"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick

Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter with the San Francisco police department whose job it is to track-down and "retire" fugitive androids amidst a post-world war terminus/three, radiation-ridden and largely de-populated Earth. The radiation left over from last world war has killed off the vast majority of the Earth's animal population and destroyed the biosphere, forcing large parts of the Earth's population to emigrate to colonies on the moon and Mars. Those who are left behind, or have chosen to stay face the constant risk of physical and mental degradation from the radiation. Androids were taken with the colonists, but the occasional android turns on it's masters, fleeing to Earth which is where Rick comes in. Rick is called in to follow up on a case of eight recently reported fugitive "andys", all new advanced nexus-6 models, two of which his predecessor Dave Holden retired before being caught off guard and lasered by the third. Before setting off after the andys, Rick is sent to Seattle to visit the Rosen corporation, manufacturer of the nexus-6, to test whether the department's standard test for detecting androids, the Voigt-Komp test, is still effective. Androids are developed using biological components that make them physically identical to real humans, except by means of a detailed laboratory analysis of bone marrow. The Voigt-Komp test measures empathic response to a series of scenarios read aloud by the examiner; androids are not thought to be capable of real empathy and so usually fail the test. Empathy is an important distinction for real humans, who participate regularly in a shared empathic experience using an "empathy box", all part of a mystical religion "Mercerism", in which followers are pelted with rocks while ascend a simulated hill with a vision of the religion's founder Wilber Mercer. Ownership and the sacred/social prestige status of animals is also an important part of Mercerism; to own a real animal is a statement of one's humanity and those who can't afford one, purchase a fake, electronic version of their favourite pet.

In Seattle, Rick meets a company android, Rachael Rosen, originally posing as the daughter of Eldon Rosen, the company's founder, in an elaborate rouse intended to discredit the Voigt-Komp test by making Rick think that he had incorrectly classified a real human as an android. Rick sees through the attempt and the company later offers Rachael's assistance in tracking down the remaining six fugitive androids. After retiring the first android on his list (the one that lasered Dave Holden), Rick attempts to apprehend the second on the list, a Miss Luba Loft, posing as an opera singer and is caught off guard and arrested by a police officer called in by Luba after she denies being an android and accuses Rick of being a stalker. The officer denies any knowledge of Rick or his department and takes him off to a seemingly duplicate police station on the other side of town. There Rick meets another bounty hunter Resch and eventually uncovers (with the help of Resch) that the entire police station is an android run operation (where Rick manages to knock off the third android on his list, posing as Resch's superior and leaving Resch in doubt as to whether in fact he is an android too with falsely implanted memories of being a real human). After returning to retire Luba, with the help of Resch, it turns out he is a real human after all, and Rick is forced to question the moral and philosophical position of his job as a bounty hunter.

Developing feelings of empathy towards androids, Rick engages in a sexual encounter with Rachael Rosen and resolves to quit his profession after finishing off his final three targets. The remaining androids are holed up deep in an abandoned apartment block, solely inhabited by J.R. Isidore, a "special" who has succumbed to the radioactive dust, and has a reduced mental capacity. Rick tracks down and retires the remaining androids and suffering somewhat from his philosophical and existentialist dilemma, drives off into the uninhabited wastelands, where he undergoes a mystical experience as Wilber Mercer, climbing a weed-infested hill-top.

