The Martian Chronicles

First edition
Author	Ray Bradbury
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, horror, dystopian fiction
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	May 4, 1950[1]
Publication place	United States
Pages	222

The Martian Chronicles is a science fiction fix-up, published in 1950, by American writer Ray Bradbury that chronicles the settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous Martians, by Americans leaving a troubled Earth that is eventually devastated by nuclear war. The book is a work of science fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, dystopian fiction, and horror that projects American society immediately after World War II into a technologically advanced future. Events in the chronicle include the apocalyptic destruction of both Martian and human civilizations, both instigated by humans, though there are no stories that take place during the catastrophes. The outcomes of many stories raise concerns about the values and direction of America of the time by addressing militarism that could result in a global nuclear war (e.g., "There Will Come Soft Rains"), racial oppression (e.g., "Way in the Middle of the Air"), ahistoricism and philistinism (e.g., "—And the Moon Be Still as Bright"), and censorship and conformity (e.g., "Usher II"), among others. On Bradbury's award of a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 2007, the book was recognized as one of his "masterworks that readers carry with them over a lifetime."^[2]

The Martian Chronicles is a fix-up,^[3][4] a literary term for novels popularized nearly three decades after the work's publication, consisting of short stories previously published from 1946 to 1950 and a few new ones woven together with short interstitial vignettes as connective bridge narrative. While it may appear to be a short story cycle, the author did not specifically write The Martian Chronicles as a singular work – rather, its creation as a novel was suggested to Bradbury by a publisher years after most of the stories were published in many different publications (see Publication history and original publication notes under Contents). In responding to the suggestion, the 29 year old Bradbury was shocked by the idea that he had already written a novel and remembers saying: "Oh, my God. ...I read Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson when I was 24 and I said to myself, 'Oh God, wouldn't it be wonderful if someday I could write a book as good as this but put it on the planet Mars.'"^[5].

Bradbury credited Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio^[6] and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath^[7] as influences on the structure of the book. Winesburg, Ohio is a short story cycle, and Grapes of Wrath alternates narrative chapters with historical context chapters. Bradbury has called it a "half-cousin to a novel" and "a book of stories pretending to be a novel".

The Martian Chronicles is written as a chronicle, though the events are in the future, as each story is presented as a chapter that appears in the overall chronological ordering of the plot. Overall, the chronicle can be viewed as three extended episodes or parts, punctuated by two apocalyptic events. Events chronicled in the original edition of the book ranged from 1999 to 2026. As 1999 approached, all dates were advanced by 31 years in the 1997 edition, so the summary that follows includes the dates of the original and 1997 editions.

• The first part, covering two and a half years from January 1999/2030 to June 2001/2032, is stories about human missions from Earth to explore the surface of Mars, the human and Martian discoveries of each other, and the efforts of Martians to repel humans from their planet. The Martian resistance ends in catastrophe when a pandemic caused by chicken pox brought to Mars by human explorers kills almost all Martians.

• The second part, covering four years and a half years from August 2001/2032 to December 2005/2036, is stories about the human settlement and settlers of Mars, including human contact with the few surviving Martians, the preoccupation of the emigrants with making Mars like America on Earth, and the return of most settlers to Earth as war on Earth threatens. A war on Earth ensues and contact between Mars and Earth ends.

• The third part, covering six months from April 2026/2057 to October 2026/2057, is stories about the remaining Martian settlers and the occurrence and aftermath of global nuclear war on Earth that eliminates all human life there, and concludes with the settlers' own realization that they have become the new Martians.

The creation of The Martian Chronicles by weaving together previous works was suggested to the author by representatives of Doubleday & Company in 1949.^[8] The work was subsequently published in hardbound form by Doubleday in the United States in 1950. It has been reprinted numerous times by many different publishers since then.

The book was published in the United Kingdom under the title The Silver Locusts (1951), with slightly different contents. In some editions the story "The Fire Balloons" was added, and the story "Usher II" was removed to make room for it.^[9] In the Spanish-language version, the stories were preceded by a prologue by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

The book was published in 1963 as part of the Time Reading Program with an introduction by Fred Hoyle.

In 1979, Bantam Books published a trade paperback edition with illustrations by Ian Miller.

A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years (thus running from 2030 to 2057). (This change counteracts a problem common to near-future stories, where the passage of time overtakes the period in which the story is set; for a list of other works that have fallen prey to this phenomenon, see the List of stories set in a future now past.) This edition includes "The Fire Balloons", and replaces "Way in the Middle of the Air" (a story less topical in 1997 than in 1950) with the 1952 short story "The Wilderness", dated May 2034 (equivalent to May 2003 in the earlier chronology).

Not to be confused with the short story of the same name (1947.)

"Rocket Summer" is a short vignette that describes the rocket launch of the first human expedition to Mars on a cold winter day in Ohio.

