Bradbury's sharply satirical tales About the colonizing of Mars still resonate
Yeah, yeah, we've got thousands of high-res pics of Mars these days, and not one of them shows any houses, canals or malt shops, but that doesn't scuff the shine on The Martian Chronicles. "My book was never intended as a factual report on a real place," Ray Bradbury says with a warm chuckle in the intro to the audio version of his classic 1950 short story collection. "My book is a report from Olympus, in a way." Then he launches into it, describing humanity's gradual exodus to an alien planet where everybody's eager to perform a moral pratfall and become the next Achilles or Narcissus or whoever. It's a wild ride: The robots look like people. So do the Martians, kind of. The dead walk again (and again). One earthly expatriate proudly constructs a Poe-inspired house of horrors and starts offing his puritanical enemies one by one. And you gotta love the one about Sam Parkhill, who proudly builds the first hot dog stand on Mars. Each tale is sneakily interconnected with the larger arc (though some may feel a bit incongruous). Between them, Bradbury offers quick, humorous asides on who he was when he wrote these stories, his first published works, and why he did so. It's a joy hearing it all in the voice of author himself; he's got a sly, charming way of delivering his characters' lines, like he's been practicing this for years. So, yes, he's folksy — but if you're looking for something quaint and dated about which to feel modernly smug, move along, son. This is sharp social criticism and marvelously inventive satire. No matter how often Bradbury calls it Mars, or Olympus, don't get fooled. This is Earth.