The Martian Chronicles is a science fiction fix-up novel, published in 1950, by American writer Ray Bradbury that chronicles the exploration and settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous Martians, by Americans leaving a troubled Earth that is eventually devastated by nuclear war.
Synopsis
The book projects American society immediately after World War II into a technologically advanced future where the amplification of humanity’s potentials to create and destroy have miraculous and devastating consequences. Events in the chronicle include the apocalyptic destruction of Martian and human civilizations, instigated by humans, though there are no stories with settings at the catastrophes.
The outcomes of many stories raise concerns about the values and direction of America of the time by addressing militarism, science, technology and war-time prosperity that could result in a global nuclear war (e.g., “There Will Come Soft Rains” and “The Million-Year Picnic”); depopulation that might be considered genocide (e.g., “The Third Expedition”, “—And the Moon Be Still as Bright” and “The Musicians”); racial oppression and exploitation (e.g., “Way in the Middle of the Air”); ahistoricism, philistinism, and hostility towards religion (e.g., “—And the Moon Be Still as Bright”); censorship and conformity (e.g., “Usher II”). On Bradbury’s award of a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 2007, the book was recognized as one of his “masterworks that readers carry with them over a lifetime”.
Structure and plot summary
Fix-up structure
The Martian Chronicles is a fix-up novel consisting of published short stories along with new short bridge narratives in the form of interstitial vignettes, intercalary chapters, or expository narratives. The published stories were revised for consistency and refinement.
The Martian Chronicles may at first appear to be a planned short story cycle; Bradbury did not write The Martian Chronicles as a singular work – rather, its creation as a novel was suggested to Bradbury by a publisher’s editor years after most of the stories had already appeared in many different publications (see publication history and original publication notes under Contents).
In responding to the suggestion, the 29-year-old Bradbury was shocked by the idea that he had already written a novel and remembers saying: “Oh, my God… I read Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson when I was 24 and I said to myself, ‘Oh God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if someday I could write a book as good as this but put it on the planet Mars.'”. (See the Influences section on literary influences affecting the works’s structure.)
Chronicle structure
The Martian Chronicles is written as a chronicle, each story presented as a chapter within an overall chronological ordering of the plot. Overall, it can be viewed as three extended episodes or parts, punctuated by two apocalyptic events. Events in the book’s original edition ranged from 1999 to 2026. As 1999 approached in real life, the dates were advanced by 31 years in the 1997 edition. The summary that follows includes the dates of both editions.
The first part covering two and a half years, from January 1999/2030 to June 2001/2032, consists of seven chapters about four exploratory missions from the United States, during which humans and Martians discover each other. The efforts of Martians to repel the human explorers ends in catastrophe when chicken pox brought to Mars by humans kills almost all Martians. Two of the chapters are original works for the fix-up.
The second part covers four and a half years, from August 2001/2032 to December 2005/2036, and consists of sixteen chapters in the first edition and seventeen in the 1997 edition. It is about the human colonizers of Mars, including human contact with the few surviving Martians, the preoccupation of the emigrants with making Mars like America on Earth, and the return of all settlers but seven to Earth as war on Earth threatens. All of the settlers are from the United States, and the settlements are administered by the United States government. A global war on Earth ensues, and contact between Mars and Earth ends. Eleven of the chapters are original works for the first edition and thirteen for the 1997 edition.
The third part, covering six months from April 2026/2057 to October 2026/2057, is three chapters about the remaining Martian settlers and the occurrence and aftermath of global nuclear war on Earth that eliminates human civilization there, and the few humans who manage to flee Earth and settle on Mars. None of the chapters are original works for the fix-up.
Publication history
The creation of The Martian Chronicles by weaving together previous works was suggested to the author by New York City representatives of Doubleday & Company in 1949 after Norman Corwin recommended Bradbury travel to the city to be “‘discovered'”.
The work was subsequently published in hardbound form by Doubleday in the United States in 1950. Publication of the book was concurrent with the publication of Bradbury’s short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains” that appeared in Collier’s magazine. The short story appears as a chapter in the novel, though with some differences. The novel has been reprinted numerous times by many different publishers since 1950.