First published as "I'll Not Ask for Wine" in Maclean's, January 1, 1950.

"Ylla" introduces two unhappily married Martians, Mr. Yll K and Mrs. Ylla K, who also serve as examples for the appearance, home, life style, diet, and telepathic powers of indigenous Martians. Ylla dreams of two human astronauts landing in a spaceship on Mars, including their names, appearance, the location and time of their arrival; meeting them; and kissing one. Ylla tells Yll about her dreams, and Yll learns more as Ylla speaks while she sleeps. Yll hears Ylla singing the 17th century song "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" (with lyrics from the poem "To Celia" by Ben Jonson), in English she doesn't understand. Yll becomes bitterly jealous, sensing his wife's inchoate romantic feelings for one of the astronauts. After taking a weapon similar to a gun under the pretense of hunting, he kills both First Expedition astronauts as soon as they land on Mars.

First published as "The Spring Night" in The Arkham Sampler, Winter 1949.

An idyllic Martian summer night is disrupted as Martian adults and children spontaneously start to sing to words from English poems and children's rhymes they don't understand, including Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty" and "Old Mother Hubbard". The music, poems and rhymes emanate from astronauts aboard the Second Expedition's spaceship heading towards Mars. The Martians are terrified and sense that a terrible event will occur the next morning.

First published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1948.

"The Earth Men" is the story of Second Expedition crew's encounters with members of a Martian community not far from their landing site. The four man crew is led by Captain Jonathan Williams of New York City, who leads crew conversations with Martians. In their first encounter, the men learn that the Martians communicate to them in English using telepathy and are so encouraged that they expect to be greeted, welcomed, honored and celebrated for their successful journey. However, the crew is patronized by all of the Martians they meet, indifferent to any words about their triumph. The crew does not know that each Martian they meet suspects one or more of them is an insane Martian.

In their encounter with Mr. Iii, the Martian decides that Williams is psychotic and that his crew is the captain's hallucination, while Williams is clueless about being evaluated. Williams signs an agreement for his own confinement in an insane asylum believing that paperwork and administrative processing are related to honors. Mr. Iii tells the deluded crew that the agreement includes euthanasia, if necessary, and gives Williams a key, which Williams first believes is a "key to the city", but Mr. Iii tells him that it is the key to the "House" where they can stay the night to meet a Mr. Xxx in the morning.

Williams enters the "House" and locks himself and his crew inside. He deduces the "House" is an insane asylum. The crew discovers Martians can use telepathy to project their thoughts as images and disguises that can appear, sound, smell, and taste like real objects. When the crew meets Mr. Xxx, Williams seeks to prove his sanity by showing Mr. Xxx his spaceship and allowing him to inspect it. After the inspection, Mr. Xxx concludes that the spaceship and William's crew is an exceptionally ingenious hallucination and that the captain cannot recover from psychosis, so, he euthanizes Williams. After Williams dies, Mr. Xxx is confused because the remaining crew and spaceship did not vanish. Mr. Xxx kills the remaining astronauts believing one of them is responsible for the spaceship; however, after all the crew dies, the spaceship persists. Mr. Xxx determines that spaceship persists because he is psychotic, and so, he kills himself. The town people later sell the spaceship as scrap metal to a junkman.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

"The Taxpayer" is about an incident at the launch site of the Third Expedition to Mars in Ohio on the day of the launch. A man named Pritchard believes he is entitled to be in the crew of the Third Expedition because he is a taxpayer. Pritchard shouts to the crew as it leaves to board the spaceship that he doesn't want to be left on Earth because "there's going to be an atomic war." Pritchard is removed from the launch site by the police as the rocket is launched.

First published as "Mars is Heaven!" in Planet Stories, fall 1948.

"The Third Expedition" is the story of the third crew of seventeen astronauts to travel to, land on, and explore Mars. The expedition is led by Captain Jack Black and includes Navigator David Lustig and archaeologist Samuel Hickston. During the journey from Earth, the crew experience violent turbulence and each member was sickened by an infectious disease. One member died during the transit.

As in "The Earth Men", the Martians project an elaborate hallucination in the minds of the astronaut crew to entrap and exterminate them since the spaceship contains a weapons arsenal. The Martian projection is that of a 20th century American Midwestern town every crew member would be familiar with. Only Black, Lustig, and Hickston depart the spaceship to investigate in order to preserve the safety of the remaining crew members. As the three explore the town they speculate on what they are experiencing. They conclude it is a community established by human immigrants from Earth and that the beings they met say they are from Earth to protect their sanity.

The three explorers come upon a house that appears to be the home of Lustig's grandparents. Lustig treats the occupants as his own grandparents even though they have been dead for thirty-years. The grandmother explains, "All we know is here we are, alive again, and no questions asked." In the meantime, the rest of Black's crew has left the spaceship as they were being greeted by a crowd and a music band, but before he can intervene he meets what appears to be his brother Edward with whom he spends the rest of the day. At night in bed, Black determines that he is experiencing a telepathic hallucination and that Edward, who is in the same bedroom, is not his brother. Edward has read Black's thoughts and kills the captain. All of the other crew members are killed that night. In the morning, the Martians continue the projection and hold a sentimental Midwestern community burial ceremony for the crew.

