The Martian Chronicles Reprint Edition, Kindle Edition
Ray Bradbury
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
From the Publisher
High resolution 3-D graphic adventure game with fully animated characters and original musical score!
Includes free Martian Chronicles hints and tips for all levels of players!
Includes direct link to Martian Chronicles Website!
Compatible with both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 or later.
Amazon.com Review
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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
From the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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 1999: 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 of magnetic 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."
"If you worked harder you wouldn't have these silly dreams."
"I rather enjoyed it," she replied, lying back. "I never suspected myself of such an imagination. Black hair, blue eyes, and white skin! What a strange man, and yet--quite handsome."
"Wishful thinking."
"You're unkind. I didn't think him up on purpose; he just came in my mind while I drowsed. It wasn't like a dream. It was so unexpected and different. He looked at me and he said, 'I've come from the third planet in my ship. My name is Nathaniel York----' "
"A stupid name; it's no name at all," objected the husband.
"Of course it's stupid, because it's a dream," she explained softly. "And he said, 'This is the first trip across space. There are only two of us in our ship, myself and my friend Bert.' "
"Another stupid name."
"And he said, 'We're from a city on Earth; that's the name of our planet,' " continued Mrs. K. "That's what he said. 'Earth' was the name he spoke. And he used another language. Somehow I understood him. With my mind. Telepathy, I suppose."
Mr. K turned away. She stopped him with a word. "Yll?" she called quietly. "Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?"
"The third planet is incapable of supporting life," stated the husband patiently. "Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere."
"But wouldn't it be fascinating if there were people? And they traveled through space in some sort of ship?"
"Really, Ylla, you know how I hate this emotional wailing. Let's get on with our work."
It was late in the day when she began singing the song as she moved among the whispering pillars of rain. She sang it over and over again.
"What's that song?" snapped her husband at last, walking in to sit at the fire table.
"I don't know." She looked up, surprised at herself. She put her hand to her mouth, unbelieving. The sun was setting. The house was closing itself in, like a giant flower, with the passing of light. A wind blew among the pillars; the fire table
bubbled its fierce pool of silver lava. The wind stirred her russet hair, crooning softly in her ears. She stood silently looking out into the great sallow distances of sea bottom, as if recalling something, her yellow eyes soft and moist. " 'Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine,' " she sang, softly, quietly, slowly. " 'Or leave a kiss within the cup, and I'll not ask for wine.' " She hummed now, moving her hands in the wind ever so lightly, her eyes shut. She finished the song.
It was very beautiful.
"Never heard that song before. Did you compose it?" he inquired, his eyes sharp.
"No. Yes. No, I don't know, really!" She hesitated wildly. "I don't even know what the words are; they're another language!"
"What language?"
She dropped portions of meat numbly into the simmering lava. "I don't know." She drew the meat forth a moment later, cooked, served on a plate for him. "It's just a crazy thing I made up, I guess. I don't know why."
He said nothing. He watched her drown meats in the hissing fire pool. The sun was gone. Slowly, slowly the night came in to fill the room, swallowing the pillars and both of them, like a dark wine poured to the ceiling. Only the silver lava's glow lit their faces.
She hummed the strange song again.
Instantly he leaped from his chair and stalked angrily from the room.
Later, in isolation, he finished supper.
When he arose he stretched, glanced at her, and suggested, yawning, "Let's take the flame birds to town tonight to see an entertainment."
"You don't mean it?" she said. "Are you feeling well?"
"What's so strange about that?&quo... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
From the Inside Flap
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B00CKOQC9C
- Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (May 21, 2013)
- Publication date : May 21, 2013
- Language: : English
- File size : 1049 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 298 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#27,024 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #23 in Classic Short Stories
- #48 in Classic Fiction Anthologies & Collections
- #50 in Literary Short Stories
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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I prefer my books, and those I give my children, to remain as the author wrote them originally (translation aside), not updated, abridged, rewritten, or edited for a time long after they were written.
The book says Modern Classics at the bottom... Perhaps it should say "altered classics" instead.
It's important to get the true version of this book because "Way In The Middle Of The Air" is a truly pivotal story. In the over all arc of stories, the tired and dying Martian society goes extinct more from lassitude and being incurious than anything else. Meanwhile humans arrive and begin creating a more vibrant and hopeful society. However, the book isn't really about that. It's about the world Bradbury was living in with the fear of nuclear annihilation, Jim Crow, and a changing society. It's about progress here on earth and "Mars" as the place were going. This story shows the deep south of the early-mid 1900's as old, tired, and ready to die like the dead Martian societies. The imagery of the river is beautiful.
This one story makes it worthwhile to buy this particular edition of the book.
I wish this edition were listed separately from the crappy ones.
Can someone please list the specific editions which contain Bradbury's ENTIRE collection? That would be great.
Yes, but in different ways. Yes, there were technological anachronisms, such as typewriters. What was timeless were the people. There are explorations of what it means to be "them." First humans are the "them" to be feared and dealt with by the Martians. Then there is the "them" of the Martians. Even the humans divide into "us" and "them" at points. And there is the final story where the concept of "us" and "them" sees blurring.
Bradbury also explores the links between science, religion, and art. He looks at censorship and the killing of dreams. There are so many timeless themes in this book.
I believe if you consider yourself culturally literate, you should read this classic book. If you enjoy thoughtful fiction with philosophical implications, then you'll enjoy this book. If you read science fiction and haven't read this book, then you should pick it up next to see the roots of the stories today.
Top reviews from other countries

Having said that, the 26 stories in the collection - some funny, some dark, some downright sad, and all wonderfully atmospheric - all weave together perfectly to create a poignant, beautifully realised 'history ' of migration to Mars, the quality of man, and the nature of human existence.

This is a true Classic Science Fiction collection comprising, as it does, the major individual chronicles that make up this iconic story. Some of these stories are not in every plublished edition of the Book and well done Kindle for issuing an edition that includes some of the less available stories.
Yes this is a Classic but I had not realized how dated some of Bradbury's writing style can come across now, though in no way does that diminish the totality of the social, political and (in an out dated way) scientific insights.
Interestingly I have just finished a Paperback Sci-Fi novel, comparatively recently written, in which one of Bradbury's characters is lifted - name, character and purpose - from one of the Chronicles. What a compliment, but what crass insousance.
DJG



Above all I felt this was thin stuff from a writer who could certainly do much better when it comes to building a picture of an alien race. After an amazing start, Bradbury was not trying his best when he wrote most of this. He took a handful of memes and just repeated and reiterated. There is a lack of development and depth. Too much is trivial and mischievous.
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