I love when I go to my local book store and find a classic book that’s used and marked down. It’s like a small treasure left behind by someone else, or maybe several someones. I especially love when they’re battered old printings, full of underlines and margin notes. I’ve been in the habit of scanning the Borges and Bolaño titles since I went through a South American phase in my early twenties, so it’s no wonder that The Martian Chronicles caught my eye this trip. I didn’t think twice about picking it up.
I finished the novel profoundly depressed. The 1950s expansionist world that Bradbury envisioned here could be easily transplanted to our modern era, with only minor updates to our understanding of technology. The ethos is the same. The same sickening consumerism that would tear through an alien planet, demand it conform to our values, and would build a hot-dog stand at an ancient crossroads. It’s a novel that’s critical of that capitalist fantasy.
The narrative arc of The Martian Chronicles is told through a series of mostly disconnected vignettes. They are at times haunting, satirical, and one of them is profoundly racist, but in their afterimage there is a beauty in the negative space. They’re reflections of the society at the time, but like every dystopian idea suggests its antithesis, there’s also hope for how humanity could be.
Bradbury published this book on the heels of World War II (he only avoided the draft due to bad eyesight), and it feels like a snapshot of that post-war era. Technology is around every corner, and post-war tensions infuse everything. The nuclear era has begun, and in this story, the doomsday clock runs out of time. This isn’t a story about the flower of civilization expanding across the stars, but about that plant, and all its roots, gasping a final breath.
My favorite short is of a smart house that keeps performing the same empty actions — making breakfast, cleaning the house, preparing a nursery — even though its inhabitants have long been gone. The narrative pans out to show their images are burned onto an exterior wall of the house. It’s the lingering evidence of life after an atomic blast.
There are times that reading older sci-fi doesn’t impact me — it feels derivative and the ideas aren’t fresh. And then, somewhere through reading, I check the published date and remember that this isn’t a copy, it’s the original. And then I imagine the world that surrounded the author at the time of writing, and realize what a monument it is I hold. The Martian Chronicles is magnificent, and I’m certain some of these vignettes will stay with me long after finishing it.