The Martian Chronicles (The Grand Master Editions)
by Ray Bradbury
Book Summary Information
Author: Ray BradburyEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1984-06-01
ISBN: 0553278223
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Spectra
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780553278224
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of The Martian Chronicles (The Grand Master Editions)
Book Review: Reviews from Brizmus Blogs Books
Summary: 3 Stars
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)
Summary of The Martian Chronicles (The Grand Master Editions)
Collection of stories about man's attempts to explore and settle Mars.From "Rocket Summer" to "The Million-Year Picnic," Ray Bradbury's stories of the colonization of Mars form an eerie mesh of past and future. Written in the 1940s, the chronicles drip with nostalgic atmosphere--shady porches with tinkling pitchers of lemonade, grandfather clocks, chintz-covered sofas. But longing for this comfortable past proves dangerous in every way to Bradbury's characters--the golden-eyed Martians as well as the humans. Starting in the far-flung future of 1999, expedition after expedition leaves Earth to investigate Mars. The Martians guard their mysteries well, but they are decimated by the diseases that arrive with the rockets. Colonists appear, most with ideas no more lofty than starting a hot-dog stand, and with no respect for the culture they've displaced.
Bradbury's quiet exploration of a future that looks so much like the past is sprinkled with lighter material. In "The Silent Towns," the last man on Mars hears the phone ring and ends up on a comical blind date. But in most of these stories, Bradbury holds up a mirror to humanity that reflects a shameful treatment of "the other," yielding, time after time, a harvest of loneliness and isolation. Yet the collection ends with hope for renewal, as a colonist family turns away from the demise of the Earth towards a new future on Mars. Bradbury is a master fantasist and The Martian Chronicles are an unforgettable work of art. --Blaise Selby
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