Today I am writing my opinion after finishing the reading of this book, titled The Martian Chronicles by author Ray Bradbury. I bought it brand new at a chain bookstore, although I know it is a very popular book that can be found everywhere—new, used, remaindered, and in all conditions. There are many editions. The one I have is the 22nd edition, brand new, from March 2017. Minotauro Publishing. Original title: The Martian Chronicles. Prologue by Jorge Luis Borges. Translation by Francisco Abelenda. 280 pages. Cover design: opal. Cover illustration: Xavi Comas.
This particular edition is identical to the 2005 edition celebrating 50 years since publication (1955, first edition in Spanish), except for the absence of the "50th Anniversary" indicator label.
Review: This collection of stories brings together the chronicle of the colonization of Mars by a humanity that abandons Earth in successive waves of silver rockets and dreams of reproducing on the Red Planet a civilization of hot dogs, comfortable sofas, and lemonade on the porch at sunset. But the colonists also bring in their luggage the diseases that will decimate the Martians and show very little respect for a mysterious, fascinating planetary culture, which the Martians will try to protect against the rapacity of the Earthlings. Written in the 1940s and set in the distant future beginning in 1999, these deceptively simple stories serve as an excuse for Bradbury to immerse himself in the mysteries of the human soul and develop one of humanity's most passionate endeavors.
He is a classic author, and it is difficult to talk about him for many reasons. This is simply my personal opinion, and the book was very much to my liking. A set of tales concerning a supposed colonization or attempt to colonize the planet Mars by humans. Thus, it puts us in the position of a reader from the future reading about events that took place in specific years of the past. To this day, in the year 2017, it remains interesting in several aspects. When Bradbury wrote the book, it was 1950. He sets the chronicles in a time period spanning between 1999 and 2005 (only the last 3 refer to the year 2026). Bradbury wrote at a time when the space race had not yet begun—if we consider that race to start with the launch of the first successful artificial satellite in 1957 (Sputnik 1). He set his stories 50 years after writing them, and those 50 years have already passed. Living until 2012, he himself survived the period he imagined. To this day, no Martians have been found on the planet Mars, but around 1950, it was an unknown; the first probe to fly past it did not do so until 1965 (Mariner 4), that is, 15 years after Bradbury published his work. And although by now there have been several successful cases of surface exploration, it has still not been colonized, nor has the existence of Martians been discovered, at least not like the ones Bradbury portrays.
Bradbury's work has always had a huge reach here in Argentina; this edition (and all its reimpresions) is prologued by none other than Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most relevant writers in Argentine literature.
This particular text, The Martian Chronicles, can be approached from various angles—for example, its scientific character. Although he is not a technical detailist, he makes premises that, over time, became reality. Even though humans have not yet reached Mars, probes and rovers have arrived, carrying out various experiments and sending back diverse information. Other matters, however, such as robots or virtual reality (or something akin to it, possible today), appear when he relates, for instance:
A blue flame issued from a man's mouth. The flame shaped itself into the rounded form of a naked little woman, and whispering and sighing, unfolded like a flower in cobalt vapors. The captain pointed to another corner. A woman stood there, changing. First she encased herself in a glass pillar; then she was a golden statue, then a rod of polished cedar, and at last, a woman again. Throughout the midnight hall, people exhaled small violet flames, shifting, changing, for the night was a time of transformation and grief. (August 1999: The Earth Men, p. 51)
As we can see, Ray Bradbury also writes with a certain poetic tone. He also uses humor quite a bit—ranging from the crude to the most intelligent. As an example, I might cite when a couple is in an absolutely deserted city in a world with no other people, and he writes:
After the movie they went shopping through the silent streets. Genevieve smashed a storefront window containing several dresses and put on the most ostentatious one. She poured a bottle of perfume over her head and looked like a wet dog. (December 2005: The Off Season / The Silent Towns, p. 234)
There is no doubt that he loves using the word estío (summer) (he even has a book with that word in the title). Other recurring words are telepathy, desert, abandonment. The theme of telepathy in the Martians seems to suggest something superior (something beyond our reach) belonging to the "others" versus "us." And it is not a matter of technology, but something immaterial—something which, at least here in Earth, after countless scientific studies, is completely discredited, but if it existed, it would be astonishing, and I believe that is how he saw it in his time. Nevertheless, he treats rockets naturally, as if we were talking today about cars, planes, or trains. At first, the rockets are piloted by a captain, but by the end, the people who pilot them are ordinary citizens.
