The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (Review)

I greatly enjoyed Fahrenheit 451, so The Martian Chronicles has long been on my reading list. I recently re-read Fahrenheit with my daughters, and Grace was looking for something new to read. I gave her my copy of The Martian Chronicles and decided that good parenting demanded I give the book a read while Grace was exploring Bradbury’s writing. There were some undoubtedly heavy subjects for her, but Bradbury presents them in a way that works well for discussion. Martian Chronicles is a fast read with engaging storytelling, and I recommend it for most anyone (with caution for younger readers).

I have fewer notes than most of my reading, but I’ll lead my thoughts with my favorite excerpt from Fahrenheit 451:

You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.

This excerpt resonated with me, because it captures the importance of thinking well and being willing to share your thinking in the marketplace of ideas. It is easy to leave ideas shallow and uncritiqued, yet the only way to move from ignorance to a finely honed capacity for thought is to wrestle with ideas. Ray Bradbury is someone who helps with that process, and he does so in The Martian Chronicles.

A portion from his book that I spent the most time chewing on was toward the beginning when Bradbury described the decline of humanity on earth:

They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal. That's the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn't mix. Or at least we didn't think they did. We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud. They wouldn't move very well. So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion. We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answer to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are lost people.

I’m uncertain whether I draw the same conclusion from it that Bradbury did, but it is a thought-provoking observation. This paragraph helped set up the rest of the book, which offers a new vignette during the advancing colonization process by humans on Mars. Throughout the book, gives the reader so much to think about in relation to the current issues of the day. Science fiction is best when an author can tell an engaging story while prompting readers to think. In The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury provides exactly that.