(The original short story was set in 1960 and dealt with characters nostalgic for their childhoods in the American Midwest in the 1920s. The story contains a brief paragraph about medical treatments that slow the aging process, so that the characters can be traveling to Mars in 2000 but still remember the 1920s.)

First published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1948.

"—And the Moon Be Still as Bright" is the story of the Fourth Expedition after it lands on Mars. Shortly after landing, crewman Hathaway surveys the planet and reports that he could not find a living Martian among the modern and ancient cities and towns though there were huge numbers of Martian corpses that tests showed they all died of chicken pox that must have originated from one of the previous expeditions. Hathaway believes the corpses are ten days old and that some Martians may be living on isolated mountains.

The expedition is led by Captain Wilder and includes Jeff Spender, a crewman who becomes disaffected with the expedition's mission as he observes his fellow crewmen behaving as ugly Americans demonstrated by drunkenness, loud partying, littering, and indifference and disrespect for anything Martian. When the crew explores what Bradbury describes as a "dreaming dead city", Spender is so enthralled that he recites Lord Byron's poem "So, we'll go no more a roving" that includes the story's title at the end of the first stanza, though immediately after he's done, drunken crewman Biggs vomits on a beautiful tilework. Without permission, Spender leaves the expedition to explore Martian settlements. Spender quickly learns to read Martian manuscripts and finds personal spirtual fulfillment in Martian philosophy, religion, art, and culture. Spender returns to the expedition encampment, declares himself "the last Martian" and murders six crewmen, with Biggs being the first. In response, Wilder organizes a manhunt to kill Spender.

During the manhunt, in which Spender kills one more crewman, Wilder calls a truce to communicate with the rogue crewman. Spender explains to Wilder his spiritual awakening, describes his plan to kill the rest of the crew (except for Wilder) and the crews of all subsequent expeditions, and asks Wilder to advocate for limited settlement of Mars for fifty years to allow archaeologists to study Martian civilization in case he is killed. Wilder denies Spender's point of view after Spender gives him a tour of a village. Wilder resumes the manhunt. Although Wilder finds he has grown sympathetic to Spender's concerns, he kills the rogue crewman before his crew can. At the end, Wilder is affected by the incident. He beats crewman Parkhill when the subordinate uses a Martian city for target practice.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

" The Settlers" is a vignette that describes the "Lonely Ones", the first settlers of Mars, single men from the United States who are few in number.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

"The Green Morning" is a tall tale about Benjamin Driscoll, an emigrant who is threatened to be returned to Earth because he has difficulty breathing due to the thin Martian atmosphere. Driscoll believes Mars can be made more hospitable by planting trees to add more oxygen to the atmosphere and, inspired by the memory of a childhood school lesson about Johnny Appleseed, advocates for a tree planting project with the settlement Co-ordinator. The Co-ordinator explains that the priority for settlement development is mining and that the plan is to transport the settlement's food from Earth and harvest some from hydroponic gardens. However, after a long discussion, Driscoll manages to convince the Co-ordinator about the benefits of trees, and the Co-ordinator assigns and equips Driscoll for the project. Driscoll, on foot, hauls a bin full of seeds and sprouts into a valley wilderness and manually plants them. A drenching rainstorm breaks a thirty-day dry spell that causes his plantings to sprout and grow into a mighty forest overnight.

Read "Interim" (February 2003/2034) regarding supplies of lumber that continue to be transported from Earth to Mars.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

"The Locusts" is a vignette that describes, in less than six months, the arrival of ninety thousand emigrants to Mars in numerous rockets Bradbury likens to a swarm of locusts. The construction of towns is portrayed as the work of "steel-toothed carnivores" with nails as teeth that "bludgeon away all the strangeness" of Mars, transforming the planet into familiar American towns "filled with sizzling neon tubes and yellow electric bulbs".

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles. It is the only full-length story in The Martian Chronicles, besides "Way in the Middle of the Air," that had not previously appeared in another publication.

"Night Meeting" is the story of Tomás Gomez, a young Latino construction worker on Mars, who drives his truck across an empty expanse between towns to attend a party, and his encounters along the way with an elderly gas station owner and a Martian who appears to him as a phantom.

Gomez stops for gasoline and converses with the gas station owner who explains that he came to Mars because he appreciates things that are "different" and says he is satisfied because "everything's crazy" there. He tells Gomez that even his clock "acts funny" and that he sometimes feels like an eight year old.