In "electric sheep", Phillip K. Dick confronts the reader with the question: what does it mean to be human? We are provided with a self-paradoxical example of Rick, the empathic-bounty hunter; in order to retire androids he must suppress his empathy towards them, becoming android-like himself. If empathy is a defining characteristic of humanity, then we are forced to question the authenticity of empathy: it remains ambiguous if the new nexus-6 model can actually pass the Voigt-Komp test, Mercerism is exposed as a fake and consider the Penfold Mood Organ, where humans can so easily re-program their emotional behaviour, irrespective of the state of the world around them. Like in his other novels, Dick also asks the question what is real? I found the section of the book where Rick attempts to arrest Luba really great in this regard. When he is arrested his identity comes into question: is he an android with falsely implanted memories? Then we are lead to believe that Resch is certainly an android: the background adds up and he exhibits the same android-like lack of empathy that allows him to be so good at his profession; but then suddenly it turns out he is definitely human. I really like the way Dick shakes the foundations of what the reader believes is real one minute and then not the next ... or is it? Theres so much that I also didn't quite understand the underlying significance of (I feel like there is a lot of complex themes at play): the significance of the apparitions of Wilber Mercer, Rick's mystical experience at the end of the novel, finding the toad. I feel like I'll need to come back to this one again.

There is so much to love about this book; the cult of animal ownership and Rick's constant reference to the Sidney's catalogue of animal prices, the Penfold mood organ (I love the opening chapter, so entertaining), the obnoxious Buster Friendly. So far, I've really enjoyed the two other Phillip K. Dick novels I've read, he think he is such a great writer. A really cleverly constructed story. Definitely recommended.

"The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham

Bill Mason wakes up in hospital on the day he is due to have the bandages removed that he has worn over his eyes for the last seven days. But the nurse doesn't respond to his calls and the hospital ward is silent. Eventually Bill makes the decision to remove the bandages himself; luckily his vision has returned after his accident seven days ago, but he discovers that just about everyone else in the world has gone blind. It all began the previous night when the world was witness to a spectacular, never seen before display of lights, thought to be a vibrant meteor shower; anyone who went outside to watch the display is now blind. Bill walks around central London trying to make sense of the situation when he meets Josella Playton, who escaped blindness after sleeping-off a party two nights ago. The pair meet up with a group of sighted individuals that have holed-up in the University building and are planning to gather supplies and head out into the countryside before things turn too nasty in the cities. The night before they are due to leave Bill and Josella commit to a sort of marriage to one another in their new community but are separated when they are kidnapped, along with others in the group by Coker, a sighted man who has been trying to round up assistance for a large number of blind followers, ever hopeful that what ever disaster has befallen London and England has spared some other country in the world (Coker speculates the United States) and that they only need to keep as many people alive as long as possible before help inevitably arrives. After days of being chained to and forced to support his gang of blind followers, members of the group start to fall victim to an unknown disease (thought to be similar to typhoid, but not exactly the same). After almost all of the group perish, Bill escapes and finding an abandoned truck loaded with supplies, sets off into the countryside to find the university group and hopefully Josella.

Whats all this got to do with "Triffids" you ask? Well, Triffids are a strange kind of plant that was discovered by the world about twenty years before the current events. Triffids grow to about two and a half meters tall, can lift themselves up and walk (albeit slowly) and possess a stinging tendril which they can lash out at their prey to a distance over four meters and can kill a full sized human in a single blow. Bill Mason works with Triffids for a living and is all too familiar with their dangerous behaviour (his original eye injury was attributed to a Triffid sting). With most of the world's population blind, Bill predicts Triffids will become a big problem and his prediction is correct; the Triffids run amok in the cities and countryside alike, making an easy meal out of the blind wandering the streets.

Eventually Bill finds Josella at a country house she told him about during the night at the university building and for the next few years they setup a life amongst the house's other residents, having a child. During a visit to the coast one year, Bill speculates that the meteor shower was probably a cold-war era orbiting weapons system that malfunctioned and that the disease that killed off so many in the days following the blindness was probably also attributed to a satellite weapon. During the trip home, a helicopter arrives at the country house bringing news of a colony that has been setup on the Isle of Wight by some of the original university group and Bill, Josella and the rest of the household and invited to move there. Deciding to move after the next summer, the group narrowly avoid being recruited into another new world order led by a sighted man Bill associates with indiscriminate killing during the days following the meteor shower in London, and escape to the Isle of Wight to live out the rest of their days.

