My Martian Chronicle

When Ray Bradbury started publishing his books I was definitely part of the age and gender group that lived to eat up his every word. I was crazed for Sci-Fi when most vulnerable to it. The biggest city from home was Fresno, Calif.; 45 miles north of town and San Francisco might as well have been Mars. In my little town the local library only allowed you to take out four books at a time so I got around that by reading my four books and also the four books my mother would check out. It didn’t matter how adult they were or how badly written or stupid, I read them all. I remember being mesmerized by Bradbury’s books and it was the beginning of realizing that there was more to the written word than had been theretofore foisted upon my fertile imagination.

Having lately been burned by rereading the most popular books of both Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five) and J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye), motivated to do so by their passing, I picked up a copy of Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles with trepidation. I was right to worry because it’s pretty much pulp in a way but still, in certain chapters, powerful enough to bring tears to one’s eyes because Bradbury was capable of seeing what was possible scientifically but still able to describe a red-neck sensibility that makes the reader cringe. What could I have possibly have felt as a ten-to-12 year-old? Of course the allure of space travel but also the recognizable image(s) of the grown-ups in my own family. No wonder I’m such a far-left liberal as an adult.