::READERS REVIEWS::

Beautifully matured - The Martian Chronicles - There's not a lot more to add to all the positive reviews already here. I too found this book thought provoking, provocative, profound. It's an inspiring piece of work. I've been reading the (sadly) negative reviews too, and apparently this is not everybody's cup of tea. Know, however, that there is a reason why this is a classic. If you don't 'get' it, well you're just losing out on something special. Some people criticize the science. Mr Bradbury himself admitted that this was more a work of Fantasy than Sci-Fi. Who am I to argue? The book concerns the colonization of Mars and the implications on both humans and, yes, Martians. At this stage in time it reads more like an alternate history book, considering some of the dates involved. The prose is very good. Lyrical, and haunting at times. The book, whilst essentially a series of short stories strung together, actually flows pretty good, and everybody should enjoy peeling away the layers of meaning. It's more than just an adventure, it's a chronicle, of what makes us tick. Am I reading too much into it? Perhaps. Read it. Own it. You should.

A classic - but... - I know this is a classic, but I just could not get into the stories at all. Just not my sort of thing.

Classic, classic, classic! - The exploration and colonization of Mars by humans is told alongside the depopulation and extinction of Martians in this collection of coordinated short stories by master sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. The Martian Chronicles will not be remembered in the annuals of sci-fi writing for amazing new technologies, weapons, aliens, or bravery. It will be remembered for the desperation of the Martians to preserve themselves, the classic (on Earth) destruction of native peoples because of introduced diseases (and remember The War of the Worlds?), the arrogant aggressiveness and moral poverty of the stewards of Earth, and the classic "history as written by the victors" ending.

It's enough to get one addicted to sci-fi, even though these stories date from half a century ago.

I also have an old cassette of Leonard Nimoy reading "Usher II" and "There will come soft rains." These stories, and the others, are haunting, and full of visions of mind control issues and future outcomes fueled by the Cold War.

For the serious sci-fi fan, this is an important work.

Amazing! - If I were to write a jacket blurb for this book, it would go something like this:
"Ray Bradbury does it again with another stellar title. This is a novel of science fiction, mystery, beauty, and conflict. Starting with the first rockets to Mars, Bradbury tells the story of Mankind's spreading and fleeing to and from the planet. It is a great story and is not only for science fiction fans but also for anyone who enjoys a good book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I picked it up thinking it wouldn't be to amazing, but once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. It isn't just another science fiction novel; it's much deeper than that. I would definitely recommend this book to all of my friends. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't willing to read and understand this, because it's a bit higher then comfortable reading level for me, but it's really not that hard. Any extra effort you put into reading this book is generously rewarded.

There really is no major character in this book, because the same person rarely appears in multiple chapters. It is a book of short stories, so this is I picked Captain Wilder of the Fourth Expedition as the "most" main character for two reasons. One, he plays an important part in the colonization of Mars as the captain of the first successful expedition to the planet (there were actually 3 attempts before his success). Two, he is one of the few characters to appear in more than one chapter. I think he is somewhat similar to Tobias MacIvey from A Land Remembered in several aspects. They are both leaders, Tobias of his Cattle Company and Wilder of the Fourth Expedition and the mission to the outer planets, and they are both peaceful but powerful. They rarely fight anyone, and when they do, they never started it, they have a good reason to be in it, and they usually win. They do differ, because Tobias is always trying to make a living and drive cattle and get money, making him a bit more economic-minded than Wilder, who wanted to preserve the natural Martian landscape as it was when they first landed, making him a bit more conservative. I believe these two characters would get along fine. They never pick fights with anyone, so I can't see why they would with each other. If there was any interaction, I think it would be cooperation.

There are many conflicts of all different shapes and sizes in this book, so it is hard to determine the most significant one. I think one of the most major ones is between man and his fellow man. There are many examples of this throughout the book, from one on one struggles to gang fights to full scale wars. The largest of these is an atomic war on earth that destroys the entire continent of Australia in the first blow. Right after that, everyone is called home from Mars and only a handful is left. The book shows no clear resolution to this at the end. As one character puts it near the end of the book, "I take it most of Earth's a shambles, but the war goes on."

One theme of this book is man's nature to ruin beautiful things, especially natural beauty like that of Earth and Wars. Near the middle of the book there is a small chapter who wants to go to mars on a rocket because he is afraid of an "atom war". Later in the book, we have that atomic war on Earth and actually destroy the entire continent of Australia, among other things. With mars, there is a chapter devoted to that too. It says "The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers to beat the strange world into a shape the was familiar to the eye to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie stars and fit green shades to pull against the night." And this is exactly what we do to mars. We kill off the Martian race, and then use their ancient cities for target practice. We then bulldoze what remains and build a city of steel on a once beautiful metropolis. This theme is easily applicable to real life. Basically, the life lesson is to appreciate natural beauty instead of destroying it. That's a moral many people could use.

Reviews from Brizmus Blogs Books - Well, first off, I wish that I had known before I started that this was actually going to be a series of short stories with very little link between them all. I might have saved myself the trouble of reading it, since in the end, I really didn't enjoy it.
I'll admit that it was very well written and imaginative, nothing short of what one would expect from Ray Bradbury. The Mars of the future that he creates is one that is easy to believe in (or would be if we didn't already know it wasn't like that), and the changes it goes through over time are almost what is to be expected, sometimes a daring leap away from the expected.
So it wasn't bad. It was just boring. Most of the time. The occasional story that was an exciting, thought provoking, and adventuresome escape from reaility. For eight whole pages, it was easy to forget that I am living today, in 2010, in a world in which Mars is uninhabited by human or other. I would get so into that Mars, not wanting it to end. . .
And then the next story would start, and I would have to force myself to read, to not fall asleep, for a good 70 or 80 pages until the next 8 pages of joy would sneak up on me.
The prose was lyrical and beautiful, and Ray Bradbury's ideas are fresh and different (especially, I imagine, back in the 1940's when it was written). It's really just such a pity that it had to go off and be boring. Because it could have been great. It had potential.

