a book
The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury · 1984 · 288 pages
Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves. Each wave different, and each wave stronger.
Ray Bradbury is a storyteller without peer, a poet of the possible, and, indisputably, one of America’s most beloved authors. The Mars he imagines in these masterful chronicles is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor—of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grand master once again enthralls, delights, and challenges us with his vision and heart—starkly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, weakness, folly, and poignant humanity in a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
recommended by 4 people
sourced from public statements
Orson Scott Card
“Bradbury’s martian stories are infused with tragedy, lost dreams, ancient glories and hope resurgent. And the way he writes! This is language that is meant, like ancient Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, to be read aloud. It contains its own music. It is music.”↗
Chris Hadfield
“Mars for humans. Why did Ray Bradbury write the Martian Chronicles? Great book to re-read:”↗
Martha Wainwright
“The first real book that I read independently was Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, and it really marked my pre-teen years. It was sitting on a bookshelf in my house in Saint-Sauveur, Quebec, and I just picked it up when I was about 12. I’m not a big sci-fi reader, but it reads pretty easily. It was the most expanded that my mind had ever been to that point by far! I don’t know if I understood all of the subtleties of it, but it was the beginning of the possibility of fiction, in a way.”↗