"The Day of the Triffids" is a fantastic read, a genuinely creepy and convincing horror story built out of a such a strange sounding premise (killer plants take over the planet after everyone goes blind from a meteor shower). The author takes this creative scenario and by using an engaging set of characters and plot, analyses the ethics in a survival situation and the changed moral values of the post-apocalyptic world. The novel has been defined as a "cosy catastrophe" where the few sighted characters retreat into the countryside for a relatively comfortable existence while the world collapses around them, and I found this same feeling transferred to the reader, making it quite a cosy read.

I'm looking forward to reading more Wyndham; "Triffids" was a really enjoyable, an easy read, an sf classic. Definitely recommended.

"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One is set in the year 2045; the world has become an ugly place with widespread war, famine and general poverty. The world's oil supply has ended and the climate is wrecked. Like most people in the world, the protagonist of the story, Wade Watts spends hours on end plugged into the "OASIS", a virtual, massively-multiplayer simulation world where your avatar can live and play on hundreds of custom-built worlds while forgetting about the problems of the real world. Five years previously, the eccentric billionaire creator of OASIS, James Haliday, passed away leaving his entire fortune and controlling stake in Gregarious Simulation Systems (GSS), the company responsible for maintaining the OASIS, to any user who could find his secret "easter egg" within the game's environment. To find the egg, users must find a series of keys, each unlocking a series of riddles and challenges revolving around the music, movies, videogames and Haliday's obsession with the 1980's, the decade in which he grew up. Wade is a "gunter" (slang for egg-hunter) who has dedicated most of his life to learning every obscure pop-culture reference, mastering every videogame and learning every line of dialogue in hundreds of movies from Haliday's childhood. By chance, Wade decodes the first riddle of the competition and is the first user to find the copper key, one of three keys required to find Haliday's easter egg. Wade is an instant online celebrity and is closely followed by other top gunters, Atr3mis, Aech, Shoto and Daito who also find the key. Seeking to win the prize for themselves, the mega-corporation Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a competitor to GSS, recruits thousands of users to find the egg first (avatars referred to as "sixers"), legally-signing over the egg to the company if found in exchange for a salary. Wade finds himself playing a dangerous game in both the virtual and real world after IOI agents hack the details of his home address and bomb his aunt's shanty-like home in the "stacks", hoping to kill him off as a competitor (Wade is safely tucked away in his secret hideout at the time). Teaming up with the other high-level gunters, Wade progressively unlocks each of the keys in a series of challenges that see Wade battle it out against an un-dead king in the video game Joust, recite the dialogue to "WarGames" and "Monte Python and the Holy Grail" and play a perfect game of Pacman (amongst others). After a giant showdown against an army of sixers attempting to block off the final key, Wade gains possession of the egg and wins the competition.

Ready Player One was a really fun read. I was a young child in the eighties so I really enjoyed the nostalgia. I liked the way in which each of the challenges and puzzles unfolded. I liked the interplay between life in the OASIS and life in the real world. I liked the cyberpunk aspects; the sinister corporation playing dirty only to be outsmarted at each turn by the underdog protagonist. I think the bit I really enjoyed the most was in the descriptions of Wade's life in the "stacks" (ad-hoc apartment blocks constructed by dumping caravans and trailer-homes on top of one another) and the contrast to his online escape in the OASIS from his hideout.

Overall I wouldn't say this was a great book, mainly because I don't think it will appeal to everyone. Personally I found all the eighties videogame, TV and movie nostalgia really entertaining. However I did feel at times like it was nostaliga for nostalgia's sake with big info-dumps about pop-culture obscurity that didn't really move the plot along or have a particular significance to the story. That said, the story does a good job of employing the excitement of the "hunt" as something that probably has more universal appeal and made this book a very easy and enjoyable read. I wouldn't rate it in the top of my list, but a very enjoyable read none the less.