Gomez continues his journey on an ancient Martian road into the night and believes he smells Time, where Bradbury says he is driving the "hills of Time". Gomez stops on a hillside overlooking the ruins of an ancient Martian city to have a coffee break when a Martian named Muhe Ca approaches and meets him. They greet each other and are amicable. They find that they can't touch each other and that they can see through each other. Each claims the other is a phantom though each insists on being alive. Muhe Ca tells Gomez that he is going to a festival in the city that appears as a ruin to the human though it is a vibrant city to the Martian. Gomez points to the town he is traveling to but Muhe Ca sees an empty space. Gomez tells Muhe Ca that the Martian is dead because he can see ruins but Muhe Ca can't see the human town, though Muhe Ca insists on being alive. They agree to disagree on who is dead or alive; and each wishes the other can attend the celebration being traveled to. The story ends when each departs to attend their respective parties, and each regarding the meeting as a dream.

The fearless Tomás Gomez reflects a common Mexican attitude toward death, which Bradbury understood. In 1947, his story "The Next in Line" was published in his book Dark Carnival about a visit to catacombs in a Mexican village which terrifies the American protagonist. The story was inspired by his own frightful experience on a trip to Mexico mentioned in his introduction to The October Country which also includes "The Next in Line." In addition, Bradbury's 1972 novel The Halloween Tree features an episode whose characters explain Mexico's Day of the Dead.

"The Shore" is a short vignette that serves as a prologue to a group of stories that follow it. It characterizes two successive groups of settlers as American emigrants who arrive in "waves" that "spread upon" the Martian "shore" – the first are the frontiersmen described in "The Settlers", and the second are men from the "cabbage tenements and subways" of urban America.

The story first appeared as "…In This Sign" in Imagination, April 1951 after publication of the first (1950) edition of The Martian Chronicles and so, was included in the U.S. edition of The Illustrated Man and in The Silver Locusts. The story was included in the 1997 edition of The Martian Chronicles, though it appeared in earlier special editions – the 1974 edition from The Heritage Press, the September 1979 illustrated trade edition from Bantam Books, the "40th Anniversary Edition" from Doubleday Dell Publishing Group and in the 2001 Book-of-the-Month Club edition.

"Fire Balloons" is a story about an Episcopal missionary expedition to cleanse Mars of sin, consisting of priests from large American cities led by the Most Reverend Father Joseph Daniel Peregrine and his assistant Father Stone. Peregrine has a passionate interest in discovering the kinds of sins that may be committed by aliens reflected in his book, The Problem of Sin on Other Worlds. Peregrine and Stone argue constantly about whether the mission should focus on cleansing humans or Martians. With the question unanswered, the priests travel to Mars aboard the spaceship Crucifix.

After landing on Mars, Peregrine and Stone meet with the mayor of First Town, who advises them to focus their mission on humans. The mayor tells the priests that the Martians look like blue "luminous globes of light" and they saved the life of an injured prospector working in a remote location by transporting him to a highway. Peregrine decides to search for and meet Martians, and he and Stone venture into the hills where the prospector encountered Martians. The two priests are met by a thousand Martians that look like fire balloons. Stone is terrified and wants to return to First Town while Peregrine is overwhelmed by their beauty and wants to engage with the Martians, though the fire balloons disappear. The two priests immediately encounter a rock side, which Stone believes they escaped by chance and Peregrine believes they were saved by the Martians. The two argue their disagreement, and during the night while Stone is sleeping, Peregrine tests his faith in his hunch by throwing himself off a high cliff. The Martians save Peregrine from his fall. Peregrine tells Stone of the experience but Stone believes Peregrine was dreaming, so Peregrine takes a gun which he fires at himself and the bullets drop at his feet, convincing his assistant.

Peregrine uses his authority to have the mission build a church in the hills for the Martians. The church is for outdoor services and is constructed after six days of work. A blue glass sphere is brought as a representation of Jesus for the Martians. On the seventh day, a Sunday, Peregrine holds a service in which he plays an organ and uses his thoughts to summon the Martians. The Martians, who call themselves the Old Ones, appear as glorious apparitions to the priests and communicate the story of their creation, their immortality, their normally solitary exisistences, and their pure virtuousness. They thank the priests for building the church and tell them they are unneeded and ask them to relocate them to the towns to cleanse the people there. The priests are convinced and withdraw to First Town along with the blue glass sphere that has started to glow from within. Peregrine believes the sphere is Jesus.

Not to be confused with the short story in "Weird Tales" or the short story "Time Intervening" which is also under that title.

