The Martian Chronicles

By Ray Bradbury

The strange and wonderful tale of man’s experiences on Mars, filled with intense images and astonishing visions. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection.

The Martian Chronicles tells the story of humanity’s repeated attempts to colonize the red planet. The first men were few. Most succumbed to a disease they called the Great Loneliness when they saw their home planet dwindle to the size of a fist. They felt they had never been born. Those few that survived found no welcome on Mars. The shape-changing Martians thought they were native lunatics and duly locked them up.

But more rockets arrived from Earth, and more, piercing the hallucinations projected by the Martians. People brought their old prejudices with them – and their desires and fantasies, tainted dreams. These were soon inhabited by the strange native beings, with their caged flowers and birds of flame.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Feb 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9780007496976

Ray Bradbury

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.

Reviews for The Martian Chronicles

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The numbers grew steadily in proportion to the census of Earth Men already on Mars. There was comfort in numbers. But the first Lonely Ones had to stand by themselves.

Bradbury's work here can be read as a suicide note, a confession extracted at the end of a gun. Despite the conformist prosperity of the 1950s, it wasn't a hopeful time for many people. I am obviously not referring to minorities. The successive world wars and devastation of Europe and Asia were still present, though the sides had now changed and technology now offered the hand of God to the bold. Von Braun managed that shift without blinking, space appeared a cozy alternative to whatever batshit dogmatism we could manage down here. Martian Chronicles often shimmers but is largely stale. Perhaps that is the pioneer's fate. My favorite episode is when the black people all leave the South for the unknown of Mars. The hollow idiocy of racism stands there flummoxed, gaping at the heavens.

[dandelionroots · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Welcome to my devour list, Bradbury. So impressed that this novel is as powerful as it is given its genesis is a string of independent short stories taking place on Mars. Within a span of 25 years, humanity manages to land on Mars, annihilate the native populace, wreak havoc on Earth decimating the human population (nuclear warfare), and ultimately survive to rebuild and destroy anew (or can our manifest destiny drive be channeled into something more symbiotic with our surroundings? can Mars/anything mold man into a more sustainable/conscientious species?). A fucking amazing and multi-faceted portrayal of humanity (so many characteristics creatively illustrated in such a short work). Even the ending was perfect.

[addunn3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ah, I should have read it when I was a kid. This is a collection of stories wrapped around the arrival of man on Mars. This is a classic!

[heidilove_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

these stories work together to present a novel of a view of mars. though it was written ever so long ago, the timliness of these stories is still valid, and a tribute to bradbury.

[crowyhead · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Magnificent stories -- some poignant, others frightening or humorous. Highly recommended.

[wattsian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I give this five stars in my first encounter in my teens. Now that I've read a dozen or more books from this idiosyncratic, American, wild science fiction and mystery and Hollywood nostalgia author, I dig other books better. But, boy ... Boy.

[odinblindeye · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I just love Ray Bradbury. He has a way of making you think about the subjects he writes in a different and unique way. Each story is packed with a multitude of underlying questions of ethics, revenge, and the definition of people. It's been a long time coming for me reading this book, as it was one of my blind spots. Excellent, fantastic, and well worth the wait.

[therebelprince · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Possibly my favourite Bradbury work, this is a seriously transcendent piece of literature, that had a disproportionate impact on my writing and critical faculties. It's not perfect, certainly, int its elements of Bradbury's usual flaws as a writer and in its occasional sledgehammer subtlety yet... that's to request something of the book which it is not, which is surely bad criticism. This is wonderful.

[zoes_human · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I couldn't begin to tell you how many times I've read this book. No one else can write a short story quite like Bradbury. He has a dark insight into the worst part of humanity, and he can chill you to the bone in a mere two pages. There's a succinct quality to his work. In a single sentence, he can reveal human nature in a way that other writers struggle to do with 500 page tomes. There's a streak of horror in his work as well, and what makes it truly terrifying is that the thing he makes you fear is us.

[cassandrat-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There many things I like about this book and there many things I dislike. I believe I like the vignette format and I like Ray Bradbury's writing but the lack of faith in humanity bothers me. Some of it is very beautiful and some of it is very disappointing. Since women seem to not have characters in this future, the portrayal of women contributes to my unshakeable dissatisfaction. Four stars anyway... When it works it works.

