The Sword and Laser discussion

I love this book! I've read it at various stages of life and each time I take something new away from it. As a preteen it was the fantastic situations of the car that wouldn't slow down, the wish in a bottle, the amazing croplands only needing water. Later on I saw the colonization issues as the existing population fought back with whatever it had. Later on I understood the utter tragedy the last few stories represented. And finally, not included in each volume, "Dark They Were and Golden Eyed," a commentary on the soul of the land.

I'm going to go story by story here. Let's start with the introduction to the Harper Perennial trade paperback (and likely many others) titled "Green Town: Somewhere on Mars; Mars, Somewhere in Egypt." In that intro Bradbury acknowledges influences such as Barsoom and Egypt, as well as Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. He talks about friendship with Fellini(!) and a lunch with Aldous Huxley.

When you predict the future, you sometimes find yourself in the past. This hilarious section comes towards the end:

"All that being true, how come The Martian Chronicles is often described as Science Fiction? It misfits that description. There is only one story in the entire book that obeys the laws of technological physics: “There Will Come Soft Rains.” It was among the first Virtual Reality houses that positioned themselves in our midst these last few years. In 1950 that house would have cost a bankrupt sum. With the advent of today’s computers, Internets, faxes, audio tapes, Walkmen earplugs, and wide-screen TV, its rooms could be hot-wired on the cheap at Circuit City."

Circuit City! I about fell over. And of the rest, only computers and the Internet remain in wide use. Perhaps Bradbury's stories will be more prescient than he thought. His stranger predictions look more plausible as technology advances.

Next up: Rocket Summer. A piece of flash fiction before the term was coined. I don't recall reading this one in earlier editions but it must have been there. The story takes us from the known world of Ohio and introduces us to the strangeness to come.

Ylla: I am going to spoiler protect from here on out, just for courtesy's sake. I'm on my...hard to be sure...fourth? sixth? reading. Some are reading for the first time. Within the spoiler text expect full spoilers for the book, since I'll refer to later stories from time to time.

(view spoiler)[Ylla represents our introduction to the ancient civilization and technology of Mars. The two characters live in the dregs of those who have come before, using an ancient house that appears to have once been a vacation home. They and their predecessors have lived their for a thousand years, as Mars slowly recedes around them. Vast cities remain empty, yet their vehicles easily eat up the miles.

For all their technology, the Martians as represented by Ylla and Yll remain vain and self interested. The husband neglects his wife, and she resents him for it, yet neither speak. We also see how Martians channel the visitors and take on their characteristics.

Bradbury's vision here is better than he may have thought, predicting "metal insects" and "electric spiders" for use in battle. We're just about there now.

Rather than rejoice having visitors from another planet, Yll is enraged with jealousy from his wife's visions. He uses a strange device with some of the above mentioned metal insects to kill them, then pretend they never existed.

Here we also see something that will be very important later. The Martians have dark skin and golden eyes. That's the description of a true Martian. "They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices." How they arrive at that we won't know until much later in the book.

Regarding Ylla's fairly obvious lack of agency, yes, I see it, but no, it didn't bother me on the first few readings. I understand how it would bother today's readers but I don't think that is what Bradbury meant. We are taking today's sensibilities and applying them to yesterday. Bradbury brilliantly depicted an abused spouse, browbeaten into conformity and her creativity taken away. This is a tragic tale on two levels. (hide spoiler)]

The Summer Night:An interstitial, (view spoiler)[important in showing the Martians susceptible to suggestion. They intuit the culture and language of the explorers. Martians remain vulnerable due to this characteristic. (hide spoiler)]

The Earth Men:(view spoiler)[This is the story I remember most strongly from my youthful reading of the book. Rather than being welcomed as explorers, the Earth astronauts are treated as if they were mentally ill. It's a turnover of the trope of the intrepid adventurer. This is how we would treat apparently-human people who claimed to be from another planet.

