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.