Everything is very American: the place names, the names of people, behaviors, customs, and to a certain point, it gives it a degree of verisimilitud. Let us consider that if an astronaut reaches Mars today, it is possible they will be American (although Russians, Chinese, and Europeans are in a race, it is more feasible, from my point of view, for Americans to arrive first). On occasion, he alludes to the beetle car (the Volkswagen Beetle), so popular for many years, especially in the 40s and 50s—curiously, not many years ago, near the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, an interpreted version of that car adapted to modern times was re-released.
"He groped his way to the kitchen, defrosted some raspberries, and ate them disconsolately" (p. 107).
When I read that phrase, I immediately thought of the microwave, and then I asked myself: What was Bradbury thinking? Did the character defrost them with water? As was common in his era, since the author does not delve into technical issues or provide further details, it is left up to the reader, and we see that the exact same process, yesterday and today, can be read differently due to the advent of new technologies. However, sometimes the past remains, and is present in the history of the future, right down to something that changed so much and so radically as sound and music. He stuck with the gramophone and phonograph.
Another interesting aspect of Bradbury and this text is the inclusion of musical and literary themes; he only mentions them, but anyone struck by curiosity can look them up to learn more. I have done so; I took notes of them as they appeared, and I found a blog where they were also mentioned and linked to YouTube videos. The direct link is: [http://billardeletras.com/blog/temas-musicales-y-poemas-de-cronicas-marcianas-de-ray-bradbury](http://billardeletras.com/blog/temas-musicales-y-poemas-de-cronicas-marcianas-de-ray-bradbury)
The story I liked the most was perhaps The Earth Men (August 1999), but without a doubt, the one that impacted me the most was Way in the Middle of the Air (June 2003). The initial dialogue is phenomenal:
- Did you hear?
- Hear what?
- The niggers, the niggers!
- What about them?
- They're leaving, they're going, didn't you know?
- What do you mean? How can they leave?
- They can leave. They're leaving. They're going right now.
- A couple?
- All of them in the South.
- No.
- Yes.
- Impossible. I don't believe it. Where? To Africa? Silence.
- To Mars.
- You mean the planet Mars?
- Exactly.
Because of its social content, laying bare his contempt for the prevailing racism of his era—written in the 1940s, published in 1950, with the Brown v. Board case in 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the desegregation process took place over several years following Bradbury's work. When he refers to "All of them in the South," it leaves no room for other interpretations. I imagine, as it must have for many of his contemporaries, the reality lived by a portion of their fellow citizens caused revulsion—both the victims and those who expressed hatred toward the other—and he makes that visible in the story.
Another interesting story is Usher II. Just from the title, we can recognize a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe. This story also visualizes Bradbury's concerns: on one hand, his literary essence by referencing Poe, one of the most recognized North American writers, considered the creator of the modern short story; and on the other hand, the background of the story, which accounts for the concern over book burning (he may have kept in mind, or been impacted by, book burning by the Nazi regime) and the danger it entails, or seen from another perspective, the love for literature and the condemnation of whatever destroys it.
The Prologue is written by Jorge Luis Borges. It is incredible how in a page and a half he gives a historical recap of how Science Fiction—a genre that includes the chronicles—came to be, and calls the work "a book of phantasmagorical appearance." Borges says in the Prologue:
Perhaps The Third Expedition is the most alarming story in this volume. Its horror (I suspect) is metaphysical; the uncertainty regarding the identity of Captain John Black’s hosts discomfortingly insinuates that we do not know who we are either, nor what our face looks like to God. I also wish to highlight the episode titled The Martian, which encloses a pathetic variation of the myth of Proteus.