In this case, projection of hallucinations seals the issue. No one believes them, and their ship is thought to be a hallucination as well. Along with a refreshing take on the trope, we also see the rigidity of the Martian population. They can't accept anything other than their already built up world view. That has fatal consequences for both sides. (hide spoiler)]

The Taxpayer: Another interstitial,(view spoiler)[ that exists mainly for foreshadowing. Atomic war is expected soon and the Taxpayer, representing humanity, wants out. (hide spoiler)]

The Third Expedition: Here we see the apparently irrational hatred of the Martians for Earthmen.(view spoiler)[ The rocket lands and the astronauts all see relatives that died long ago. They scatter to various houses and have an afternoon and evening that lulls them to inattention. Only at the last minute does the Captain realize that it is a hallucination, and dies before he can act on it.

The Martians don't have an army or really much in the way of weapons. They are susceptible to suggestion and use that as a defense. The Martians fight back the only way they know how, and the Earthmen are summarily executed. It seems a chilling, vicious, unwarranted attack...until the next story. (hide spoiler)]

And the Moon Be Still As Bright: Here we find a reason why the Martians might have hated Earthmen:(view spoiler)[ They have been wiped out by a terrestrial disease, Chicken Pox, brought by the other expeditions.

The Martian civilization was far along the path of decline, with four out of five cities empty. Yet that 1/5 remained, living an elegant, peaceful life even in decline. They died suddenly of an extra-martian disease brought by brash Terrans.

This one isn't even thinly veiled. It's the story of smallpox in South America, a disease brought by colonizing Europeans which wiped out 90% of the population. It didn't matter if the Europeans (or the Earthmen) didn't mean to do it, the local population is still dead.

This is also another skillful Bradbury trope reversal. SF of the era was replete with the idea of danger from space, invaders or monsters. What if we were the invaders? The way he worked in the historical precedent makes the idea impossible to refute.

Spender, the archaeologist, is offended with the way the more boisterous members of the expedition immediately begin sullying the area with trash and noise. He wants Mars to remain as it is, to be studied and respected, so much so that he begins killing crew members in an attempt to forestall more expeditions. He gains no sympathy among the crew, but the Captain offers him an out, run to the hills and be lost. Spender doesn't take it, preferring to die there.

We see Egypt as well here, the vast lost civilization and its artifacts. Spender is buried in a sarcophagus found nearby and put in a tomb with local artifacts around him, like a pharaoh. The Captain disciplines a crew member for destroying parts of a Martian city, but that won't last. (hide spoiler)]

The Settlers:Interstitial. People are coming to Mars. Mostly setup, notable for discussion of The Loneliness, how people feel when far from home. The Earth under discussion here and in the stories to this point have been remarkably Midwest in tone, reflecting Bradbury's youth.

The Green Morning: (view spoiler)[A settler named Benjamin Driscoll finds himself unable to breathe in the thin air of Mars, making him unsuitable for the mining operations that represent the great majority of Earth's effort on Mars. He doesn't want to go back so he proposes to go about planting trees in an effort to generate oxygen.

This is a prose poem, a feeling piece best left unexamined. Why weren't the settlers tested before they left Earth? For that matter, what could Terrans have found worth mining on a planet that supported and advanced civilization for millennia? Leave that alone and go along with what is said.

Driscoll doesn't look back for the thirty days he plants seeds. Finally there is rain, and the trees grown in vast quantities. Not a few, not a part, but every seed sprouts and grows to maturity quickly. They give off the much needed oxygen.

This is Bradbury's move to Southern California. What seems to be a dusty desert, once irrigated, turns into amazing cropland. As Southern California bloomed in reality, so did the soil of Mars in his imagination. (hide spoiler)]

The Locusts:Interstitial. Humans are coming in great numbers, and transforming Mars into a more Earth like place. It's also a callback to Rocket Summer, as the rockets land on Mars, heating up their landing points, burning some beyond recognition.

Night Meeting: Less a time travel story than a touchpoint of two points in time.(view spoiler)[ A Martian of the indeterminate past can talk to, but not touch, a human of the recent Martian settlement. They have come together on an odd night to swap stories of their journey and destination.

The Martian casually references a date in the four million range, meaning his civilization is at least that old. As a kid I didn't track the idea, but since the year on Mars is twice as long, it would be more like eight million years.

The Mars civilization is at the height of its power, with the traveler heading to a city that was in ruins before the Chicken Pox plague killed the Martians. That past is as real to him as the humans' present.