"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea" by Jules Verne

Told from the perspective of Professor M. Pierre Aronnax, the novel begins with an account of a huge "sea monster" which has been recently sighted at several locations around the globe and has left the scientific world bewildered as to it's origin or exact nature. Believing the monster to be giant cetacean (i.e. whale, dolphin) and wishing to rid the world of this nuisance, Professor Aronnax embarks on the Abraham Lincoln, with his trusty servant Conseil, on a mission to destroy the monster. Onboard the Abraham Lincoln, the pair meet Ned Land, a Canadian harpooner, keen to test his hunting skills. During an encounter with the monster, Aronnax, Conseil and Ned fall overboard; the `monster' in fact turns out to be a giant and fantastical submarine, the `Nautilus', constructed and commanded by Captain Nemo, a dark and mysterious figure who has rejected the terrestrial world. After rescuing the three men and taking them aboard the Nautilus, Captain Nemo informs the three that they are prisoners and can never leave the vessel, in order to ensure the secret identity of his submarine and crew, however are free to roam onboard and will be given quarters and food during the Nautilus's ongoing journey. The novel follows the Nautilus's voyage of twenty thousand leagues through the world's oceans, discovering shipwrecked treasures, visiting the lost city of Atlantis, the south pole and battles with giant whales and octopi. After Captain Nemo destroys a hostile vessel, linked to his dark and troubled past within a unspecified oppressive nation, he spirals into an increasing bout of depression. When the Nautilus ventures into the `maelstrom', a giant whirlpool off the Norwegian coast, the three men use the opportunity to escape the Nautilus and return to civilisation after months of adventure.

This was a really enjoyable read; Verne obviously had a keen imagination and his depictions of the Nautilus's exploits and fantastic underwater world in which the story takes place is vivid and exciting. Through his work, Verne predicted inventions such as the submarine and underwater diving-suit before their time. The novel is like a travel-journal; Aronnax provides us with rich descriptions of the underwater life he encounters. Underlying the journey, Verne builds the tension in the story as we gradually learn more about Nemo's dark past and through Ned Land's growing resentment over his imprisonment and plans for escape (while he's not trying to harpoon and eat every single animal he encounters). With so many different species described during Aronnax's journal, I wish someone would make an annotated/illustrated, online version of the book, where for each species described, you can click on the word and it automatically brings up a picture (i.e. straight from a google/wikipedia search?).

A classic (both in and out of the sf genre) that everyone with a sense of adventure or a love of the ocean should read.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Genly Ai, an envoy of the league of worlds known as the Ekumen is sent to the planet Gethen (otherwise known as Winter due to it's intense glacial-coverage and generally cold, snowy climate) on a peaceful mission to persuade Gethen to become a member of the league. The Gethenians have a strange sexual physiology; for each 26-day lunar cycle they spend 24 days in "Somer", an androgynous state followed by 2 days in "Kemmer", in which they transform into either a male or female, depending on hormones and their interactions with an interested sexual partner. There is no gender differences on Gethen; the resulting society knows nothing of sexual exploitation or war (although there is still murder and small-scale family and political feuds). As an outsider, Genly struggles to relate to Gethenians. Their ambiguous sexuality leads Genly to find them untrustworthy. The strange art of "shifgrethor", an elaborate system of social prestige used within the nation of Karhide (in which Genly Ai has been based for the last two years, seeking an audience with the king), stifles nearly every conversation with the locals. After Ai gains an audience, and is not well received, his main advocate in Karhide, Estraven, a political leader, is charged as a traitor by the king and exiled, under pain of death, into the neighbouring authoritarian police-state of Orgoreyn. Finding apathy for his mission in Karhide, Genly Ai travels to Orgoreyn hoping for better luck, but is embroiled in political feuds and eventually sold out and shipped off to a "Voluntary Farm" on the far side of Orgoreyn, a kind of Siberian concentration camp. Learning of his fate, Estraven sets off to rescue Genly, and posing as a prison guard helps Genly escape into the cold, north-western wilderness of Orgoreyn. In an effort to return Genly to the safety of Karhide, without being detected in Orgoreyn, the two men set off on an desperate 81 day journey across the northern polar glacier. During the journey the two reach an understanding of each other and develop a strong friendship and a kind of love. After reaching Karhide, Estraven is betrayed by an old friend and tragically shot while attempting to flee back into Orgoreyn. Following Estraven's death, the king admits another audience with Genly Ai after which further diplomats of the Ekumen are invited to land on Gethen. At the end of the novel, Genly visits Estraven's family and son in a rural provence of Karhide seeking solace.