Speaking of Proteus, Borges wrote two poems:[http://www.poesi.as/jlb0917.htm](http://www.poesi.as/jlb0917.htm)[http://ciudadseva.com/texto/otra-version-de-proteo/](http://ciudadseva.com/texto/otra-version-de-proteo/)
I also found that metaphysical horror in both stories, and personally, the story The Martian reminded me of a tale I read long ago called The Monkey's Paw by the British writer W.W. Jacobs (1902). By the way, the tale The Monkey's Paw was included by Jorge Luis Borges, Bioy Casares, and Silvina Ocampo in their famous Anthology of Fantastic Literature.
And in the Prologue of the Anthology of Fantastic Literature, they say:
Surprise. It can be of punctuation, verbal, of plot. Like all literary effects, but more than any, it suffers from time. However, rarely does an author dare not to take advantage of a surprise. There are exceptions: Max Beerbohm in Enoch Soames, W.W. Jacobs in The Monkey's Paw. Max Beerbohm deliberately, aptly, eliminates all possibility of surprise regarding Soames's journey to 1997. For the least expert reader, there will be few surprises in The Monkey's Paw; yet it is one of the most impressive stories in the anthology.
Below are some citations referring to The Martian Chronicles that I found on Google Books, some of which I found relevant due to how diverse they are:
By virtue of these Chronicles, of very diverse conception and execution, it has been given to me to relive, in the late autumn days of 1954, those delightful terrors. Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles. Prologue by J.L. Borges. Buenos Aires, Ediciones Minotauro, 1955. Postscript of 1974. I reread with unexpected admiration Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), so superior as a whole to each of the texts that compose them. Bradbury is heir to the master's vast imagination, but not to his interjective and sometimes dreadful style. Miscelánea. Jorge Luis Borges. Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España, Nov 10, 2011.
Bradbury always has the exact tone; he makes no concessions, does not fall into easy ironies or gallery-playing poses. He makes a dystopian description realistic, makes the future everyday—something Borges also saw in his equally celebrated Martian Chronicles (1950). Bradbury speaks of reality with the precision and notarial testimony that only distances of hundreds of years or thousands of kilometers in space can grant. As Amis explains, "Bradbury's conformist hell is the best achieved of all those invented by science fiction authors." Estética: perspectivas contemporáneas. Antonio Notario Ruiz. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, Nov 26, 2008.
5. Utopias and dystopias related to the future of humanity. These are more or less allegorical and prophetic works where the philosophical and ideological mix with science fiction elements. Examples: Brave New World (A. Huxley); 1984 (G. Orwell); Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury); The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury), etc... Estética y pragmática del relato fantástico. Juan Herrero Cecilia. Univ de Castilla La Mancha, 2000.
Amidst the rubble of that past, hazard-filled life, I began reading a copy of Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles that rested on a shelf, alongside other books (...) That volume had nothing special about it; it was very worn, and its blue covers hinted at nothing that evoked Mars, save for large orange and yellow letters announcing the title, author, and a prologue by a certain Jorge Luis Borges whom I did not yet know—all beneath an illustration too minimalist and conceptual to be attractive to me. (...) When Pancho Monaghan discovered I was interested in that copy, he invited me to keep it without giving it the least importance. I asked him if he didn't like it, and he replied (...)
· Bah... That guy didn't get a damn thing right. And broadly speaking, it's queer stuff. But the message is good.
· What message? -I inquired.
· You know, dammit. This is going to hell. Mars is the future. Tulipanes de Marte. Javier Yanes. Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España, Jan 23, 2014.
In the same tradition of novels that look with concern at the evolution of society, Ray Bradbury, perhaps the author with the most literary projection within science fiction, achieved stories that captivate through the brilliance of his evocative style, such as the collection of short stories that make up The Martian Chronicles (1946), and like the milestone novel that was Fahrenheit 451 (1953). (...) This book (I, Robot, I. Asimov, 1950) like Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, are good examples that short stories are the most appropriate vessels for science fiction, for in them surprise, intensity, and paradox can be accentuated. Itinerarios lectores. Luis Daniel González. BibliotecaOnline SL.
Prototype of the West, as Araújo himself tells us in a preliminary note, "is a modest homage to authors like Bradbury, Lem, K. Dick, Huxley, Sturgeon, K. Le Guin and others." (...) others like Bradbury capture in their texts the social anxieties of humans in the atomic age. (...) As for Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1950), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and Dandelion Wine (1957) must be highlighted. Lem's work, like Bradbury's, is social satire painting an irreverent vision of the human condition. El juego eterno: teatro de Luis Araújo. Luis Araújo, John P. Gabriele. Editorial Fundamentos, 2001.