I'd love to give the titles of the short stories I particularly enjoyed, but I read the book in French. I'll translate, but I don't know if they'll translate the same way.
-The Summer of the Spaceship (L'ete de la fusee)
-The Men from Earth (Les hommes de la Terre)
-Balls of Fire (Les Ballons de Feu)
-Usher House (Usher II)
-High Up in the Sky (Tout La-Haut dans le ciel)
-Picnic in A Million Years (Picque-Nicque dans un million d'annees)

The more you read, the harder it becomes to put down - The Martian Chronicles is a collection of loosely related short stories. The stories are often grim depicting racism, greed and other issues like mans imperialistic nature.

You have to go into this book willing to suspend your belief. Mars is not depicted as the red, baron planet that we know of today. Also, a lot of the plot elements are quite far-fetched, such as a group of average people being able to secretly build a rocket that travels to Mars, or a character that is able to build robots that are copies of humans in just about every way (speech, movement, etc) in a very short period of time. There are many far-fetched ideas strung throughout.

I have to admit; when I first started this book I thought it was ridiculous and way too far-fetched. However, as I kept digging in and just accepted this book for what it is I started reading for the underlying message rather than trying to pick the book apart. Once I took a more open-minded approach the book really started to shine. By the time I reached the middle of the book I was finding it increasingly harder to put down.

The Martian Chronicles is currently my favorite Bradbury book which I highly recommend; you just have to be willing to open your mind a bit. If you are stuck on hard sci-fi then this book is probably not for you.

Father Mars arose from the snow-topped crag of Mount Haemus - This is more along the lines of bunch of short stories in chronological order. I would love to give this book 4 stars but some of the stories were terrible, they didn't make sense and hard to follow.

Yet their were a couple like "Usher II" and "Way in the Middle of the Air" that were amazing, some really good stuff. "While The Silent Towns" had me laughing out loud.

If you don't mind trying to make sense of the other ones. But all mean help yourself some hidden treasures

The more you read, the harder it becomes to put down - The Martian Chronicles is a collection of loosely related short stories. The stories are often grim depicting racism, greed and other issues like mans imperialistic nature.

You have to go into this book willing to suspend your belief. Mars is not depicted as the red, baron planet that we know of today. Also, a lot of the plot elements are quite far-fetched, such as a group of average people being able to secretly build a rocket that travels to Mars, or a character that is able to build robots that are copies of humans in just about every way (speech, movement, etc) in a very short period of time. There are many far-fetched ideas strung throughout.

I have to admit when I first started this book I thought it was ridiculous and way too far-fetched. However, as I kept digging in and just accepted this book for what it is I started reading for the underlying message rather than trying to pick the book apart. Once I took a more open-minded approach the book really started to shine. By the time I reached the middle of the book I was finding it increasingly harder to put down.

The Martian Chronicles is currently my favorite Bradbury book which I highly recommend; you just have to be willing to open your mind a bit. If you are stuck on hard sci-fi then this book is probably not for you.

same book wrong cover - The book was in excellent condition, but the cover shown was orange, like the one i was looking for,but the one i got was a newer updated cover. would have liked to have the one that was pictured

An easy read - This is one of Ray Bradbury's best, an easy to read Si-Fi that's not science fiction because Ray Bradbury wrote it. Read it, you'll enjoy the ideas, the scope, and the way words are used.

The more you read, the harder it becomes to put down - The Martian Chronicles is a collection of loosely related short stories. The stories are often grim depicting racism, greed and other issues like mans imperialistic nature.

You have to go into this book willing to suspend your belief. Mars is not depicted as the red, barren planet that we know of today. Also, a lot of the plot elements are quite far-fetched, such as a group of average people being able to secretly build a rocket that travels to Mars, or a character that is able to build robots that are copies of humans in just about every way (speech, movement, etc) in a very short period of time. There are many far-fetched ideas strung throughout.

I have to admit when I first started this book I thought it was ridiculous and way too far-fetched. However, as I kept digging in and just accepted this book for what it is I started reading for the underlying message rather than trying to pick the book apart. Once I took a more open-minded approach the book really started to shine. By the time I reached the middle of the book I was finding it increasingly harder to put down.

The Martian Chronicles is currently my favorite Bradbury book which I highly recommend; you just have to be willing to open your mind a bit. If you are stuck on hard sci-fi then this book is probably not for you.

The Colonization of Mars - Lofty topics are covered here, within these pages. I would urge, you the reader, to think about the cultural climate at which time this book was written. What is masterful about Bradbury's art is that the highly political issues of civil rights, atomic war, etc. are not so much in the forefront as some of the other readers have led you to believe. The main question of this book, as it is and was with NASA space program is "what of the colonization of mars?" So, there is your task, what is your answer, how do you feel? It is interesting to see where Bradbury's characters end in the grand scheme of things. If you are unsettled by nondescript fanciful creations, let the book unravel some more, don't put it down. All will be explained.