In an interview with Le Guin, she stated that the initial concept for the novel was a society with no war and that this eventually lead to the idea of an androgynous society. As in "The Dispossessed", Le Guin builds a complex world for the setting of the book complete with histories, politics, religion and a blend of ancient texts, hearth-stories, legends and myths that are told in-between the story chapters. For me, this type of world-building was great and made the story so engaging and immersive, and supported the development of the more complex themes in the novel such as fidelity/betrayal, the nature of cross-cultural understanding/friendship, hardship and the journey of inner discovery.

I was really blown away by this one; I enjoyed "The Dispossessed" immensely, and really hoped this book would be as good, and I wasn't disappointed. I'm considering adding more of Le Guin's novels to the list (such as "The Word for World is Forest" and "The Lathe of Heaven").

"The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester

Gully Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class aboard the spacecraft "Nomad", an uneducated man with no ambitions, has been floating inside a coffin-sized piece of wreckage of his vessel for the last one hundred and seventy days. When the spacecraft "Vorga" passes by to inspect the wreckage and upon hearing his distress call ignores him and continues on it's way, something inside Foyle snaps. Swearing a murderous revenge on the Vorga and her crew, he finds the motivation to repair and launch the scraps of the Nomad, where he is eventually rescued by a strange cult living a secluded life amongst a scrapyard of derelict space vessels in the asteroid belt. The members of the cult tattoo his face and adopt him into their clan. Driven by his quest for revenge, Foyle hijacks a working vessel and returns to Earth, killing several clan members in the launch.

Gully Foyle lives in a twenty-fourth century future where people can "jaunte", a form of self-teleportation using one's mind over distances of up to one thousand kilometers. Other methods of transport have become redundant (excepting inter-planetary spaceships which travel across distance too far for jaunting). The rich and powerful lock themselves up in jaunte-proof mazes inside their mansions and a state of war exists between the inner and outer planets and moons of the solar system. The Vorga is owned by the Presteign Industrial Clan, a powerful corporation with political ambitions; when Foyle attempts to destroy the ship, he is captured and interrogated about his knowledge of "PyrE", a mysterious and powerful substance that could turn the tide of the war, and was being transported by the spacecraft Nomad when the vessel was attacked and destroyed. He is thrown into a jaunte-proof underground prison when he meets fellow-inmate Jisbella McQueen, with whom he escapes and is taught to channel his rage into more productive plans for revenge. Returning to the wreckage of the Nomad, the pair recover a quantity of PyrE and a large fortune in platinum, but soldiers hired under the Presteign clan interrupt the salvage operation and Jisbella is left behind as Foyle flies off into the sunset. Using his discovered fortune, Foyle assumes the identity of a rich socialite, undergoes surgery to receive implants that provide him with commando-like killing abilities and ultra-fast movement and starts to hunt down the crew of the Vorga. His killing spree eventually leads him to Olivia Presteign, daughter of the head of the Presteign-clan, who was responsible for the decision to abandon him and the Nomad; he is smitten by her and her sadistic hatred for the world, and struggles with reconciling these feelings with the desire for revenge. Upon further research by the Presteign group, acting independently of Olivia, it is discovered that during his time in the wreckage of the Nomad, Foyle had sub-consciously jaunted over six hundred thousand kilometers, a feat never before achieved. Eventually Foyle is wrapped up in the race to recover PyrE (when turns out to be a highly powerful, planet-destroying explosive) where he is knocked unconscious during an explosion, trigged by a telepath hired by the Presteign group. Foyle suffers synesthesia, bringing on more powerful latent jaunting capabilities that allow him to jaunte through inter-stellar space and time. Discovering other worlds that humankind could colonise, he returns to Earth, shares his discovered secrets of inter-stellar jaunting and invites the rest of humanity to abandon the war and join him amongst the stars.