"Interim" is a one paragraph long vignette that describes the Tenth City built by colonists with lumber from California and Oregon, and occupied by emigrants that so much resembles an ordinary Midwestern American town in appearance and community life that the town seems to have been removed intact from Earth by an earthquake and transported and setdown on Mars by a tornado.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

"The Musicians" is the story of a "heap" of young boys who defy their parents and habitually play in and among the otherwise unpopulated ruins of indigenous Martian towns where many Martians perished in their homes. Martian towns are being incinerated by Firemen who are charged with eliminating any trace of their existences. Within the houses are the remains of the dead Martians, which have become skeletons and "black leaves", desiccated thin black flakes that behave like fallen tree leaves. One of their games involves a running to a desigated house. The first boy arriving first earns the title of "Musician" and makes a shambles of the remains of a dead Martian by striking the ribcage with bones like playing a "white xylophone" and scattering black leaves all about, including on themselves. Boys who get caught by their parents with traces of black leaves on their person are physically punished. The Firemen complete their mission by the end of the year.

First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1952.

Two women, Janice Smith and Leonora Holmes, prepare to depart on a rocket to Mars, to find husbands or lovers waiting for them there. Janice muses on the terrors of space, drinks in last memories of the Earth she will soon be leaving, and compares her situation to that of the pioneer women of the 19th-century American frontier.

This story only appears in the 1974 edition of The Martian Chronicles by The Heritage Press, the 1979 Bantam Books illustrated trade edition, and the 1997 edition of The Martian Chronicles. In its original form, the story was dated 2003, and this date is consistent with the other stories. As it appears in the 1997 edition, the date (together with all the other dates) has been shifted ahead 31 years, to May 2034.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

In an unnamed Southern town, a group of white men learn that all African Americans are planning to emigrate to Mars. Samuel Teece, a racist white man, decries their departure as a flood of African Americans passes his hardware store. He tries to stop one man, Belter, from leaving due to an old debt, but others quickly take up a collection on his behalf to pay it off. Next he tries to detain Silly, a younger man who works for him, saying that he signed a contract and must honor it. As Silly protests, claiming that he never signed it, one of Teece's friends volunteers to take his place. Several of Teece's friends stand up to him and intimidate him into letting Silly depart.

As Silly drives off, he yells to Teece, "What you goin' to do nights?" – referring to Teece's nightly activities with a gang that had terrorized and lynched blacks in the area. The enraged Teece and a friend give chase in his car, but soon find the road cluttered with the discarded belongings of the rocket passengers. After they return to the hardware store, Teece refuses to watch as the rockets lift off. Wondering how he and his friends will spend their nights from now on, he takes a small triumph in the fact that Silly always addressed him as "Mister" even as he was leaving.

This episode is a depiction of racial prejudice in the United States. However, it was eliminated from the 2006 William Morrow/HarperCollins edition, and the 2001 Doubleday Science Fiction reprinting of the book.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles. Not to be confused with the short story "The Naming of Names", first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1949, later published as "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed".

This story is about later waves of immigrants to Mars, and how the geography of Mars is now largely named after the people from the first four expeditions (e.g., Spender Hill, Driscoll Forest) rather than after physical descriptions of the terrain.

First published as Carnival of Madness in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1950. In 2010, Los Angeles artist Allois, in collaboration with Bradbury, released illustrated copies of "Usher" and "Usher II".^[10]. The story also appeared in the 2008 Harper Collins/ Voyager edition of The Illustrated Man.

"Usher II" is about censorship. William Stendahl is a book lover who has retreated to Mars after the government confiscated and destroyed his vast collection. On Mars, he constructs his image of the perfect haunted mansion, complete with mechanical creatures, creepy soundtracks, and thousands of tons of poison to kill every living thing in the surrounding area. He is assisted by Pikes, a film aficionado and former actor whose collection was confiscated and destroyed by the government and who was subsequently banned from performing. When the "Moral Climate Monitors" come to visit, Stendahl and Pikes arrange to kill each of them in ways that allude to different horror masterpieces, culminating in the murder of Inspector Garrett in a sequence reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado". Once Stendahl's persecutors are dead, he and Pikes watch from a helicopter as the house crumbles and sinks into the lake as in Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". At the end of this story, Poe (or Stendahl) hints that Moral Climates could have avoided these deaths if they had only read the books they banned, since then they would have recognized what was happening to them.

Bradbury hints at past events on Earth, set in 1975–30 years prior to the events in "Usher II". The government sponsored a "Great Burning" of books and made them illegal, which leads to the formation of an underground society of book owners. Those found to possess books had them seized and burned by fire crews. Mars apparently emerged as a refuge from the fascist censorship laws of Earth, until the arrival of a government organization referred to only as "Moral Climates" and their enforcement divisions, the "Dismantlers" and "Burning Crew". Bradbury would reuse the concept of massive government censorship (to the point of abolishing all literature) in his book Fahrenheit 451.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

A very brief prelude to the following story, describing the immigration of elderly people to Mars.

First published in Super Science Stories, November 1949.

LaFarge and his wife Anna have forged a new life for themselves, but they still miss their dead son Tom. A night thunderstorm startles the elderly pair, who see a figure standing outside their home in the rain.