The vibrant past of Mars lives on even as its present is a tiny fraction of its previous self. Will that past assert itself later? (hide spoiler)]

The Shore: Another interstitial, this one explaining why the Martian colonists are overwhelmingly American. The worsening war keeps others Earthside.

Took me a minute to parse out the line "Everyone knew who the first women would be." I don't recall that line before. Of course Bradbury meant prostitutes, as the next story makes clear. I suppose that may have been true of colonies in the past, but it does stick out like a sore thumb today.

The Fire Balloons: Not sure how I feel about this one. It's a religious tale, which unlike so much of SF treats religion with respect. (view spoiler)[Several priests go to Mars to minister to the humans, but one insists on finding the "second race" of Martians that aren't even vaguely humanoid - they are blue glowing spheres.

The spheres won't communicate with them but seem friendly. As Father Peregrine finds out first by accident and then deliberately, they won't allow the humans to come to harm.

Father Peregrine determines to bring Christianity to them, in a form they might accept. He's every inch a Priest, concerned about the immortal souls of the Martians.

He needn't have worried. The blue sphere Martians are disembodied people, having assumed the form eons past. They live without sin, without even the possibility of sin. If anything, they represent the perfect way of living that the Fathers are attempting to bring to humanity. The priests come to Mars to bring inspiration but find themselves the ones inspired. (hide spoiler)]

I thought you were asking if we should have individual threads on the individual stories!

Jump in any time! I'm going to finish the book this weekend and then do an overall discussion. Chiming in on a particular story here is a-ok by me.

*stretches fingers* All right! Let's get to the second half of the book. I neglected to mention Interim which is another interstitial. What is odd about this one is how it talks about bringing in "fifteen thousand lumber feet of Oregon pine" plus a lot of Redwood to build a town. But in The Green Morning we see that trees grow excellently on Mars, once watered. So are they using local wood? Because the above implies that they are bringing it in from Earth.

This is one of the pieces that makes me wonder if these stories are all in the same universe, or if perhaps each is a mood piece that might be in a related multiverse.

The Musicians: A short, gruesome tale of the boys of Mars, who play "musician" (view spoiler)[with the corpses of Martians killed by the Chicken Pox brought by early expeditions. It's reminiscent of his light horror works like The October Country.

Playing "musician" means tapping the corpse until the black skin flakes off and the xylophone-like bones appear. (I guess the Martians really were humanoid, not just in appearance but construction as well.) Meanwhile the adults are busily burning the old towns to remove the corpses. The light of Day is getting rid of Night, but the boys dwell in the macabre for as long as they can. (hide spoiler)]

The Wilderness: This story features two female characters, but as for representation, I'm torn.(view spoiler)[ It's two friends waiting to go to Mars, one of whom has a fiance there. She's also terrified of the dark and of falling, both of which she'll experience on the trip.

But the story is less about that than their goodbye to the town. Bradbury's virtuoso language is out in full force, describing their final visit to familiar places, soon to be left forever.

In a sense the story fails the Bechdel test all the way through, since the reason the two women are talking, the reason they are even in this situation, is because of a man. In another sense it is two friends bidding goodbye to a familiar life together. Another Bradbury story that still has the full force of its intent, but has become more than a little outdated. (hide spoiler)]

The Naming of Names: Another interstitial. More people are coming to Mars and naming previously unnamed places. It's an allegory for the government coming and asserting control over a place previously free.

Usher 2: A multimillionaire (probably equal to a billionaire in today's terms) builds a replica of Poe's House of Usher on Mars. It's not just for the fun of it though. The project is in reaction to Earth burning the majority of books twenty years back, leaving morality police in place to ensure "pure" material.
(view spoiler)[
This story is a callback to the greats of horror literature, each called out by author name and characters. It's a macabre story played light. The MC invites members of the "Society for Prevention of Fantasy" to the house, then kills them off one by one. It's a revenge fantasy the next alternate-universe over from Fahrenheit 451.

Having fulfilled its purpose, the recreated House of Usher falls in on itself, just like the original. (hide spoiler)]

The Old Ones: Short setup for the next story. Old people are coming to Mars to retire.