"The Stars My Destination" seems to be fairly highly regarded in reviews of the last twenty years or so, and is mentioned frequently in "top-ten sf novel" lists. It is exciting and frenetically-paced, with a fantastically loveable (and hate-able) anti-hero Gully Foyle, and must have been quite exceptional for it's time (I find it so hard to believe this was written in the 1950s!). It introduced so many concepts that would be taken up as main-stream by the "cyber-punk" genre that really only kicked-in in the 1980s (the combination of the amoral-hero, evil mega-corporations, ultra-violence, nihilistic attitude to human life, radical change/breakdown in social order (in this case after the discovery of jaunting) etc.). On reflection there is also a bit in common here with Samuel Delany's "Babel-17", although I think with a slightly less optimistic tone. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but there is a lot going on, and it sometimes felt that too many threads were opened up all at the one time and not all of them resolved. I feel like it was an enjoyable read, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't make my top ten .. perhaps there's something here that speaks to other readers that I don't quite get. In any case, recommended for sf fans or those exploring the genre.

"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein

Michael Valentine Smith was born aboard the spacecraft "Envoy", during the first manned-mission to Mars. After landing, all radio contact was lost between the Envoy and Earth and when the remains of the spacecraft are discovered twenty five years later during the second mission to Mars, Michael Smith is also found alive and well, raised by Martians for the majority of his life. Smith returns to Earth and is an instant celebrity, and owner of a great fortune, owing to his parent's heritage and his claim to being the first human alive on Mars. Due to his Martian upbringing, Smith has a fair degree of difficulty in understanding human behaviour; he has never seen a women, has trouble understanding clothing, money and religion, amongst other things that don't exist in the Martian culture. To "protect" him from Earth-culture he is isolated in hospital and kept under guard. Nurse Gillian Boardman, sneaking into his private room, inadvertently becomes his first "water brother" by sharing a glass of water with him, a sacred act in Martian culture. Eventually she helps him escape, with the aid of reporter Ben Caxton to the mansion of Jubal Harshaw, famous author, lawyer and doctor who seeing Mike initially as naive, assumes the role of protecting him legally from the outside world. Mike exhibits telekinetic powers and the ability make things instantly and permanently disappear if he considers a "wrongness" in them, which he does when government agents try to arrest him and his friends. Eventually he is secured legal rights against those who try to exploit his situation, and leaves the care of Jubal to explore the world. Studying religion through his interactions with members of the fictional "Fosterite Church of the New Revelation", Mike starts his own "Church of all Worlds", inspired by Martian culture and elements of Human religion, where members learn the Martian language and associated psychic and telekinetic abilities. His new church creates a scandal with it's liberal ideas on monogamy and the afterlife and is eventually labelled as blasphemous, and burnt down by an angry mob of Fosterites and Mike is arrested by the police. After saving his followers and assuring his fortune will be bequested to the continuance of the church, Mike preaches to an angry mob and is beaten and killed.

Overall the concept of the book was an interesting one; we see Human society from the eyes of an outsider (i.e. Mike) providing a mechanism by which to analyse and criticise institutions such as marriage and the Church. The problem is that as the book was written in the 1950's the treatment of the issues feels very dated. One of the big ideas explored in the book is that of free-love vs. monogamy. Although, through Mike's philosophy, Heinlein advocates freedom of sexual expression, overall the text is still very sexist with too many fixed ideas about gender roles in love/sex. The book is fairly constrained in the notion of "free-love"; the definition here really only covers heterosexual relationships and where the woman's role is passive. Perhaps going any further might not have been accepted by the audience of the time. As in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (and as I hear in other Heinlein novels) there's a fair bit "preaching" in the conversations between his characters (i.e. characters go on rants about their firm political or philosophical ideas, quite possibly thinly veiled versions of the author's own beliefs).

