Ray 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, essays, theatrical works, screenplays and teleplays, and numerous superb short story collections. But of all the dazzling stars in the vast Bradbury universe, none shines more luminously 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.
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.
The twenty-seven stories contained in The Martian Chronicles are "Rocket Summer," "Ylla," "The Summer Night," "The Earth Men," "The Taxpayer," "The Third Expedition," "—And the Moon Be Still as Bright," "The Settlers," "The Green Morning," "The Locusts," "Night Meeting," "The Shore," "The Fire Balloons," "Interim," "The Musicians," "The Wilderness," "The Naming of Names," "Usher II," "The Old Ones," "The Martian," "The Luggage Store," "The Off Season," "The Watchers," "The Silent Towns," "The Long Years," "There Will Come Soft Rains," and "The Million-Year Picnic."
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"I read this book almost 33 years ago when my imagination was at its peak; during a time when it didn't matter how outlandish my dreams were or were destined to become. This book prepared my thoughts for the prospect of Mars and its many probable challenges which included an imaginative encounter with new life forms. Looking back, I now realize that the new life form wasn't to be encountered on Mars; it's was to be encountered here on Earth. My meaning is captured within the concept of 'Cogito ergo sum.' To venture to Mars, we would have to mature our thinking, hone our cooperative nature, advance our math and science, improve our tools, and dream bigger. All these accomplishments morphed us into something greater; a life form that is far less hoof to mouth, far less reactionary, far less selfish and far less impulsive. We have morphed to fit the design of the task and should we hold this form long enough than I believe it will become our new first nature. Thus making us a new life form among the old; more fit for the challenges of our combined future. My imagination may have peaked 33 years ago but it has not decayed an iota.
“We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.â€
-Ray Bradbury"
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Hilrie (5 out of 5 stars)