The Martian: No, not THAT one. Mark Watney is nowhere near this story.
(view spoiler)[
An old couple retires to Mars, partly out of grief for the death of their young son many years back. A perfect replica of him shows up during a storm, and quickly moves into their lives.

It's clearly not the kid, but the being wants to be him, so they treat him as such. It's a Martian, one of the few left. He's so suggestible that he turns into what the people around him want most.

The mother insists on a trip to town, where the kid is pulled in all directions by the memories of others. It eventually leads to his death from conflicting imperatives.

This is a weird, compelling story. While looking humanoid, the Martians are very different from us. It's the story of a being evolved to please, and unable to resist that. (hide spoiler)]

The Luggage Store:War is coming to America, source country of the Martian colonists. And the pull is strong. Many will return to Earth. Even Father Peregrine, who fought so hard to bring salvation to the blue spheres. It was a salvation unneeded by those beings, but Father Peregrine's motives were pure. And even he would go back, to fight in a useless war.

The Off Season: Sam Parkhill, one of the astronauts of the Fourth Expedition, opens a hot dog stand at a major intersection. There's just one problem. (view spoiler)[People are leaving for Earth at a rapid clip, so his hot dog stand won't get any business.

Meanwhile some of the few remaining Martians chase him down in a sand boat and grant him title to so much land that he essentially owns half of Mars. I'm unsure why they would do this, or really how you would determine title on Mars.

The story mentions that there's only a hundred or so Martians left. This seems to be their last action since they are apparently all gone a story or two later.

I find this one interesting and properly weird, fitting as part of the Martian Chronicles, but I have trouble understanding the motivations of many of the characters in it.

Sam and his wife are looking at Earth in the sky when they see explosions covering essentially all of the surface. There is going to be an off season. A REALLY long off season.

(hide spoiler)]

The Watchers: The human population of Mars watches Earth (view spoiler)[ as it burns in the night sky. Finally a Morse Code message comes through, asking and telling them to come home. (hide spoiler)]

The Silent Towns: Walter Gripp was out prospecting when the call to return home came. (view spoiler)[By the time he went back into town a week later, everyone had left the planet.

Or so it seemed. At one point a phone rings. He misses answering it, but after several attempts manages to catch one ringing and answer it. On the phone is a woman in a town a thousand miles away. They are disconnected so he gets in a car and drives to the town.

He's initially very relieved, but finds out quickly that they don't get along. There's also fat bashing since the woman is obese, as if that makes her bad. I'll forgive Bradbury for this but rolled my eyes at "fat = bad."

Gripp runs off and hides in a new location. He occasionally hears a ringing phone, but never answers. (hide spoiler)]

The Long Years:Mr. Hathaway lives with his family in a stone cottage on Mars. He interacts with them regularly, but there is something not quite human about them.
(view spoiler)[
It's been 20 years since the Great War. They spot a rocket in the sky and assume it's Earthmen. It is, but not quite what they expected. It's the outer-system expedition returning home.

Hathaway's health isn't good, and while he is ecstatic to see humans again, he shows signs of failing health throughout. Eventually he drops dead. That's when the wife reveals that she and the rest of the family are robots, programmed to be like Hathaway's family, but unable to change or grow old as he did.

The expedition leaves, and the robots carry on as they did before, unchanging, running a facsimile of humanity on and on and on. (hide spoiler)]

There Will Come Soft Rains: A house on Earth goes through its daily routine. The house is fully automated and serves breakfast, opens the garage door, and issues reminders, all on an automatic schedule. No one is there.
(view spoiler)[
We gradually find out that the house is the last one standing in a city destroyed by nuclear war. The inhabitants exist only as outlines on a wall, vaporized in the blast.

Humanity has screwed up big time. They have destroyed vast areas on the Earth in a pointless war.

In the end the house collapses, both literal and figurative representations of the destruction of war. (hide spoiler)]

The Million Year Picnic:A family comes to Mars: Father, Mother, one daughter and three sons. It's billed as a vacation to the kids, but the parents have taken one of the few rockets left out of Earth. The father promises they will see Martians and the kids are excited.(view spoiler)[

What the parents know and the kids do not, is that another family is on their way, the gender composition of their children exactly the opposite.