[greeniezona · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Read aloud as a bedtime story for my twelve-year-old. Overall it was pretty well-suited for reading aloud.We particularly enjoyed the early chapters that were more outright critiques of colonialism and first contact. The kids also liked the chapter written after "The Fall of the House of Usher." One chapter had so much racism that my kid got more and more upset until we finally decided just to skip it. Also, the story of the last man on Mars finding the last woman on Mars contained enough sexism and fat-shaming that he repeatedly scoffed about what a jerk the protagonist of the chapter was. Over all we liked it. It wasn't quite what my twelve-year-old expected and wasn't quite what I remembered. The science and tech predictions haven't aged particularly well. But it's definitely a classic.

[andrlik · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I first read this book in middle school, and it was one of my first introductions to Ray Bradbury's writing. It's a magical work, really a collection of short stories, but as always it's Bradbury's thorough understanding of human nature that sets him apart. Well, that and his prose. I could die a happy man if I ever wrote something that affected people as profoundly as Bradbury's work affects me.

[electrascaife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A piercing - yet still loving in many ways - look at human nature through the idea of the colonization of Mars. Bradbury's writing is stunning, of course.

[emma_mc_8 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow, I really, really loved this. I found it interesting and surprising and thought-provoking. There are several stories that I want to read again and again. Bravo, Bradbury.

[renbedell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fantastic set of short stories that are loosely connected about the first encounters on Mars and the colonization of it. Each story has its own theme that is incredible and thought provoking. They can be humorous, haunting, or suspenseful. I loved each one as they would blow my mind on concepts that I would have never thought of. Incredible book!

[theampersand · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful but not always successful book. While it's been called one of the first classic science fiction novels, it's hard to say what "The Martian Chronicles" really is. Is the story of Earth's conquest of Mars sort of a space Western, with the red planet playing the role of the American West and the doomed, mysterious Martians playing the role of the Native Americans? Is it an Atomic Age warning about the dangers of technology and human greed? Is it an attempt to confront an alien culture or reverie about small-town American values? In the end, I think it's the jarring combination of both of these last two things -- the utterly unfamiliar and the hopelessly corny -- that really undoes the book. The author seems to take pains to depict the Martians as having values utterly unlike our own: they're psychic beings obsessed with aesthetics, beauty, and balance, but even before the Earthmen appear, Bradbury also, in some respects, portrays them as not too different from fifties-era suburban American families. "The Martian Chronicles" is one of those books that goes a million miles without seeming, in some ways, to leave the author's backyard. The book is full of fifties quaintness -- the sort of cloying stuff that you can see in the period's studio Hollywood pictures and sanitized TV shows, which was mercilessly skewered by the generations that followed -- and I'm not sure if aspects of it didn't seem gauzy and dated on the way that it was published. Bradbury was, of course, a sort of chronicler of small-town Midwestern life, but it serves him rather badly here. You'd have to be an American to take Bradbury's glowing depictions of American consumer culture and friendly small-town life at all seriously. No wonder so many European science fiction writers chose to ignore most of what American science fiction writers produced: Bradbury puts us on Mars, but then shows us drugstores, movie theaters, hot dog stands, and chocolate malteds. His future is specifically, and, perhaps, in places, knowingly American, but it also makes his vision seem a bit parochial. Much of "The Martian Chronicles" seems like an uncomfortable juxtaposition of futurism and nostalgia. When it works, it works because Bradbury is, at the sentence level, such a good writer. The parts of "The Martian Chronicles" that describe the Martians and the structures that they leave behind are genuinely haunting and beautiful: you can feel the ruins' silence and power. The guy was a real master of atmosphere. Whatever other problems it might have, "The Martian Chronicles" remains a joy to read. Before he died, Bradbury voiced support for the Tea Party movement, which caused a lot of anguish in leftish literary circles. But I don't think that, as some suggested, he was just going senile: there's a lot of forthrightly populist material here, particularly in the chapter in which a man constructs a replica of Poe's "House of Usher" in which to trap and kill a bunch of academic social-improvement types who would criticize or ban fantasy literature. Of course, Bradbury's political views also seem to contain some particularly, maddeningly American contradictions. His Mars seems, like many Westerns, a vision of an unspoilt anarchist/libertarian paradise, which makes his obsession with comfortable American domesticity all the weirder, to say nothing of his own clearly literary pretensions and his reverence for Martians as a spiritually oriented, aesthetically refined civilization. The gee-whiz tone of some of the book and the author's obvious pessimism about the inescapable self-destructiveness of human nature are also difficult to reconcile. Personally, though, I can't take battle cries against censorship too seriously from an author whose work doesn't contain a trace of sex, little explicit violence, and, from a certain perspective, not too much psychological danger, either. The tone of this book is sometimes mournful, often awestruck, but generally placid. The lady doth protest too much: while it was written in the first days of the Comics Code, there's nothing here that seems worth censoring. "The Martian Chronicles" is, in a sense, a fine read, but I ended up respecting its author a bit less after reading it. How many times do you hear yourself saying something like that?

