June 2001/2032: —And the Moon Be Still as Bright
Publication history
First published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1948.
Plot
Jeff Spender, a crew member with the Fourth Expedition, becomes repelled by the others’ ugly American attitude as they explore a dead Martian city and begins to kill the others for their disrespect of the ruins.
August 2001/2032: The Settlers
Publication history
First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.
Plot
“The Settlers” is a vignette that describes the “Lonely Ones”, the first settlers of Mars, single men from the United States who are few in number.
December 2001/2032: The Green Morning
Publication history
First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.
Plot
A tall tale concerning Benjamin Driscoll, who Johnny Appleseed-like, is an emigrant who is threatened to be returned to Earth because he has difficulty breathing due to the thin Martian atmosphere. Driscoll believes Mars can be made more hospitable by planting trees to add more oxygen to the atmosphere. Referencing this story, Driscoll Forest is a place named in “The Naming of Names”.
February 2002/2033: The Locusts
Publication history
First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.
Plot
A vignette describing the arrival of ninety thousand American emigrants to Mars.
August 2002/2033: Night Meeting
Publication history
First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.
Plot
“Night Meeting” is the story of Tomás Gomez, a young Latino construction worker on Mars, who drives his truck across an empty expanse between towns to attend a party, and his encounters along the way with an elderly gas station owner and a Martian who appears to him as a phantom. They each regard each other as a dream.
The fearless Tomás Gomez reflects a common Mexican attitude toward death, which Bradbury understood. Prior to the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, two of his short stories relating to the Day of the Dead were published in 1947 — “El Día de Muerte” set on the Day of the Dead in Mexico City and “The Next in Line” that was published in his book Dark Carnival about a visit to catacombs in a Mexican village which terrifies the American protagonist. Both stories were likely inspired by his learning about Mexican death rites during his own frightful experience on a 1945 trip to Mexico that included a visit in Guanajuato where he viewed mummies.
October 2002/2033: The Shore
Plot
This vignette characterizes two successive groups of settlers as American emigrants who arrive in “waves” that “spread upon” the Martian “shore” – the first are the frontiersmen described in “The Settlers”, and the second are men from the “cabbage tenements and subways” of urban America.
November 2002/2033: The Fire Balloons
Publication historyThe story first appeared as “…In This Sign” in Imagination, April 1951 after publication of the first (1950) edition of The Martian Chronicles and so, was included in the U.S. edition of The Illustrated Man and in The Silver Locusts. The story was included in the 1997 edition of The Martian Chronicles, though it appeared in earlier special editions – the 1974 edition from The Heritage Press, the September 1979 illustrated trade edition from Bantam Books, the “40th Anniversary Edition” from Doubleday Dell Publishing Group and in the 2001 Book-of-the-Month Club edition.
Plot
“The Fire Balloons” is a story about an Episcopal missionary expedition to cleanse Mars of sin, consisting of priests from large American cities led by the Most Reverend Father Joseph Daniel Peregrine and his assistant Father Stone. Peregrine has a passionate interest in discovering the kinds of sins that may be committed by aliens reflected in his book, The Problem of Sin on Other Worlds. Peregrine and Stone argue constantly about whether the mission should focus on cleansing humans or Martians. With the question unanswered, the priests travel to Mars aboard the spaceship Crucifix. The launch of the rocket triggers Peregrine’s memories as a young boy of the Fourth of July with his grandfather.
After landing on Mars, Peregrine and Stone meet with the mayor of First City, who advises them to focus their mission on humans. The mayor tells the priests that the Martians look like blue “luminous globes of light” and they saved the life of an injured prospector working in a remote location by transporting him to a highway. The mayor’s description of the Martians triggers Peregine’s endearing memories of himself launching fire balloons with his grandfather on Independence Day.
Peregrine decides to search for and meet Martians, and he and Stone venture into the hills where the prospector encountered them. The two priests are met by a thousand fire balloons. Stone is terrified and wants to return to First City while Peregrine is overwhelmed by their beauty, imagines his grandfather is there with him to admire them, and wants to converse with them, though the fire balloons disappear.