The parents anticipate a long silence from Earth, and that the children of both couples will grow up to intermarry. Perhaps others made it off Earth before the final collapse, but they only know of the two families. Earth still exists, humanity lives albeit in much smaller numbers, but civilization is ruined.

The family makes its way to the canal to see the Martians. The father points at their reflection in the water. They are the Martians now.

It is the start of the million year picnic. A vast planet entirely for themselves.
(hide spoiler)]

That's the end of the volume I have. But there are two very important stories left out.

The copy I have has only 1 story you didn't mention.
The already discussed "Way up in the Middle of the Air"

My copy doesn't have "The Wilderness" or "Usher 2"

John (Taloni) wrote: "*stretches fingers* All right! Let's get to the second half of the book. I neglected to mention Interim which is another interstitial. What is odd about this one is how it talks about bringing in "..."

These sorts of inconsistencies bother me a little - obviously the stories weren't originally published all together, but I think a bit more tidying-up work when they were collected into a single volume wouldn't have gone amiss.

Another small inconsistency is that, in 'Way Up in the Middle of the Air', we see loads of black people heading off to Mars, but we never see them arriving or learn what became of them. I guess you can simply assume that they integrated into the existing human society on Mars and hence appear in the later stories without particular comment (many characters aren't physically described so there's no reason to assume they're white, other than a sense that Bradbury probably thought of white as the default). It would have been nice to have just a few lines though to confirm.

John (Taloni) wrote: "There Will Come Soft Rains: A house on Earth goes through its daily routine. The house is fully automated and serves breakfast, opens the garage door, and issues reminders, all on an automatic sche..."

This was probably my overall favourite story - nicely creepy and actually quite prescient in the technology it predicts - a fully networked house which obeys voice commands.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Took me a minute to parse out the line "Everyone knew who the first women would be." I don't recall that line before. Of course Bradbury meant prostitutes, as the next story makes clear. I suppose that may have been true of colonies in the past, but it does stick out like a sore thumb today."

This line bothered me, not just because of the sexist assumptions embedded in it but because I want to know more, and he doesn't give us any more. How did these women get to Mars? Was there a sex-workers' collectively-funded rocket? Did some people pay to bring their favourite escorts with them? Is there sex trafficking in space? What is life like for a sex worker on Mars?

When you start thinking about it, sex workers in space is actually an interesting potential topic for a science fiction story, but Bradbury doesn't write it. Perhaps I should write it myself...

The other two stories are "Way Up in the Middle of the Air" and "Dark They Were and Golden Eyed." I ran out of time and energy last night. More on those tonight.


Ruth wrote: "When you start thinking about it, sex workers in space is actually an interesting potential topic for a science fiction story, but Bradbury doesn't write it. Perhaps I should write it myself..."

I very much encourage you to do this. Mary Robinette Kowal captured some of the Bradbury feel in her shorts about the Lady Astronaut of Mars. References abound in her work, such as Nathaniel York as the MC's husband (Astronaut in Ylla). Why not update Martian Chronicles with a more modern take on just those sex workers?

John (Taloni) wrote: "That's the end of the volume I have. But there are two very important stories left out."

My copy misses "The Fire Balloons" which is a very intriguing story.

Thanks, a great commentary.

John (Taloni) wrote:
Ruth wrote: "When you start thinking about it, sex workers in space is actually an interesting potential topic for a science fiction story, but Bradbury doesn't write it. Perhaps I should write it myself..."

I very much encourage you to do this. Mary Robinette Kowal captured some of the Bradbury feel in her shorts about the Lady Astronaut of Mars."

You know what, I think I will write something... although I can’t promise it’ll be as good as MRK, this is an interesting topic which feels under-explored in SF.

Ruth wrote: "When you start thinking about it, sex workers in space is actually an interesting potential topic for a science fiction story, but Bradbury doesn't write it. Perhaps I should write it myself... "

Condomnauts by Yoss has intergalactic ambassadors as sex workers basically, who have to be prepared for ....well, anything.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Ruth wrote: "When you start thinking about it, sex workers in space is actually an interesting potential topic for a science fiction story, but Bradbury doesn't write it.
Condomnauts by Yoss has intergalactic ambassadors as sex workers basically, who have to be prepared for ....well, anything ..."