[tabatha014 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Man this book got me thinking!!! And quite frankly it was a little disturbing. But that being said it was really good! Probably one of my favorites!

[phoibee-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you like to read science fiction & short stories, I highly recommend this book. Here are some stories I enjoyed the most:

August 1999: The Earth Men
They declared that they were from the Earth. The people on the planet Tyrr were not impressed.

April 2000: The Third Expedition
Captain John Black's expedition to Mars. They saw familiar faces.

August 2002: Night Meeting
Tomas Gomez meets a Martian.

June 2003: Way in the middle of the air
He said he can't publish this story on 1949.
The story is about black people who did not rely on the politicians and set themselves free with technology.

April 2005: Usher II
This is where Fahrenheit 451 started. I haven't read Poe's Amonticillo so I'm convinced I should read it.

I listened to an audiobook of Martian Chronicles narrated by Ray Bradbury. I like that he added commentaries. After finishing the audiobook, he said that he was more optimistic than he was when he wrote this. He believed that we are going to Mars not to runaway from ourselves but to fulfill ourselves. If he would write it again, it will have a different ending. But, he said that he has total respect to the young person than he was. After reading the final chapter, he was touched by the feeling that he put in it for these people and for their hope and the face of annihilation to exist in the universe and eventually to move on out to the stars.
"I believe that we will someday live among the stars and live forever."

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to the audiobook and in the introduction the author tells the reader how the Chronicles came to be. He also tells the reader that this is not science fiction because there is no science. It is a collection of short stories that are at the same time good prose, philosophy and story telling. The stories share some connections and are about colonizing Mars by humans from earth. Time period covered is from the 2000 to 2026. The author wrote them as short stories but later was encouraged to publish them as a book so there are some short vignettes to connect the stories. I think the publishing date is 1950 for the first edition by Doubleday. The genres are considered to be Science fiction, Post-apocalyptic fiction, Horror, Dystopian fiction. There is a lot of literary influence in these stories. Bradbury said the John Carter of Mars books and Harold Foster's 1931 series of Tarzan Sunday comics had such an impact on his life that "The Martian Chronicles would never have happened" otherwise. Bradbury cited the Barsoom stories and Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson as literary influences. I liked the Fire Balloons that addresses evangelism and Christianity and the concept of sin in other beings. Especially interesting was Usher II which addresses censorship and moral police (House of Usher, Poe) and would later be revisited when the author wrote Fahrenheit 451. And the last story, The Million Year Picnic, reminds me of an Adam Eve type story. Over all, you can tell that these stories are dated and the audio was good but not exceptional in any way. While the stories are dated you can still recognize how a book written in 1950 contributed to a lot of current literature and it does capture the age it was written (cold war, fear of blowing up the earth, rocketry). Rating 3.875

[laurochka-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. Each tale had its own melancholy. Mars was perhaps too believable but its destiny was also disappointingly believable. A bleak vision, beautifully written.

[csaulpaugh-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. It gave a very different view of life and really brought you to a different dimension.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting to see how different a colonisation tale written by a thoroughly American writer is from those of people who come from more traditionally colonial powers. Dated at times but generally an impressive collection of stories.

[Asuna Kirisaki · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am truly hoping there will be another book to this one. I look forward to reading more. If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to [e-mail] or [e-mail]

[charrlygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Martian Chronicles is an amazing collection of interconnected stories about Mars. Human missions to Mars, religious missions to Mars, nervous breakdowns on Mars, etc... Even though some of the tales are outdated by today's views, the underlying values and messages remain the same; they are timeless.

Some of the stories have been released previously, and some have been changed over the years. I discovered, thanks to Wiki, that one tale having to do with race relations, was not included in this collection at all. I'm not sure it really matters, but just know that this anthology is NOT the same as it was upon its original release.

There's not much new I can add to what's already been said about The Martian Chronicles. Ray Bradbury's writing is so simple, yet so evocative-he can get across in just a few words what it takes me paragraphs to say. 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. My highest recommendation!

[thetruebookaddict · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I remember reading this when I was a girl, but I really didn't remember too much about it. Not surprising since that was probably over 35 years ago. I enjoy Bradbury's books because there is always a message. In this book, the message I gleaned was that humans aren't happy unless they're conquering and destroying. We arrive on Mars to the detriment of the Martians who currently inhabit the planet. The Martians try to stop our arrivals, but it's no use...we're relentless. My absolute favorite chapter was April 2036: Usher II. This was a masterful and fun variation on Poe's famous story, The Fall of the House of Usher.

