A surrealist set of stories based in its own time and place. That place and time was a America in the immediacy of post World War II. What I like about Bradbury is his craft. It is very American and reminds me a lot of Steinbeck in style and pacing. Essentially a homey, slice of life, small town Americana, except on Mars. Each of these stories reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode. Subtly surrealist with a moral without being too in your face with the message. Steinbeck and Rod Serling were contemporaries of Bradbury. Bradbury when asked would never admit to being a science fiction author. But he used science fiction the way it should be used; as camouflage for interrogating the good and bad points of human nature. In the Martian Chronicles he pokes at genocide, American rapacity, environmental destruction, heedless trampling of history, racism and governmental overreach into culture and the arts. But he did all this in such a way to not rile anyone up. Although the book was banned in some southern states, presumably for painting racism in a bad light, and that didn’t happen until the 80’s. There was also the nuclear apocalypse theme which was so prevalent in the 1950’s as the cold war raged. In the back of my Bantam paperback edition you could mail in 75 cents to get a copy of Alas, Babylon and/or A Canticle for Leibowitz, both excellent nuclear apocalypse novels contemporary with the Martian Chronicles. In summary, this little collection of stories about Mars is a bit anachronistic, but still relevant, and an excellent time capsule for its time and place. Postscript The other members of the book club had newer, library versions of Martian Chronicles. And we discovered that the newer versions have replaced a chapter in the original work. That original chapter was about the exodus of African Americans to Mars called “Way in the middle of the air”. This old chapter had some racist characters acting badly. It was essentially a commentary on fleeing oppression to freedom. The new chapter inserted in its place is something about priests that Bradbury wrote in 1972. I don’t really know, because it’s not in my old dog-eared version. As near as we can tell the change was made due to pressure from some southern states sometime in the 1980’s. That swap seems ironic to me from the author of Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel written during the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Bradbury’s themes, unfortunately, are as relevant today as they were in the 1950’s.

A science fiction compilation of stories. Ray Bradbury's tales are always very thoughtful. This is one of his best books. The story that I liked the most, was titled: “And The Moon Be Still As Bright”. It moved me, and I really recommend it.

May f*#k you up

A masterpiece.

sci-fi horror blend at its best