I read the description of this book and I genuinely can’t decide if it sounds awesome or terrible.

Ruth wrote: "Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Ruth wrote: "When you start thinking about it, sex workers in space is actually an interesting potential topic for a science fiction story, but Bradbury doesn't write i..."
Jury's still out for me! I'm halfway. It comes across as campy/cheeky, does that make it better or worse? ;)

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Ruth wrote: "Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Ruth wrote: "When you start thinking about it, sex workers in space is actually an interesting potential topic for a science fiction story, but Bradbury do..."

B5 had an episode where Ivonava had to have sex to complete a treaty....

(view spoiler)[ She gets out of it because the alien ambassador is to proud to admit ignorance and has no idea what human sex is (hide spoiler)]

John (Taloni) wrote: "The Watchers: The human population of Mars watches Earth [spoilers removed]"

Did anyone else think it was really strange that (view spoiler)[the people went back to earth once the war started? My guess would have been that tons of refugees would have tried to get away from earth, considering that you could see the earth burning from space. So something like a rescue effort to get people off the earth would have made sense to me. Instead everyone on mars goes back to earth, presumably so they could all die together? (hide spoiler)]

^Yep, that bothered me too. Quite a lot actually. Which brings me to...

(was going to leave this open but on second thought, am going to spoiler protect most of it.)

Way in the Middle of the Air: The entire black population of the South leaves for Mars in a single day. They've constructed their own rockets, in secret. A wave of people sweeps through a Southern town on their way to the outskirts where the rocket will pick them up.
(view spoiler)[
This set of affairs enrages Teece, a racist, bigoted white supremacist who has grown prosperous on the labor of black people. That's probably the best thing we can say about him as he is revealed as a bigger and bigger monster as the story continues.

Teece tries several ways to try to get some blacks to stay. He's nothing without someone to oppress. He's so dedicated to racism that even some other good ol' boys sitting with him try to pull him back. A point is made here: It doesn't take more than a small percentage of virulent racists along with a larger "go along to get along" group to enable oppression.

Yes, the n-word is used several times. It's used to show the small minded bigotry of the speaker. Should we ban the story for that? I don't see it. But there's another reason that perhaps it was left out.

By the end of the story, the blacks are on the rocket, on their way to Mars, and Teece is left alone with his hate. He takes solace in a forced-respectful term that the last black person he spoke to used in talking with him on their way out. And the blacks are free. That is the end of the story. This story.

And then...

The Martian Chronicles continues. In The Silent Towns and The Long Years, we see how everyone went back to Earth. Only a handful of people are left on Mars.

After escaping, after leaving for freedom on Mars, they went back. For whatever reason we are left to speculate. Misguided patriotism perhaps. Maybe a chance to give it to men like Teece. Bradbury doesn't tell. But when the outer system expedition returns they find precisely one actual human on Mars, and we know of only two more. So everyone went back.

The Southern blacks escaped to freedom on Mars. Then they returned to Earth, to die in a brutal nuclear war. That is the essential tragedy of this story. The destiny they had escaped rose up and took them. (hide spoiler)]

John (Taloni) wrote: "Way in the Middle of the Air:..."

My thoughts exactly, both on the portrail of Teece and on the events of later stories.

John (Taloni) wrote: "^Yep, that bothered me too. Quite a lot actually. Which brings me to...

Way in the Middle of the Air:..."

This story does not fit if every one goes back to Earth. For these people the USA is not home and Mars is the promised land. Good short story that is in a parallel universe.

Part of an Apocryphia

The entire 'going back' part makes no sense for any of them. "We have a life here, let's throw it away to go die in nuclear fire!" Um... no. And you can't even use the "I'm going to fight for my country" call to patriotism since troops are meaningless in a nuclear war. Not to mention that a nuclear war will be over the day it starts, assuming it starts with a massive first strike.

You would think the mass exodus would be "to" Mars. not back to Earth

Tassie Dave wrote: "You would think the mass exodus would be "to" Mars. not back to Earth"

It doesn’t make much logical sense, no. I kinda let that part slide as a bit of artistic licence to let Bradbury wax poetic about the twice-depopulated planet.