The Martian Chronicles Book Review

Chronicles were written in the middle of the last century, the theme was inspired by the fear of nuclear war, and each short story is dated. “January 1999. Rocket Summer”, ”December 2001. Green Morning”, etc. It is joyful to realize that people, the humanity, have already skipped these dates, are alive, and planet Earth is alive. In all of Bradbury’s works, including The Martian Chronicles, there is a certain dreary note, sadness that makes us think about the fragility of the world in which we live, this feeling is deep and penetrating into the soul. Individual stories leave a strong impression, especially the short story ”They were swarthy and golden-eyed”, although it is not included in the Chronicle proper, it is on the same topic. But here it is dated 2026, a stunning, incredibly poignant, and soul-chilling story with the gentle title ”There will be gentle rain.” The Martian Chronicles have a frank subtext, the idea that the writer wanted to convey to the readers, people must take care of the Earth before it is too late because humanity has only one home. 

The Plot Analysis

Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in America in a poor family, Ray’s father was a descendant of the British pioneers, and his mother was Swedish. As Bradbury himself said, there was no money to enter the university, even just to buy a book, so he very often went to the library and read, at the age of 27 he graduated from the library instead of the university. The genre of his works is often a cross between science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature. In addition to well-known novels and short stories, Bradbury wrote poetry and fairy tales, which, unfortunately, were not very popular. Ray dreamed of living to be a hundred years old but died after an illness at 91 (“Ray Bradbury”). Bradbury managed to develop his potential by reading a vast amount of literature. Essentially, every work of his is a reference to another piece or scientific discovery.

The Martian Chronicles collection includes 26 stories, each can be read separately, each has its own characters, and each plot practically does not intersect with others. Only they are all connected with Mars, not all about Mars because there are those where this planet is simply chosen as the scene of action, and the author wants to share with us, not at all space adventures. Bradbury has such a language, it creates an atmosphere, in his books, it is just nice to come to visit, like old friends. It is curious to read about our time (the chronology of events unfolds from 2000 to 2026), as the author sees it from his present (Sevilla Vallejo 254). The evident connection between the stories in one way or another draws a line of the universal interconnectedness, with Bradbury attempting to point out that all things in the world are related to a certain degree.

So far, only men, and only white men, are in leadership positions there, humanoid robots are easily made there, but other delights of technological progress have so far frozen in their development, a look from the past. There are many topics that are pleasant and interesting to think about even after reading. The plot of the novel is built on the basis of short stories and short stories, but each of them is not a continuation of the previous one (Gioia). This makes it somewhat difficult to read since the characters are constantly changing, either the readers meet with Lafarge, then this is Samuel, then Spender. Because of this, it was difficult to imagine the numerous heroes of the book, also because of the unusualness of their names and the lack of a description of their appearance and characters.

Conclusion

Ray Bradbury became famous after his novel The Martian Chronicles in 1950. At the moment, the novel is 64 years old, but it is still very popular and known to many, it is a collection of stories about the problems of people, namely Americans, of that time, 50 years. The plot is very interesting and original, in my opinion: the relocation of people to Mars. The ”Martian Chronicles” contains stories, both about people and about Martians, which, as you read, make you laugh, and think, some stories frighten, and frighten every cell of the body, forcing you to experience the heroes all the events that happen to them.

Works Cited

”Ray Bradbury”. Biography, 2021, https://www.biography.com/writer/ray-bradbury.

Gioia, Ted. ”The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury”. Conceptual Fiction, 2022, http://www.conceptualfiction.com/Martian_Chronicles.html.

Sevilla Vallejo, Santiago. ”How Can We Become Conscious of Our Martianhood?”. Teaching Language and Literature On And Off-Canon, 2020, pp. 240-261. IGI Global, https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-3379-6.ch014. Accessed 3 June 2022.