Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles

Hi

The Martian Chronicles is my second book by Ray Bradbury.
I got this beautiful edition from Bol and it has 241 pages.
It’s hard to believe that this story was first published in 1950. It doesn’t feel like a 65 year old novel most of the time.

“The Martian Chronicles tells the story of humanity’s repeated attempts to colonize the red planet. The first men were few. Most succumbed to a disease they called the Great Loneliness when they saw their home planet dwindle to the size of a fist. They felt they had never been born. Those few that survived found no welcome on Mars. The shape-changing Martians thought they were native lunatics and duly locked them up.
But more rockets arrived from Earth, and more, piercing the hallucinations projected by the Martians. People brought their old prejudices with them – and their desires and fantasies, tainted dreams. These were soon inhabited by the strange native beings, with their caged flowers and birds of flame.”

This book is a collection of short stories that go together; not just because of the general themes (Mars, race, life, death, religion, loneliness, fear, politics and colonization) but also because of the timeline and the feeling throughout the book.
The stories give different perspectives of life on Mars. Obviously these stories refer to humans on Earth’s colonization past.
So every character lasts for only one chapter/story in which he/she is part of the greater story about Mars.
Each story is very different from the ones before even if they are about something similar (landing on Mars for example) and this makes for an engrossing and interesting collection full of thought-provoking stories.

The stories are very easy to read because of the simple but effective and quite beautiful prose and style used.

This whole collection is weird, definitely disturbing, spooky, very good and full of cynicism and bitter irony.
I couldn’t try to tell what my favorite story is. There were so many I absolutely loved.

But it’s a shame Bradbury didn’t give us a strong female character in this book. Still, it’s a product of its time so that’s not really surprising.

Happy reading!
Helena

Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451

Hi

This review is about one of the great Dystopian classics; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
It won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the Retro Hugo Award.
My copy has 159 pages.

“Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.
When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.”

I didn’t love this novel. Not that it's bad, I just expected more of it.
The novel is strictly theme- or plotdriven. Every scene and character has a function. It is too straight-forward for my tastes.
I did love the characters and the story. The story is wonderful. It’s fast, unsettling, realistic and absorbing. Guy starts out as a gullible slave to the system. But things happen and he grows into someone else, he grows into a new role.
The prose is a bit tricky but once you get used to the paradoxes about living while being mind-dead etc. it is a good novel.

I could go on and one about the themes and the messages in this novel, but I won’t, I’ll be quick.
To me, this novel is about the dangers of conformity, the importance of real knowledge instead of biased knowledge fed to us. How changes can be man-made instead of ordered by the government. About censorship, suppressing individualism and the consequences of too much stimulation.

Happy reading.
Helena