[jddunn_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's always just a bit dangerous to re-read one of my adolescent touchstones. I've found that far too often, they haven't held up well in the cold light of my adult sensibilities and allegiances. And I was even more apprehensive about Bradbury, because his crotchety, reactionary turn in his dotage is well known and lamented. It's tempting to look for the seeds of that in his earlier work, and you can definitely find them to varying degrees in the form of his pastoralist nostalgia, his largely unexamined issues with expertise and authority, his hyper-individualistic outlook, and his overdeveloped persecution complex about what would later be known as political correctness. Bradbury certainly had a conservative temperament and aesthetic, if he wasn't yet a conservative idealogue.However, the good news is that he wasn't, and while all of those tendencies are on display here, they're restrained and put to use in the service of much more worthy ends. His pastoralism is neatly subverted in "The Third Mission," where the idyllic American small town of his youth turns out to be a death trap. His PC persecution complex at least leads to some good if implausible meta-literary fun in "Usher II". But what's most interesting is that he deploys these conservative impulses mostly in the service of what we'd think of today as liberal causes. He tackles racism in "Way in the Middle of the Air," sexism in "Ylla", "Madness and Civilization" sorts of issues regarding the societal construction of mental illness in "The Earth Men", and nuclear weapons and ecology throughout. He even displays an almost Edward Abbeyesque radical environmentalism in "The Moon Be Still As Bright," which for me is the best story in the collection. This is pretty progressive stuff for the early Fifties. Politics aside though, what sticks with you from the Martian Chronicles and what makes it great is the imagination and the atmosphere. It's just a short story collection, but it manages to create and embody a world and a culture and an era in ways that subsequent huge multi-volume Scifi series can't approach. I've read quite a bit of Mars literature since The Martian Chronicles, but Bradbury's Mars is still the Mars I see in my mind, and that's quite an accomplishment.

[danielstj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a riveting collection of fiction by famed master Ray Bradbury about life on Mars from all different sides and angles. The language verges on the poetic, infused with extraplanetary wonder and possibility. It was a good, solid collection of reminiscences and possibilities woven into a narrative scheme. It should be essential reading for those interested in Bradbury or sci-fi.3.5 stars.

[obtusata · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a re-read for me. I often cite The Martian Chronicles as being one of many pivotal books for me as it helped me to discover an author who'd work I loved at a time when I was just so over reading all the teenage crap. I love Bradbury's stories and this collection does not disappoint. It's a series of tales about Mars, Martians, and Earthlings rise, fall, and determination on Mars.

While the stories are fascinating, one thing I noticed and had a hard time ignoring was the boring gender stereotypes. It makes sense that Bradbury stuck to what he knew (men are heroes, women are their wives), but it felt more foreign to me than the Martian's and their lifestyles did. As a woman, I have a hard time with these back-burner roles women are relegated to. II find that I have to remind myself, on occasion, that the stories were written several decades ago and that the author's inability (or unwillingness) to imagine a bolder future for people (women adventurers, nurturing men, etc.) doesn't take away from the stories which are already full of rich imagination and bold ideas.

So, yes, the gender stereotypes are annoying, but the stories are still good and I still love Bradbury's work.

[agentx216 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I enjoy Bradbury and enjoy his writing style and subjects. However, this vignette collection didn't really hit the mark for me. There were some hits but there were story sections that I didn't really get. I appreciated the style and the different story structure so it wasn't that. The fall of Earth was really the best string shared among the stories and that's about it. Not enough meat for me. Final Grade - D

[soniaandree_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading this book left me with a bitter taste of sadness, for some reason. The successive (and relatively short) chapters didn't prepare me for the way the narrative was going to end - it is a great skill indeed to go from one chapter to chapter, expecting and hoping for things to end up well, and then finish with an anticlimactic ending. Martians are *humans* in character and way of life - they don't welcome alien (human) colonial endeavours because it disturbs ordinary life. From chapter to chapter, successive attempts at bringing in humans succeed, at great cost - the disappearance of alien civilization. But humans do not change their ways, either on Earth or Mars, which will ultimately be the reason behind their downfall. This book is easy to read, very short but still conveys great feelings and thoughts about humanity. The utopian dream of a human colony ends up a failure, which is sad. I recommend this book even to those who don't like science-fiction, as it doesn't feel like science-fiction.