The Martian Chronicles

Soar above the fossil seas and crystal pillars of a deadworld in the pages of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. A milestoneof American literature, Bradbury’s classic collection of interconnectedvignettes about life on the red planet diverges from the War of the Worlds theme,in which humanity must defend its shores against its neighbors, for in Bradbury’sprismatic vision, humanity is the conqueror, colonizing Mars to escape an Earthdevastated by atomic war and environmental catastrophe. Bradbury’s TheMartian Chronicles is a must-read for any fan of science fiction orfantasy, a crucial precursor to films like Avatar and Alien andbooks like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion,and a haunting prophesy of humanity’s destiny to bring our old dreams andfollies along with us wherever we may venture forth.

1100197062
The Martian Chronicles

Soar above the fossil seas and crystal pillars of a deadworld in the pages of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. A milestoneof American literature, Bradbury’s classic collection of interconnectedvignettes about life on the red planet diverges from the War of the Worlds theme,in which humanity must defend its shores against its neighbors, for in Bradbury’sprismatic vision, humanity is the conqueror, colonizing Mars to escape an Earthdevastated by atomic war and environmental catastrophe. Bradbury’s TheMartian Chronicles is a must-read for any fan of science fiction orfantasy, a crucial precursor to films like Avatar and Alien andbooks like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion,and a haunting prophesy of humanity’s destiny to bring our old dreams andfollies along with us wherever we may venture forth.

18.99 In Stock
The Martian Chronicles

The Martian Chronicles

by Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles

The Martian Chronicles

by Ray Bradbury

Paperback(Reprint)

$18.99 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

Soar above the fossil seas and crystal pillars of a deadworld in the pages of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. A milestoneof American literature, Bradbury’s classic collection of interconnectedvignettes about life on the red planet diverges from the War of the Worlds theme,in which humanity must defend its shores against its neighbors, for in Bradbury’sprismatic vision, humanity is the conqueror, colonizing Mars to escape an Earthdevastated by atomic war and environmental catastrophe. Bradbury’s TheMartian Chronicles is a must-read for any fan of science fiction orfantasy, a crucial precursor to films like Avatar and Alien andbooks like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion,and a haunting prophesy of humanity’s destiny to bring our old dreams andfollies along with us wherever we may venture forth.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062079930
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 10/11/2011
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 31,863
Product dimensions: 5.32(w) x 8.02(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile: 740L (what's this?)

About the Author

About The Author
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

Hometown:

Los Angeles, California

Date of Birth:

August 22, 1920

Place of Birth:

Waukegan, Illinois

Education:

Attended schools in Waukegan, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

January 2030

Rocket Summer

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer's ancient green lawns.

Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.

Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.

The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land....

February 2030

Ylla

They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls ofmagnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.

Mr. and Mrs. K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years, and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.

Mr. and Mrs. K were not old. They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking room.

They were not happy now.

This morning Mrs. K stood between the pillars, listening to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly run on the horizon.

Something was going to happen.

She waited.

She watched the blue sky of Mars as if it might at any moment grip in on itself, contract, and expel a shining miracle down upon the sand.

Nothing happened.

Tired of waiting, she walked through the misting pillars. A gentle rain sprang from the fluted pillar tops, cooling the scorched air, falling gently on her. On hot days it was like walking in a creek. The floors of the house glittered with cool streams. In the distance she heard her husband playing his book steadily, his fingers never tired of the old songs. Quietly she wished he might one day again spend as much time holding and touching her like a little harp as he did his incredible books.

But no. She shook her head, an imperceptible, forgiving shrug. Her eyelids closed softly down upon her golden eyes. Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.

She lay back in a chair that moved to take her shape even as she moved. She closed her eyes tightly and nervously.

The dream occurred.

Her brown fingers trembled, came up, grasped at the air. A moment later she sat up, startled, gasping.

She glanced about swiftly, as if expecting someone there before her. She seemed disappointed; the space between the pillars was empty.

Her husband appeared in a triangular door. "Did you call?" he asked irritably.

"No!" she cried.

"I thought I heard you cry out."

"Did I? I was almost asleep and had a dream!"

"In the daytime? You don't often do that."

She sat as if struck in the face by the dream. "How strange, how very strange," she murmured. "The dream."

"Oh?" He evidently wished to return to his book.

"I dreamed about a man."

"A man?"

"A tall man, six feet one inch tall."

"How absurd; a giant, a misshapen giant."

"Somehow"--she tried the words--"he looked all right. In spite of being tall. And he had--oh, I know you'll think it silly-he had blue eyes"'

"Blue eyes! Gods!" cried Mr. K. "What'll you dream next? I suppose he had black hair?"

"How did you guess?" She was excited.

"I picked the most unlikely color," he replied coldly.

"Well, black it was!" she cried. "And he had a very white skin; oh, he was most unusual! He was dressed in a strange uniform and he came down out of the sky and spoke pleasantly to me." She smiled.

"Out of the sky; what nonsense!"

"He came in a metal thing that glittered in the sun," she remembered. She closed her eyes to shape it again. "I dreamed there was the sky and something sparkled like a coin thrown into the air, and suddenly it grew large and fell down softly to land, a long silver craft, round and alien. And a door opened in the side of the silver object and this tall man stepped out."

The Martian Chronicles. Copyright © by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews