nicanical
Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a collection of simple yet thought-provoking stories all set in one retrofuturistic timeline where Earth colonizes Mars. The stories are light on the sci-fi; obstacles like travel to Mars and habitation and availability of resources once there are waved away by setting Mars up like Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, with a breathable atmosphere and potable water.
Instead of wrangling technical hurdles The Martian Chronicles' stories resembles Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle in its exploration of themes like oppression, the role of technology, and man's tendency to destroy itself.
Bradbury seems to take a dim view:
Life on Earth never settled down to doing anything very good. 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.
On Bradbury's writing style: it is clear and clean, and the occasional sense of whimsy with how serious events are written about deadpan and matter of factly. The near extinction of indigenous Martians, astronauts killing each other, Earth's destruction—so it goes.
Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a collection of simple yet thought-provoking stories all set in one retrofuturistic timeline where Earth colonizes Mars. The stories are light on the sci-fi; obstacles like travel to Mars and habitation and availability of resources once there are waved away by setting Mars up like Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, with a breathable atmosphere and potable water.
Instead of wrangling technical hurdles The Martian Chronicles' stories resembles Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle in its exploration of themes like oppression, the role of technology, and man's tendency to destroy itself.
Bradbury seems to take a dim view:
Life on Earth never settled down to doing anything very good. 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.
On Bradbury's writing style: it is clear and clean, and the occasional sense of whimsy with how serious events are written about deadpan and matter of factly. The near extinction of indigenous Martians, astronauts killing each other, Earth's destruction—so it goes.