The Spanish language version of The Martian Chronicles, Crónicas Marcianas, was published in Argentina concurrently with the U.S. first edition, and included all the chapters contained in the U.S. edition. The edition included a foreword by Jorge Luis Borges.
The book was published in the United Kingdom under the title The Silver Locusts (1951), with slightly different contents. In some editions the story “The Fire Balloons” was added, and the story “Usher II” was removed to make room for it.
The book was published in 1963 as part of the Time Reading Program with an introduction by Fred Hoyle.
In 1979, Bantam Books published a trade paperback edition with illustrations by Ian Miller.
As 1999 approached, the fictional future written into the first edition was in jeopardy, so the work was revised and a 1997 edition was published to advance all of the dates by 31 years (with the plot running from 2030 to 2057 instead of 1999 to 2026). The 1997 edition added “November 2033: The Fire Balloons” and “May 2034: The Wilderness”, and omitted “Way in the Middle of the Air”, a story considered less topical in 1997 than 1950.
The 1997 edition of Crónicas Marcianas included the same revisions as the U.S. 1997 edition.
In 2009, the Subterranean Press and PS Publishing published The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition that included the 1997 edition of the work and additional stories under the title “The Other Martian Tales”. (See The Other Martian Tales section of this article.)
Contents
Bradbury culled the table of contents for The Martian Chronicles “Chronology” with each item formatted with the date of the story followed by a colon followed by the story title. The title of each chapter in the first edition was the corresponding line in “Chronology”.
In the 1997 edition, chapter titles omitted the colons by printing the date and the story title on separate lines. The chapter titles that follow are formatted consistent with the “Chronology”. The years are those appearing in the first edition followed by the year appearing in 1997 edition.
Publication information concerning short stories published prior to their appearance in The Martian Chronicles is available in Ray Bradbury short fiction bibliography.
January 1999/2030: Rocket Summer
Publication history
First appeared in The Martian Chronicles. Not to be confused with the short story of the same name published in 1947.
Plot
“Rocket Summer” is a short vignette that describes the rocket launch of the first human expedition to Mars on a cold winter day in Ohio.
February 1999/2030: Ylla
Publication history
First published as “I’ll Not Ask for Wine” in Maclean’s, January 1, 1950.
Plot
Ylla, an unhappily married Martian, who, like all Martians, has telepathy, receives an impression of the human space traveler Nathaniel York. Ylla sings the 17th century song “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” (with lyrics from the poem “To Celia” by Ben Jonson), in English she doesn’t understand. She has a romantic dream involving him, in which he takes her back to Earth. Her jealous husband, Yll, kills York and her memories fade.
August 1999/2030: The Summer Night
Publication history
First published as “The Spring Night” in The Arkham Sampler, winter 1949.
Plot
An idyllic Martian summer night is disrupted when Martian adults and children spontaneously start to sing the words from English poems and children’s rhymes they don’t understand, including Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” and “Old Mother Hubbard”. The music, poems and rhymes emanate from astronauts aboard the Second Expedition’s spaceship heading towards Mars. The Martians are terrified and sense that a terrible event will occur the next morning.
August 1999/2030: The Earth Men
Publication history
First published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1948.
Plot
The Second Expedition encounters members of a Martian community not far from their landing site. The Earth explorers, mistaken for delusional Martians, find themselves locked up in an insane asylum.
March 2000/2031: The Taxpayer
Publication history
First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.
Plot
A man named Pritchard believes he is entitled to be in the crew of the Third Expedition because he is a taxpayer. He doesn’t want to be left on Earth because “there’s going to be an atomic war.”
April 2000/2031: The Third Expedition
Publication history
First published as “Mars is Heaven!” in Planet Stories, fall 1948. The original short story was set in 1960. The story in The Martian Chronicles contains paragraph about medical treatments that slow the aging process, so that the characters can be traveling to Mars in 2000 but still remember the 1920s.
Plot
The Third Expedition find themselves lulled into a collective hallucination by the Martians and then killed by them. The ending leaves it ambiguous whether this was the plan of the Martians all along, or, given the telepathic origins of the hallucination and the way it was molded to their expectations and desires, Captain John Black accidentally willed it into being