When morning comes, "Tom" is busy helping Anna with chores. LaFarge sees that Anna is somehow unaware of Tom's death, and after speaking privately with him, LaFarge learns that "Tom" is a Martian with an empathic shapeshifting ability: the Martian appears as their dead son to them.

Later that day, Anna insists on a visit to the town. "Tom" is deathly afraid of being so close to so many people. LaFarge promises to keep him close, but at the town they become separated. While searching for "Tom", LaFarge hears that the Spaulding family in town has miraculously found their lost daughter Lavinia. Desperate to avoid a second devastating heartbreak to his wife, LaFarge stands outside Spaulding's home and finds "Tom" now masquerading as Lavinia. He is able to coax "Tom" to come back, and they run desperately back for their boat to leave town. However, everyone "Tom" passes sees someone significant to them—a lost husband, a son, a wanted criminal. The Martian, exhausted from his constant shape-changing, spasms and dies.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

The story of Mars and its inhabitants is continued in a discussion between a priest and a luggage storeowner. Nuclear war is imminent on Earth, and the priest predicts that most of the colonists will return to help.

First published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1948.

On Mars, former Fourth Expedition member Sam Parkhill has opened a hot-dog stand and is expecting a huge rush of business as soon as the next wave of settlers and workers arrives from Earth. When a lone Martian walks in one night, Parkhill panics and kills him. Other Martians arrive in sand ships, prompting Parkhill and his wife to flee across the desert in their own ship. Once the Martians catch up, they surprise Parkhill by giving him ownership of half the planet. He returns to his hot-dog stand just in time to witness the start of the nuclear war on Earth, which puts an end to the settler flights and his business.

First appeared in The Martian Chronicles.

The colonists witness a nuclear war on Earth from Mars. They immediately return out of concern for their friends and families, buying up the luggage store owner's entire inventory before they leave.

First published in Charm, March 1949.

Everybody has left Mars to go to Earth, except Walter Gripp—a single miner who lives in the mountains and does not hear of the departure. At first excited by his find of an empty town, he enjoys himself with money, food, clothes, and movies. He soon realizes he misses human companionship. One night he hears a telephone ringing in someone's home, and suddenly realizes that someone else is alive on Mars. Missing the call, and several others, he sits down with a phone book of Mars and starts dialing at A.

After days of calling without answers, he starts calling hotels. After guessing where he thinks a woman would most likely spend her time, he calls the biggest beauty salon on Mars and is delighted when a woman answers. They talk, but are cut off. Overcome with romantic dreams, he drives hundreds of miles to New Texas City, only to realize that she drove to find him on a back road. He drives back to his town, and meets Genevieve Selsor as he pulls in.

Their meeting is the opposite of what he had hoped for in his dreams; she is unattractive (due to her weight and pallor), foolish, and insipid. After a sullen day, she slyly proposes marriage to him at dinner, as they believe they are the last man and the last woman on Mars. Gripp flees, driving across Mars to another tiny town to spend his life happily alone, avoiding all contact with Genevieve and ignoring any phone he hears ringing.

First published in Maclean's, September 15, 1948.

Hathaway (the physician/archaeologist from the Fourth Expedition), now retired, is living on Mars with his wife and children in the hills above an old, abandoned settlement, vacated many years ago when everyone returned to Earth at the beginning of the war there. A gifted inventor and tinkerer, he has wired the old ghost town in the valley below so that he can make it come alive at night with lights and sounds as if it were still inhabited. One night, he sees a rocket approaching Mars and sets fire to the old town to attract the attention of those on board.

On board the rocket is his old commander, Captain Wilder (also from the earlier stories about the Fourth Expedition), returning to Mars after twenty years exploring the outer solar system. He and his crew land and are met by Hathaway, now old and suffering from heart disease. Hathaway brings the crew to his house for breakfast and introduces them to his family. Wilder, who remembers meeting Hathaway's wife many years earlier, remarks that she looks remarkably young, while Hathaway has aged considerably. Wilder pales when he and one of his crew realize that Hathaway's son, who gives his age as 23, must be at least in his forties. Wilder sends the crewmember off to the local cemetery to check the headstones. He returns to report that he has found the graves of every member of the family but Hathaway.

Wilder offers to take Hathaway back to Earth, but he declines. In the next moment, Hathaway has a heart attack and dies, begging Wilder not to call his family to his side because they "would not understand". Wilder then confirms that Hathaway's wife and children are actually androids, created by Hathaway after the originals died years ago.

As Wilder prepares to depart, one of the crew returns to the house with a pistol, thinking to put an end to the androids, whose existence seems pointless now that Hathaway is gone, but he returns shortly, having been unable to bring himself to kill the robotic family even knowing that they are not truly human. The rocket departs, and the android family continues on with its meaningless routine, though on nights the android of the wife goes outside and quietly looks up at the stars, seemingly of her own volition. Her motivation for doing so remains unstated.