The two priests immediately encounter a rock slide, which Stone believes they escaped by chance and Peregrine believes they were saved by Martians. The two argue their disagreement, and during the night while Stone is sleeping, Peregrine tests his faith in his hunch by throwing himself off a high cliff. As he falls, Peregrine is surrounded by blue light and is set safely on the ground. Peregrine tells Stone of the experience but Stone believes Peregrine was dreaming, so Peregrine takes a gun which he fires at himself and the bullets drop at his feet, convincing his assistant.
Peregrine uses his authority to have the mission build a church in the hills for the Martians. The church is for outdoor services and is constructed after six days of work. A blue glass sphere is brought as a representation of Jesus for the Martians. On the seventh day, a Sunday, Peregrine holds a service in which he plays an organ and uses his thoughts to summon the Martians.
The fire balloons, who call themselves the Old Ones, appear as glorious apparitions to the priests and communicate the story of their creation, their immortality, their normally solitary existences, and their pure virtuousness. They thank the priests for building the church and tell them they are unneeded and ask them to relocate to the towns to cleanse the people there. The fire balloons depart, which fills Peregrine with such overwhelming sadness that he wants to be lifted up like his grandfather did when he was a small child. The priests are convinced and withdraw to First Town along with the blue glass sphere that has started to glow from within. Peregrine and Stone believe the sphere is Jesus.
Bradbury said he consulted a Catholic priest in Beverly Hills while he developed the plot for “Fire Balloons”. In an interview, Bradbury recalled part of a day-long conversation: “‘Listen, Father, how would you act if you landed on Mars and found intelligent creatures in the form of balls of fire? Would you think you ought to save them or would you think they were saved already?’ ‘Wow! That’s a hell of a fine question!’ the father exclaimed. And he told me what he would do. In short, what I make Father Peregrine do.”
Interpretation of “The Fire Balloons” has been called “ambiguous” because its meaning can be dramatically different due to the context set by the stories that accompany it. Its first appearance in the U.S. in 1951 was as a stand-alone story as “… In This Sign” and in The Illustrated Man that was concurrent with its first appearance in The Silver Locusts in the U.K. which included all of The Martian Chronicles stories with Martian characters. Within The Silver Locusts and the 1997 edition of The Martian Chronicles the strategy used by Martians in “The Fire Balloons” is implicit – they use their telepathic powers to peacefully keep settlers away from their mountains.
As in “Ylla” the Martians understand Father Peregrine’s fond memories of his grandfather and the Fourth of July celebrations they shared together involving fire balloons before and after the Crucifix lands on Mars. As in “The Earth Men”, an elaborate, imaginary world is constructed, though in “The Fire Balloons” it is for the priests to convince them to cleanse humans of sin in First City. The appearance of Martians as fire balloons ends with the chapter.
February 2003/2034: Interim
Publication history
First appeared in The Martian Chronicles. Not to be confused with the short horror story or “Time Intervening,” which is also under that title.
Plot
A vignette describing how the Tenth City are built by colonists
April 2003/2034: The Musicians
Publication history
First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.
Plot
Young boys defy their parents and habitually play in and among the otherwise unpopulated ruins of indigenous Martian towns where they perished in their homes. The Firemen methodically incinerate the remnants of Martian civilization and the bones of the Martians. The boys play amongst the relics and make Martian bones into musical instruments.
May 2003/2034: The Wilderness
Publication history
First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1952. The story appears in the 1974 edition of The Martian Chronicles by The Heritage Press, the 1979 Bantam Books illustrated trade edition, and the 1997 edition of The Martian Chronicles.
Plot
In Independence, Missouri, a woman, Janice Smith, expects a telephone call at midnight from her fiancé Will on Mars. He has already purchased a home on Mars identical to her home on Earth. His response after the long delay due to the distance to Mars is incomplete due to natural interference so, she only hears him say “love”. Smith contemplates being a pioneer as the women before her, and then falls asleep for the last time on Earth.
June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air
Publication history
First appeared in the first edition of The Martian Chronicles and not included in the 1997 edition. The work later appeared in the July 1950 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories after five major magazines rejected the manuscript drafted
