Voodoomary
I did not expect this book to hit me like a train, nor did I expect its nostalgic Twilight Zone vibe. Once I made that connection, I understood why the book works well. Bradbury uses Mars the way Serling used the supernatural. The distance lets you look at things that would be too painful to examine straight on. Social commentary, racial violence, the destruction of beauty by progress, and the fragility of what humans build arrive wrapped in red dust and rocket ships. The stories land harder for the wrapping.
The tonal range makes this extraordinary rather than good. A lesser writer would create whiplash moving between dark satire, quiet elegy, gleeful vindication, and devastating loss. Bradbury moves between these modes without losing the thread of his sensibility. He is a poet that layers an elegiac melancholy is the underneath everything, whether he is being funny or breaking your heart. The stories do not bleed together or jar against each other. They accumulate.
I cried more than once. Bradbury mourns things without condemning existence for taking them, which is a rare, generous emotional register. This is in my top ten. I wish it were longer.
I did not expect this book to hit me like a train, nor did I expect its nostalgic Twilight Zone vibe. Once I made that connection, I understood why the book works well. Bradbury uses Mars the way Serling used the supernatural. The distance lets you look at things that would be too painful to examine straight on. Social commentary, racial violence, the destruction of beauty by progress, and the fragility of what humans build arrive wrapped in red dust and rocket ships. The stories land harder for the wrapping.
The tonal range makes this extraordinary rather than good. A lesser writer would create whiplash moving between dark satire, quiet elegy, gleeful vindication, and devastating loss. Bradbury moves between these modes without losing the thread of his sensibility. He is a poet that layers an elegiac melancholy is the underneath everything, whether he is being funny or breaking your heart. The stories do not bleed together or jar against each other. They accumulate.
I cried more than once. Bradbury mourns things without condemning existence for taking them, which is a rare, generous emotional register. This is in my top ten. I wish it were longer.