All that said, the book is still an interesting read; Heinlein's writing is well-paced and easy to read and he keeps the action moving along well. Although the "preaching" can get a bit much, at least it's mostly written in an engaging fashion, so even though I found myself cringing sometimes, I wasn't really too bored with it. Based on what I found in the second-hand bookstore, I picked-up a 1991 re-published version of the book based on Heinlein's original manuscript (about 650 pages) which differed from the version published in 1961 that had been cut down significantly (for excessive length and to remove more controversial elements). I kind of wish I had read the original print because they were right about it being too long.

"The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury

The Martian Chronicles is a series of short stories, originally published across several science fiction magazines in the 1940's, telling of the human colonisation of Mars. The book is composed of both short stories and small vignettes that are pieced together into a chronological order. The early stories focus the repeated attempts of the first Human explorers on Mars who encounter a telepathic Martian civilisation. The first two astronauts to arrive on Mars are shot by a jealous Martian husband when his wife dreams of their arrival on Mars. The crew of the second mission to Mars are mistaken for Martians suffering from a mental illness and thus euthanised by a Martian psychologist, as is customary in Martian culture (because of their telepathy, Martians can project their appearance into the minds of others, and the psychologist had assumed their Human-identities were a product of their deranged minds). During the third mission to Mars, the crew are lead into a telepathically-created fantasy town of their youth, populated by their long-dead loved ones, before being killed off by the Martians who have laid the trap. The fourth mission to Mars discovers the decaying ruins of Martian civilisation after all but a handful of its inhabitants were wiped out by Human diseases brought to Mars during the first landings. The later stories focus on Humans coming to Mars, colonising the planet and transforming it into an image of home. In "The Green Morning", a colonist travels around Mars planting the seeds of Earth trees (perhaps as an analogy of American legend "Johnny Appleseed"). In "The Musicians", young boys venture into deserted Martian cities to play amongst the debris and on the rib-cages of dead Martians before "the firemen" come to remove the debris and end the fun. In "The Martian", a lone Martian enters a Human town, shapeshifting into the appearance of the townsfolk's deceased and missing loved ones before dying of exhaustion. The final set of stories tell of impending nuclear war on Earth, to which most of the Martian colonists return home to and the eventual destruction of our planet. The remaining Humans on Mars live out a lonely and isolated existence.

This was a fantastic book and an absolute pleasure to read. Bradbury's writing style is poetic and ranges from melancholic and nostalgic to downright funny. This is an important novel in sf because of it's lack of the "hard-science" of other science fiction, instead focussing on aesthetically creating mood and atmosphere, making it more accessible to an non-sf audience, and therefore carrying greater popular appeal. The novel is somewhat an analogue of the North American frontier and westward expansion; Bradbury provides a subtle criticism of the colonist's rampant desire to plow Mars into a carbon-copy of their mid-western American towns and creates nostalgia over the loss of the Martian civilisation and culture.

Particularly good stories included: "Night Meeting" in which a Human colonist encounters a Martian "ghost" who insists that his version of reality (at the peak of Martian civilisation) is just as real (and thus equally fleeting) as the current Human colony that the colonist perceives; "Way in the Middle of the Air" which tells of african-americans emigrating to Mars to escape the racism encountered in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century; "The Martian", "The Silent Towns" (very funny) and "There Will Come Soft Rains" which describes an automated house going about its daily work long after it's Human inhabitants have been killed during a nuclear apocalypse (this one was pretty chilling really). The exact nature of the Martians is never exactly explained and always a mystery, erring on the side of the surreal. The Martians are ghost-like and presented almost like one of the colonists might have dreamed of them having visited the deserted cities and relics of their past.

Definitely recommended reading for anyone and everyone.