The Martian Chronicles
Ratings473
Average rating4
A collection of stories about the Mars colonization. They're presented in a chronological order, from the first rocked launching to the post-apocalyptic life on earth. Some are good, a few really good.
The first stories are a bit comical and witty. They talk about how the first missions failed somewhat due to human eagerness to receive a heroes welcome when arriving in mars. No one there seemed to care.
to be continued
3.5
Would love if they made these stories into a movie or limited tv series. It gave me black mirror/twilight zone vibes.
SUMMARY: Man, was a a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in wave... Each wave different, and each wave stronger. The Martian ChroniclesRay 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 Mein, 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.
Lu avec les cinquièmes. Pas sûr que ça leur ait plu. Je ne m'attendais pas à ça. Un roman philosophique à mes humbles yeux.
Sometimes whimsical, sometimes prescient, this is a collection of stories of earthlings landing on Mars. As it progresses we realise that they are chapters of a continuing narrative with a dark undercurrent of how readily we otherise certain communities.
It's hard to set a particular date to the stories. Some seem to be set in the future and some in a bygone era of the American south.
The overall feel of the book is that I started out reading an innocent story that ended up with an unexpected sting in its tail.
Que forma de escribir! Que forma de narrar!! Nunca pensé que la ciencia ficción podría ser escrita de esta forma. Me ha encantado, coronado como top 3 libros favoritos y en un futuro relectura asegurada!
I really can't tell you why I put off reading this for literal years, it's so good.
My last book for age 27 😭.
Beautifully written as always. Ray Bradbury's works always reads poetic and lyrical. Sometimes you forget that this book was published in 1950 but OTHER TIMES you are very reminded.
It's wild how different times were when this book was written. It's wild that this imaginative author could imagine a Martian society a decade before humans first reached space but could not imagine a desegregated US just a handful of years before the first laws against it were put into motion. (Let's be clear this book is very much anti-racist, it just says a lot for the beliefs of the time.) Also, widely America (US) centric, which is another thing I blame on the time it was written.
This is precisely my kind of fiction. There's no consistent characters, which makes me more interested in each one as they come up, and more fascinated by their respective scenes and ideas. Not everything makes sense, but this is the kind of book where I'm rather ok with that. This is supposed to be cautionary and unsettling, and it does a good job of being all of that. I'm not sure if this is old enough to be considered a classic, but if it is, it has become one of my favorite works of classic literature.
Temporary DNF at 20%.
I'm simply not in the mood for this book right now. I will likely come back to it one day.
This book is set on mars but has very human stories, often dealing with loneliness and loss. The chapters almost read like an anthology and were tied together by the setting and passing of time. Overall I enjoyed the book, but the anthology-like structure had some chapters feeling experimental and often disrupted the momentum of the story.
On another note, I enjoy the artifacts an author leaves behind once their work is aged by a few decades (or more). Whether it's Martian wives serving in their gendered role as household caretakers (on mars!), or the overall theme of war always being an inescapable, close thing. It's obvious to see the influence of 1950s America on Bradbury. I've started looking up authors before I read their books so that I understand where they're coming from, and it's always gratifying to see how the world may have been influencing them from that time.
1) Confesh: I had never read this before (I did Fahrenheit 451 in high school, not this), and I prob wouldn't have picked this up if it hadn't been for book club. But! I'm glad I did, I enjoyed it more than I expected too (which may sound like faint praise but, whatev).
2) At book club we discovered that there's a difference between pre- and post-1997 editions–I read a post-1997 edition and it swaps out one story (which is apparently pretty racist per those who read it) for 2 other ones, one of which was “The Fire Balloons” which was one of my very favorites in the whole book. (The newer edition also changes the dates within the book, which, whatever.)
3) Anyway, I'm glad I have read this now! Like yeah even with the removal of the apparently very racist story from the earlier edition, the gender politics are dated (and there is one story that is supes fatphobic in addition to misogynistic) and now it's a story of presumed only white characters, but it was overall a quick fun read and I could def see how influential it is on other works.
Grandes alegorías sobre el colonialismo, la guerra, la soledad y el descubrimiento gracias a la pluma de Ray Bradbury.
Si bien hay conceptos ya rebasados por la tecnología actual, las temáticas e ideas trascienden y puentean el abismo entre la imaginación de un futuro pasado con la realidad presente.
I don't know what I expected, but this wasn't it. I knew it was considered a classic. It is a collection of thematic vignettes of varying lengths, from just a few paragraphs to several pages. The book is short. The beginning was rather cheeky, with several expeditions to Mars and the results of them. I found the middle of the book a bit meandering, but it really hit its stride with several of the longer stories being very riveting.
My favorite stories were:
–And the Moon be Still As Bright - a commentary on colonialism
Usher II (which I found brilliant) - a commentary on the cost of censorship
The Martian - a commentary on loss and grief
The Luggage Store - a pithy short but meaningful conversation
The Off Season - where the plot takes a dark turn
The Silent Towns - a statement on our materialism and shallowness
The Long Years - where not everything is as it seems
There Will Come Soft Rains - almost a meditation on the potential disaster of nuclear war
The Million-Year Picnic - a poignant end
Having gone back through the book to pull out my favorites made me realize how much I did enjoy the book. It provoked a lot of thought.
