The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury

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Category: Fiction Acquired: borrowed from the Todd & Betsy library Read: August 5, 2008 - all in one day. Briefly: Earthlings colonize Mars in the early 21st century, and demonstrate that their ability to develop new technology far outpaces their ability to use it wisely. By the end of the book, they've basically snuffed out civilization on both planets.

Comments: I'm not really that much of a sci-fi fan. While the genre is good at bringing up interesting and even important questions about the future, the visions they present are so often dark and pessimistic that the stories can be real downers. Ray Bradbury is particularly like that.

So why do I feel that this is one of the best sci-fi books ever written? Maybe it's because I first read it at an impressionable age, somewhere around age 12. Maybe it's because it connected so well with the space-race fever we were all feeling in the 1960's. Maybe it's because the stories are just so darn good. Really - "Usher II" and "There Will Come Soft Rains" are still among my favorite all-time short stories. As I was reading them yesterday for the first time in ten years, I was literally finishing sentences in my head as I turned the pages.

The book was written in 1949, by the way, and Bradbury's idea of the 'far future' is the time span from 2002 to 2005, when most of the action occurs (each chapter begins with a date). His vision of where our technology would be in 50 years is overly-optimistic (often humorously so), while his vision of how badly we'd mess things up is likewise (thankfully) pessimistic. At least, Los Angeles hasn't been incinerated by a nuclear bomb yet, last I heard.