First published in Collier's, May 6, 1950, and revised for inclusion in The Martian Chronicles.

The story chronicles the last hours a lone, unoccupied, highly-automated house of the McClellan family that stands and operates intact in a California city that is otherwise obliterated by a nuclear bomb, and its destruction by a fire caused by a windstorm. The story commemorates the United States' atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 5, 1945 (US time) during World War II. The title of the story was taken from Sara Teasdale's anti-war poem "There Will Come Soft Rains" originally published in 1918 during World War I and the 1918 Flu Pandemic. The chronicle includes the house entertainment system mentioning Teasdale as Mrs. McClellans favorite poet and recitation of the Teasdale poem to the empty house just hours before the fire that consumes the house ignites.

First published in Planet Stories, summer 1946.

A family salvages a rocket that the government would have used in the nuclear war and leaves Earth on a "fishing trip" to Mars. The family picks a city in which to live and call home, then destroys the rocket so that they cannot return to Earth. They enter and the father burns tax documents and other government papers in a campfire, explaining that he is burning a misguided way of life. A map of Earth is the last thing to be burned. Later, he offers his sons a gift in the form of their new world. He introduces them to the Martians — their own reflections in a canal.

Edgar Rice Burroughs's works were key influences. In an article written shortly before his death, Bradbury said the John Carter of Mars books and Harold Foster's 1931 series of Tarzan Sunday comics had such an impact on his life that "The Martian Chronicles would never have happened" otherwise.^[11] In an introduction he wrote for The Martian Chronicles,^[specify] Bradbury cited the Barsoom stories and Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson as literary influences.

The background of Mars shared by most of the stories, as a desert planet crisscrossed by giant canals built by an ancient civilization to bring water from the polar ice caps, is a common scenario in science fiction of the early 20th century.^{[citation needed]} It stems from early telescope observations of Mars by astronomers from the 19th-century who believed they saw straight lines on the planet, the first of them being the Italian Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877. Schiaparelli called them canali (a generic Italian term used for both natural and artificial "grooves" or "channels"), which was popularly mistranslated into English as "canals", man-made water channels. Based on this and other evidence, the idea that Mars was inhabited by intelligent life was put forward by a number of prominent scientists around the turn of the century, notably American astronomer Percival Lowell. This ignited a popular fascination with the planet which has been called "Mars fever". Planetary astronomer Carl Sagan wrote:

Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears.^[12]

Upon publication, The Paris Review noted that "The Martian Chronicles ... was embraced by the science-fiction community as well as critics, a rare achievement for the genre. Christopher Isherwood hailed Bradbury as 'truly original' and a 'very great and unusual talent'."^[13] Isherwood argued that Bradbury's works were "tales of the grotesque and arabesque" and compared them to the works of Edgar Allan Poe by writing, Bradbury "already deserves to be measured against the greatest master of his particular genre."^[14] Writer and critic Anthony Boucher and critic J. Francis McComas praised Chronicles as "a poet's interpretation of future history beyond the limits of any fictional form".^[15] The writer L. Sprague de Camp, however, declared that Bradbury would improve "when he escapes from the influence of Hemingway and Saroyan", placing him in "the tradition of anti-science-fiction writers [who] see no good in the machine age". Still, de Camp acknowledged that "[Bradbury's] stories have considerable emotional impact, and many will love them".^[16]

A decade of after its publication, Damon Knight in his "Books" column for F&SF, listed The Martian Chronicles on his top-ten science fiction books of the 1950s.^[17]

Carl Sagan listed The Martian Chronicles as among the "rare few science‐fiction novels [that] combine a standard science‐fiction theme with a deep human sensitivity".^[18] Robert Crossley (University of Massachusetts Boston) has suggested that the story "Way in the Middle of the Air" might be considered "the single most incisive episode of black and white relations in science fiction by a white author."^[19]

The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition published by Subterranean Press (2010) contains The Other Martian Tales section:

• "The Lonely Ones" (Startling Stories, July 1949, reprinted in Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales)
• "The Exiles" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter/Spring 1950, reprinted in The Illustrated Man)
• "The One Who Waits" (The Arkham Sampler, summer 1949, reprinted in The Machineries of Joy)
• "The Disease" (previously unpublished)
• "Dead of Summer" (previously unpublished)
• "The Martian Ghosts" (previously unpublished)
• "Jemima True" (previously unpublished)
• "They All Had Grandfathers" (previously unpublished)
• "The Strawberry Window" (Star Science Fiction Stories #3, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1954, reprinted in A Medicine for Melancholy)
• "Way in the Middle of the Air" (see above)
• "The Other Foot" (New Story, March 1951, reprinted in The Illustrated Man)
• "The Wheel" (previously unpublished)
• "The Love Affair" (The Love Affair, Lord John Press 1982, reprinted in The Toynbee Convector)
• "The Marriage" (previously unpublished)
• "The Visitor" (Startling Stories, November 1948, reprinted in The Illustrated Man)
• "The Lost City of Mars" (Playboy, January 1967, reprinted in I Sing the Body Electric)
• "Holiday" (The Arkham Sampler, Autumn 1949)
• "Payment in Full" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1950)
• "The Messiah" (Welcome Aboard, spring 1971, reprinted in Long After Midnight)
• "Night Call, Collect" (Super Science Stories, April 1949 as "I, Mars", reprinted in I Sing the Body Electric)
• "The Blue Bottle" (Planet Stories, Fall 1950, reprinted in Long After Midnight)
• "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1949, reprinted in A Medicine for Melancholy)