One thing to be aware of, though, is one story (Way in the Middle of the Air) that addresses racism through the eyes of racists in the Jim Crow south and is one of the few stories that take place on Earth. It is disturbing in its portrayal of the bigotry and actions of the main character and in the repeated use of the n-word. It does not feel as gratuitous and “natural” as the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, but is jarring nonetheless. It is a commentary on racism, and having been written in 1948 by a white man lacks any subtlety, but fits the theme of the book in calling out humanity's shortcomings.
Overall a very good book and it entices me to want to read more of Bradbury. The prose is often beautiful, full of imagery and poetic phrases.
Wow! This book was a great experience from start to finish. It has a wide berth and captures so many emotions and grand ideals.
This is a very good collection of stories, all tied together in a nice alternative world. The writing is elegant and so the scenes come out of the pages in very vivid color. Classy.
Realmente es un libro que me sorprendió. No era lo que me imaginaba, muy fácil de leer y super interesante. Nos lleva a través de una linea temporal en la que en varias expediciones los humanos visitan Marte -de ahí el nombre- y vamos conociendo el planeta y a sus habitantes.
Cada crónica es distinta, aún así diría que te dejan sumido en una misma sensación: alerta, misterioso y que quieres avanzar a la siguiente. ¿Algún día conoceremos más sobre ese planeta? ¿Conoceremos a sus habitantes? O tal vez ya lo hicimos... y no sabemos
Marte non è altro che una seconda America
Ho un altissima considerazione per quest'opera, che inizialmente mi ha destabilizzato. Nella mia ignoranza mi aspettavo una storia tendente all'hard sci-fi, mentre l'opera è focalizzata su aspetti antropologici e sociologici, a discapito dei dettagli tecnici e della coerenza. Infatti Marte non è sempre la stessa Marte nei racconti, i Marziani non son sempre gli stessi, e in realtà è tutto un semplice pretesto perché per Bradbury Marte è nient'altro che un'altra Terra. Questo è dovuto alla natura fix-up della raccolta, che tuttavia contiene un ordine cronologico che divide l'opera in parti dedicate rispettivamente a conquista, colonizzazione e declino.
Un titolo meno d'impatto, ma forse più adeguato sarebbe stato Cronache Umane (o Terrestri), perché non si manca mai di parlare dell'uomo, delle sue speranze, delle sue paure e dei suoi più intimi sogni e incubi. Una serie di racconti, non tutti dello stesso calibro, ma tutti narrati brillantemente, che hanno saputo stimolare in me riflessioni e inquietudini.
È un opera densa di idee e di critica, da rileggere e da sottolineare. Ha un respiro più ampio rispetto a Farnheit 451 e affronta temi diversi, in una cornice fantascientifica, Bradbury dipinge l'umanitá nel suo peggio.
“Ma in fin dei conti, che cos'è questa maggioranza e da chi è composta? e che cosa pensa, come fa a fare quello che fa, non cambierà mai? e io, soprattutto, come ho fatto a trovarmici in mezzo, a questa marcia maggioranza? Non mi ci trovo bene, io. Si tratta forse di claustrofobia, di paura della folla, o semplicemente di buon senso?”
At first, I was not sure what to make of the stories here, and it ended up riding the shelf for some time before I returned to it. Bradbury's writing has a beautiful quality while still being quite accessible. I like that this is a collection of stories. While they have a shared narrative, each has its own personality, allowing us to see from many different perspectives.
Like C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, The Martian Chronicles are not scientifically accurate. In fact, the book is less about the science of space as it is about people. Each story tells about human nature from a different perspective. In the end, our fallen nature will bring us to be the ruin of ourselves.
I didn't have an expectation for this book, however, I was surprised by the depth I found. Much like Star Trek episodes that are entertaining, but end up having a message that I see so clearly as I got older. I am glad to have read this, and may find myself coming back to it in a few years when I have more time for pondering the stories and what they have to say.
This is a wonderful book! The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because the voice of Middle America in 1950 finally overwhelms everything in “The Silent Towns,” when Bradbury's attempt to be light-hearted just comes across as mean-spirited, misogynistic, and fat-phobic. Knowing what I know of Bradbury, I'm skeptical he intended any real malice behind it, but it's the part that aged even worse than any of the analog technology, or the assertion of canals and atmosphere on Mars.
The rest of it, though, is a fantastic collection of prose-as-poetry from someone who has little interest in real science fiction or futurism. It's ultimately a story about America from someone who is still optimistic about the promise of America, even though he's pessimistic about humans' ability to realize that promise.It reminded me, strangely and a little sadly, of Epcot — an old-fashioned optimism and faith in humanity that we've lost.
It might be the decades apart from when this book was written but it was hard for me to connect to it.I like how [a:Ray Bradbury 1630 Ray Bradbury https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1445955959p2/1630.jpg] and other authors of the time used SciFi to dissert on human behavior.