When I was little my parents took me to Mexico City. I will always remember my father's behavior, vulgar and fatuous. My mother didn't like those people either because they were brown and didn't bathe often. My sister wouldn't even talk to them. Only I really liked them. And I can picture my mother and father here on Mars doing the same thing again... To the average American, what is rare is not good. (...) -Do you remember what happened in Mexico when Cortés and his magnificent friends arrived from Spain? An entire civilization destroyed by voracious and virtuous fanatics. History will never forgive Cortés. Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles. Editorial Minotauro. pp 90-91.
This tale inserted in Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles points out to us that Mexico and Mars are doors that allow glimpses into other days, other alternatives; the Martian and the human separate and merge into one on the arid plain illuminated by two moons of a planet both living and dead at once. (...) There are no scientific gadgets of those that throw sparks and laser rays in the text of The Martian Chronicles. It is mentioned that humans reached Mars (which speaks to us of a never-reviewed spacecraft), but Bradbury's Mars has little to do with the real, scientific Mars (even the Mars known to science of the early 1950s). In The Martian Chronicles, the setting has little to do with what one imagines when thinking of SF. (...) Throughout Bradbury's work, emphasis is placed on the perception of reality; beyond that: what is the nature of that series of nervous and sensory impulses we call reality. Expedición a la ciencia ficción mexicana. Ramón López Castro. LD Books, 2001.
The silence of Martian cities in Ray Bradbury's novel. (...) The conquest and colonization of Mars do not differ, for the author, from other previous conquests and colonizations on Earth. Therefore, the chronicles and their images are nostalgic, and perhaps that is the answer to the question Borges formulated in the late days of autumn 1954 when prologuing the book: What has this man from Illinois—Bradbury—done to fill episodes of the conquest of another planet with terror and loneliness? Bradbury has put, says Borges, his long empty Sundays, his American tedium, his solitude... There are three types of cities in the book: Martian cities, Earth cities, and those that Earthlings build on Mars. Of the former, Bradbury only lets us glimpse an ideal way of life, with almost no physical descriptions: he will speak more of them later, when they are uninhabited, empty, and abandoned; when they are territory of nostalgia. Earth cities, or rather: life in Earth cities is terrible (hence why man seeks a new life on Mars); they are gray and harsh cities, the environment for all the pettiness of human thought, for anguish, repression, monotony, and fear. Rather than descriptions of Earth cities (North American cities), Bradbury suggests atmospheres, contexts: except when nostalgia intervenes before the imminent journey; then places, images, street corners, and trees appear seen through the eyes of a departure, idealized as if return were impossible... Also terrible are the cities men build on Mars, provisional cities, "emergency" ones, in which not even the names show enthusiasm for the colonizing enterprise: Aluminum City, Electric Village, Detroit II... Fortunately for Mars—as an entity and as a place—they last little since their materials are crude, perishable, and faced with a new war on Earth, the colonists will return crazed with patriotism, forgetting the adventure-game on Mars; they will return from a place where they were always just passing through, in transit, and with that feeling they built the cities, they will return to incinerate themselves in the holocaust of a war, the last one. Daily life of the Martian appears alien to the city, but it exists, close by, as one can read in the final chapters of the book. (...) Ciudad express: arquitectura, literatura, ciudad. Juan Carlos Pérgolis. Nobuko, 2005.
The nod to The Martian Chronicles contained in the title is therefore not idle: this work by Ray Bradbury is formally a science fiction novel, composed of a series of disjointed stories that take place on a dark and beautiful Mars; however, the Red Planet is for the writer principally a stage on which to dissect the human being and his miseries. Crónicas eléctricas: Breve y trágica historia del sector eléctrico español. José Luis Velasco Garasa. Ediciones AKAL, Oct 30, 2015.
