At two o’clock in the morning, colonists receive a message that war had begun, that a stockpile of nuclear weapons “prematurely” detonated destroying the Australian continent, and that Los Angeles and London had been bombed. The message said “come home” repeatedly without explanation. The proprietor of a luggage store, who is a character in “The Luggage Store”, sells out of stock early in the morning, as colonists prepare to return to Earth.
December 2005/2036: The Silent Towns
Publication history
First published in Charm, March 1949.
Plot
“The Silent Towns” is a story about thirty year old Walter Gripp, a miner who lived in a remote mountain shack and walked to the town of Marlin Village every two weeks to find a wife. On his December visit Gripp finds the town abandoned and happily helps himself to money, food, clothing, movies, and other luxuries, but soon realizes he’s lonely.
As he walks to return to his shack, Gripp hears a phone ringing in an abandoned house but he can’t reach it soon enough to communicate with the caller. He hears a telephone ringing in another house and misses the call and realizes he expects the caller to be a woman. In the abandoned home, he obtains a colony telephone directory and starts calling the listed numbers in alphabetal order but stops after contacting a woman’s automated message service.
Gripps tries his luck with telephone exchanges and government and public institutions, and then places where he thinks a woman would take herself. Gripp calls the biggest beauty parlor in New Texas City and reaches Genevieve Selsor but is cut off. He finds a car and drives a thousand miles to the Deluxe Beauty Salon, fantasizing about Selsor along the way. Gripp can’t find Selsor there and believes she drove to Marlin Village to find him, so he returns and finds Selsor at a beauty parlor holding a box of cream chocolates.
Gripps finds the twenty-seven-year old physically unattractive and suffers while they watch a Clark Gable movie together after which she pours perfume into her hair. They return to the beauty parlor and Selsor declares herself as “last lady on Mars” and Gripp as the last man and presents him with a box containing a wedding dress. Gripp flees, driving across Mars to another tiny town to spend his life happily alone and ignoring any phone he hears ringing.
April 2026/2057: The Long Years
Publication history
First published in Maclean’s, September 15, 1948.
Plot
“The Long Years” is the story of the last days of the life of Hathaway, the physician/geologist crewman from the Fourth Expedition’s story “—And the Moon Still Be As Bright”. At night during a windstorm, Hathaway visits four graves on a hill away from his family’s hut and asks the dead for forgiveness for what he’s done because he was lonely.
As he returns to the hut, he spots a rocket approaching. He tells the family of the “good news” of a rocket arrival in the morning. He goes to the nearby ruins of New New York City and sets it ablaze as a location for the rocket to land. Hathaway returns to the hut to serve wine to his family in celebration. He reminisces about missing all the rockets evacuating colonists from Mars when the Great War started because he and his whole family were doing archaeological work in the mountains. As his wife and three children drink their wine it all just runs down their chins.
In the morning, the family prepares to greet whoever is in the rocket ship, including a great breakfast. As the rocket lands, Hathaway suffers an angina attack while running toward it. He recovers and continues on. Wilder, who was captain of the Fourth Expedition, emerges, sees Hathaway and greets him.
Wilder explains that he’s been on a twenty-year mission to the outer solar system; reports that he surveyed Mars before landing and found only one other person, Walter Gripp, who decided to stay on Mars, Wilder ponders with Hathaway the fate of Earth; and agrees to take Hathaway and his family on his return to Earth. Hathaway compliments Wilder on his promotion to lead the twenty-year mission so that Wilder would not slow the development of Mars. Wilder orders his crew out of the spaceship to join Hathaway’s family.
On their way to the family hut, Hathaway updates Wilder on the Fourth Expedition’s crewmen. Hathway tells Wilder that he visits Jeff Spender’s tomb annually to pay his respects, and about Sam Parkhill’s hot dog stand which was abandoned a week after opening to return to Earth.
