Note: This review has spoilers. But c'mon, this book has been around for 75 years, so if you haven't read it, that's pretty much on you.
I may be the final human to read "The Martian Chronicles." In this 1950 book, author Ray Bradbury predicted that the last human life on Earth will be extinguished in 2026. As I write this, that's less than three months away. I may have read this just in time.
"The Martian Chronicles" is a collection of science fiction short stories, some quirky and funny, most dark and melancholy. Each chapter is a separate story, almost always with new characters, but they all are arranged chronologically around the theme of humans colonizing Mars starting in 1999.
While "The Martian Chronicles" is easy-to-read and thought-provoking, it is not really compelling, probably because each chapter mostly stands on its own. While one chapter may be enjoyable it really doesn't move you on to the next one.
Some chapters are almost cartoonish. When some of the first humans arrive on their planet early in the book, they knock on the door of a house and find Martians who are unimpressed and uninterested in talking to them. "I haven't the time," says one. "I've a lot of cooking today and there's cleaning and sewing and all."
The astronauts eventually get the boisterous welcome they wanted, but only because they have been unknowingly locked up in a Martian insane asylum. It is there that a Martian psychologist kills the humans, convinced that the commander is crazy and the others nothing more than hallucinations. When Martians find the earthmen's spaceship they have no idea what it is, and sell it for scrap.
In another chapter, the last man and woman on Mars (apparently) find each other, but he doesn't like her, gets in his car, and drives for three days to the other side of the planet.
Most of the stories are more creepy than funny, some like episodes from Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone." In one, the Martians lure humans in with an illusion of reuniting with long-dead family members, then kill them.
Bradbury paints a very simple image of life on Mars — humans simply get off their space ships and start walking around (there is a brief mention of the air being "thin" but no one dwells on it). Humans build earth-like communities with houses and highways, cars and boats. I know this was published in 1950, but certainly Bradbury must have known how silly this was, right?
Bradbury uses the book as forum for an assortment of messages, and he's not subtle about it.
One of Bradbury's characters laments that human development will ruin Mars. "We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things," says "The only reason we didn't set up hot-dog stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because it was out of the way and served no large comercial purpose ...But here, this whole thing is ancient and different, and we have to set down somewhere and start fouling it up."
(In a later chapter, a human sets up a hot-dog stand on Mars.)
One character observes that Martians — unlike Earthlings — perfected an ideal civilization blending art, science and the love of nature. "They never let science crush the aestehtic and the beautiful."
In one chapter, a character angered that humans have turned their back on literature gets his revenge by luring his enemies into a deadly House of Usher (it doesn't have much to do with Mars). If you're getting the idea that there is a lot of deaht in "The Martian Chronicles," you're right, but most of it is thinly cartoonish.
At other times, the author warns of the dangers of authoritarianism and censorship. While he envisions not-yet-invented devices like the answering machine and Roomba vaccum, he also cautions about an obsession with technology.
"Life on Earth nevers settled down to doing anything very good," says a character. "Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness, like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets; emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth."
