![]() The Martians sometimes behave like monsters and sometimes like saints. Some are very much in the mode of the horror tales which he had at first specialized in (collected in The October Country), and others are earnest parables of human folly. When that fact is realized, some of the inconsistencies and contradictions in The Martian Chronicles diminish in importance. Bradbury has always been more of a short story writer than a novelist, and most of the stories can be read separately from their present context. ![]() Although such collections are unusual in “mainstream” fiction they are common in science fiction. ![]() The Martian Chronicles is best read as a collection of linked short stories rather than as a novel. In this work humans from Earth play the role of “invaders from outer space.” ![]() To a certain degree, Bradbury is also writing to counteract the image of a menacing Mars as portrayed first in H. Bradbury returned to this fantasy Mars in other stories not included in this volume (“The Exiles,” “The Fire Balloons” and “The Other Foot” in The Illustrated Man, “Night Call, Collect” and “The Lost City of Mars” in I Sing the Body Electric, and “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” in A Medicine for Melancholy). Clearly Bradbury had a certain vision of the Mars in which these stories are set, a fantasy world based far more on Edgar Rice Burroughs novels ( A Princess of Mars and its many sequels) than on contemporary science. ![]()
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