Wilder observes Hathaway in physical distress and has his physician crewman check Hathaway. Hathaway tells Wilder that he has stayed alive just to await rescue and now that Wilder has arrived he can die. The doctor gives him a pill and then says what he just spoke was “nonsense”. Hathway recovers and continues on to the family hut.
At the hut, Hathaway introduces his family to the crew. Wilder is struck by how young Hathaway’s wife appears, given that he met her decades earlier, and he compliments her on her youthfulness. Wilder asks John, Hathaway’s son, his age, and John answers twenty-three.
Crewman Williamson tells Wilder that John is supposed to be forty-two. Wilder sends Williamson off to investigate on the pretense of checking up on their rocket. Williamson returns to report that he found the graves of Hathaway’s wife and children, and that the gravestones said that they died of an unknown disease during July 2007/2038.
As breakfast ends, Hathaway stands and toasts the crew and his family, and as soon he is done he collapses and knows that he will soon be dead. Wilder wants to call the family in to see Hathaway, but Hathaway stops him.
Hathaway says they won’t understand and wouldn’t want them to understand, and then dies. Wilder converses with Hathaway’s wife and concludes that she and the children are all androids, created by Hathaway to keep him company after his wife and children died. The crew buries Hathaway in his family’s graveyard.
As Wilder prepares to depart, Williamson asks Wilder about what should be done about the android family and specially asks whether they should be deactivated. Wilder rejects taking them to Earth and says deactivation never crossed his mind. Wilder hands Williamson a gun and tells the crewman that if he can do anything it is better than anything he can do.
Williamson goes into the hut and returns to Wilder reporting that he pointed the gun at an android daughter, who responded by smiling, and that he felt shooting them would be “murder”. Wilder speculates the androids could operate for up to two more centuries. The rocket departs, and the android family continues on with its endless routines, that includes, for no reason at all, the android wife nightly looking up at Earth in the sky and tending a fire.
August 2026/2057: There Will Come Soft Rains
Main article: There Will Come Soft Rains (short story)
Publication history
First published in Collier’s, May 6, 1950, and revised for inclusion in The Martian Chronicles.
Plot
An unoccupied, highly automated house of the McClellan family that stands and operates intact in a California city that is otherwise obliterated by a nuclear bomb, and its destruction by a fire caused by a windstorm.
The story marks the end of the United States as a nation. The story also commemorates the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 5, 1945 (US time) during World War II. The title of the story was taken from Sara Teasdale’s anti-war poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” originally published in 1918 during World War I and the 1918 Flu Pandemic.
October 2026/2057: The Million-Year Picnic
Publication history
First published in Planet Stories, summer 1946.
Plot
“The Million-Year Picnic” is the story of William Thomas, a former governor of the state of Minnesota and Alice, his wife, and three sons, who traveled to Mars to escape war under the parents’ pretense that the family is taking a fishing trip.
Alice is not noticeably pregnant with a girl. The family enjoys a warm Martian summer day in and along water-filled canals traveling in a power boat prepared for an encampment. William is troubled by the war on Earth and does his best to keep the children entertained though he mutters his concerns as stray thoughts his children don’t completely comprehend.
William draws the boys’ attention on fish, the ancient Martian cities they pass by, and on finding Martians – the latter, William assures the boys that they will find. While boating in a canal William and his wife listen to a broadcast on their atomic radio and are jolted by what they hear. William remotely detonates the family’s rocket that causes a great sound, throttles the boat faster to drown out the noise and collides with a wharf and stops.
No damage is done and William laughingly tells everyone he just exploded their rocket. The boys instantly think it is part of a game. William tells the boys he did it to keep their location secret, and the boys think it is still part of a game. William listens in on the atomic radio again and hears nothing for a couple of minutes. He tells the family, “It’s over at last” and the children fall silent. William boats down the canal where they pass six Martian cities and asks the family to choose the best one.
They all choose the last one and William declares that it will be their new home. The boys are saddened to tears about missing Minnesota but the
