Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles

Finished: January 22, 2012

2012 Book Count: 2

I really cannot believe that I never read Ray Bradbury before now. His books are really quite spectacular, and The Martian Chronicles is one of my favourites yet.

The Martian Chronicles is a book about Mars, but it is also a book about Earth. In fact, it is very much about Earth, and people, and the things that people do to each other and the different names under which they do it. He takes a few very sharp jabs at the North American way of living and consuming, but he definitely allows for hope – that not all people are callous and self-serving, that there are individuals who are respectful, understanding and kind who are truly trying to make their world and others a better place. Unfortunately it is also clearly depicted that those people are in the minority, and often at the whim of the cruel majority.

I’m really interested in the fact that Mr. Bradbury called The Martian Chronicles fantasy instead of science or speculative fiction.

First of all, I don’t write science fiction. I’ve only done one science fiction book and that’s Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. It couldn’t happen, you see? That’s the reason it’s going to be around a long time—because it’s a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.*

I find this statement incredibly fascinating, especially because The Martian Chronicles was written in 1950, and he said the above quote in 1999. I myself, in 2012, can definitely see the mythic qualities, but it is not so far fetched to me. I could see this happening literally. Maybe I am overly inured to the idea that myths have to necessarily reflect a kind of truth back at us, or I just read so much speculative fiction and have such a bleak outlook on humanity in general that nothing shocks me. Hopefully it’s the former.

When I first started reading science fiction and fantasy when I was young, I thought that these ideas were all new. And as I delve deeper and deeper into the past of science fiction, I realize that there have always been people thinking these things – whose imaginations taken them to the end point of the actions we make as a whole. I am always humbled by the idea that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was published in 1932, or that EM Forster’s The Machine Stops was published in 1909. And I wonder why these ideas aren’t more prevalent in our society. They are inconvenient ideas, to be certain, but they have been part many parts of our cultural media for a very, very long time now.

One thing I find encouraging, though, is the popularity of dystopian fiction in writing for young adults (heard of The Hunger Games? Find a teenager and give to them). There is a whole generation of young people for whom this will be something they’ve thought really carefully about.

So, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, EM Forster, I salute you.

*Taken from Grandfather Time: an interview with Ray Bradbury by Dennis O’Leary