What I do remember very well is that the topic I gave myself to essay was Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. That perhaps gives a measure of how much the book impressed me, which I had read quite before entering university and obsessively kept spinning in my head, as did Dandelion Wine, by the same author. Some might categorize and reject Bradbury as a science fiction author because of that business with The Martian Chronicles and his many stories whose action takes place on spaceships or other planets and things like that. Nothing could be more mistaken. The settings of Bradbury's literature may be those, but its content is one hundred percent centered on people, emotions, and experiences. In other words, under the appearance of a science fiction author, Ray Bradbury is located at the opposite pole of standard science fiction literature. El Banquete: ....O lecturas de supervivencias. Fernando Villegas Darrouy. Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Chile, Jun 1, 2012.
The Martian Chronicles fabulate a conquest and colonization of Mars. In addition to Bradbury's elegiac tone, I add that it presents another very uncommon feature: the Spanish translation (which I do not have at hand) is better than the original. The Martians, who at first are frightening, end up inspiring pity when they are annihilated. Bradbury has no illusions regarding the moral dignity of the human being: any different culture or species must be greeted with napalm or with the necessary weapons to destroy it. Of course, in the Martian contest humans win, and Bradbury announces with sadness and disillusionment the expansion of the human blight on the previously idyllic red planet, of blue sands and checkered cities. Un viaje por mi biblioteca. Pierre Jacomet Ollivet, 2006.
· I ask you if you are a fan of reading science fiction books because it seems to me at the very least curious that you named your eldest daughter after one of the characters in Ray Bradbury's novel The Martian Chronicles. In fact, I believe I remember it was the title of the second story in the work.
· Well, it seems Mr. Bradbury, whose work I do not know, had the idea of using a name from Quechua culture for his book, because I can assure you that Ylla is a native name from here. In fact, my wife's mother was also named Ylla.
· Or perhaps Bradbury's choice was simply coincidence. In any case, Ylla is a very pretty name—Carlos pointed out, trying to please Mr. Huanca.
· Excuse my confusion—Michael stated politely. - And what is its meaning?
· Ylla means "sacred light," "talisman that brings fortune and luck," "worthy of trust"—Mr. Huanca explained. La máquina de escribir. Ricardo Borrero Gavilán. Chiado Editorial, Mar 1, 2013.
What book do you feel special gratitude toward? To Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. It is something that still moves me. When I read that, faced with scientific evidence, Bradbury said: "well then, my Martians don't exist," I almost cried. Retrato hablado Entrevistas con personajes de Guadalajara. Juan Carlos Núñez Bustillos. Editorial Universitaria | Libros UDG, Jul 16, 2014.
Many scholars, thinkers, and scientists were inspired by the lessons of history. This has been particularly notable in science fiction writers. Suffice one example: Ray Bradbury. Surely this author, when writing The Martian Chronicles, received the influence of various writers of fantastic tales. The impacts of the great maritime and land discoveries are also very clear in him. Bradbury was concerned in his book with showing the pernicious consequences of the encounter between cultures (in his case between the Martian and the Earthling), inspiring himself by events such as those that occurred in Guatemala after the arrival of Europeans, when a smallpox epidemic decimated the Mayan groups of an important area—a situation the novelist recreates as the chickenpox plague carried by Earthlings that wipes out the Martians (different from the Earth disease that kills the invading Martians in H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds). The first edition of The Martian Chronicles is from 1946, 13 years later than the complete English translation of the books of Chilam Balam. The prophetic dream told by one of the Martians announcing the arrival of the first humans recalls the talk about Mayan prophecies supposedly recorded before the discovery of America by Europeans. Both the Mayans and the Martians announce in their prophecies that foreigners are very close, a day's journey away, and in both cases the physical characteristics of the invaders are discussed. The strange sound books that the Martians "read" recall the "painted" books or hieroglyphic books of the Mayans. Finally, the masks, which the members of both cultures are so fond of, confirm Bradbury's play of images inspired by Mayan literature. Obras completas, Volumen 2. Silo (pseudonym of Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos). Plaza y Valdes, 2002.
Some interesting links to read:
http://universodecienciaficcion.blogspot.com.ar/2014/01/1950-cronicas-marcianas-ray-bradbury.html
ttp://universodecienciaficcion.blogspot.com.ar/2014/01/1950-cronicas-marcianas-ray-bradbury.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury
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