The debut of a theater adaptation of The Martian Chronicles was at the Cricket Theater (The Ritz) in Northeast Minneapolis in 1976.^[20]

MGM bought the film rights in 1960 but no film was made.^[21]

In 1988, the Soviet Armenian studio Armenfilm produced the feature film The 13th Apostle, starring Juozas Budraitis, Donatas Banionis, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, based on The Martian Chronicles. The film was directed by Armenian actor and screenwriter, Suren Babayan.^[22]

The Uzbek filmmaker Nozim To'laho'jayev made two films based on sections from the book: 1984's animated short There Will Come Soft Rains (Russian: Будет ласковый дождь)^[23] and 1987's full-length live action film Veld (Russian: Вельд), with one of the subplots based on The Martian.^[24]

In 2011 Paramount Pictures acquired the film rights with the intention of producing a film franchise, with John Davis producing through Davis Entertainment.^[25]

The Martian Chronicles was adapted as a full-length contemporary opera by composer Daniel Levy and librettist Elizabeth Margid.^[26] This is the only musical adaptation authorized by Bradbury himself, who turned down Lerner and Loewe in the 1960s when they asked his permission to make a musical based on the novel.^[27] The work received its initial readings from the Harriet Lake Festival of New Plays at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater in 2006,^[28] and was presented in workshop form in the inaugural season of the Fordham University Lincoln Center Alumni Company in 2008.^[29] The "Night Meeting" episode was presented at Cornelia Street Cafe's "Entertaining Science" series on June 9, 2013.^[30] The entire work was presented as a staged reading with a cast of Broadway actors at Ars Nova NYC on February 11, 2015.^[31] Three scenes were presented as a workshop production with immersive staging, directed by Carlos Armesto of Theatre C and conducted by Benjamin Smoulder at Miami University, Oxford OH on September 17–19, 2015.^[32]

The Martian Chronicles was adapted for radio in the science fiction radio series Dimension X. This truncated version contained elements of the stories "Rocket Summer", "Ylla", "–and the Moon Be Still as Bright", "The Settlers", "The Locusts", "The Shore", "The Off Season", "There Will Come Soft Rains", and "The Million-Year Picnic".

"—and the Moon Be Still as Bright" and "There Will Come Soft Rains" were also adapted for separate episodes in the same series. The short stories "Mars Is Heaven" and "Dwellers in Silence" also appeared as episodes of Dimension X. The latter is in a very different form from the one found in The Martian Chronicles.

A very abridged spoken word reading of "There Will Come Soft Rains" and "Usher II" was made in 1975 with Leonard Nimoy as narrator.

A BBC Radio 4 adaption, produced by Andrew Mark Sewell as an hour-long programme and starring Derek Jacobi as Captain Wilder, was broadcast on 21 June 2014 as part of the Dangerous Visions series.^[33][34]

In 1979 NBC partnered with the BBC to commission The Martian Chronicles, a three-episode miniseries adaptation running just over four hours. It was written by Richard Matheson and was directed by Michael Anderson. Rock Hudson starred as Wilder, Darren McGavin as Parkhill, Bernadette Peters as Genevieve Selsor, Bernie Casey as Jeff Spender, Roddy McDowall as Father Stone, and Barry Morse as Hathaway, as well as Fritz Weaver. Bradbury found the miniseries "just boring".^[35]

The cable television series The Ray Bradbury Theater adapted some individual short stories from The Martian Chronicles including "Mars is Heaven", "The Earthmen", "And the Moon Be Still as Bright", "Usher II", "The Martian", "Silent Towns", and "The Long Years".^[36] Video releases of the series included a VHS tape entitled Ray Bradbury's Chronicles: The Martian Episodes with some editions with three episodes and others with five.^[37][38][39]

Several of the short stories in The Martian Chronicles were adapted into graphic novel-style stories in the EC Comics magazines, including "There Will Come Soft Rains" in Weird Fantasy #17, "The Million-Year Picnic" in Weird Fantasy #21 and "The Silent Towns" in Weird Fantasy #22.

In 2011, Hill & Wang published Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation as a graphic novel, with art by Dennis Calero.^[40]

The Martian Chronicles adventure game was published in 1996.

• Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century

• The Martian Chronicles title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database