Book Bearings
The Martian Chronicles
- 262 pages · about 4 hours
- First published 1950
- 138 editions
Bookshop.org links may earn us a commission. It supports independent bookstores and costs you nothing.
1 About this book
This is a collection of science fiction short stories, cleverly cobbled together to form a coherent and very readable novel about a future colonization of Mars. As the stories progress chronologically the author tells how the first humans colonized Mars, initially sharing the planet with a handful of Martians. When Earth is devastated by nuclear war the colony is left to fend for itself and the colonists determine to build a new Earth on Mars.
- Science fiction
- Interplanetary voyages
- Drama
- Space colonies
2 What to expect
Linked short stories about the human settlement of Mars, arranged as a chronicle from the first expeditions onward, while Earth moves toward nuclear war. It is science fiction as fable: the stories are about colonization, nostalgia, loneliness and American society more than rockets, and the science makes no claim to accuracy. The prose is lyrical and melancholy, the stories range from eerie to comic, and it can be read one story at a time.
Good for readers who want: classic science fiction, linked short stories, and lyrical, melancholy writing.
3 About Ray Bradbury
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Ray Bradbury
5 Similar books
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons
- The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
- The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
- The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick