A collection of some 28 short stories that loosely tell the story of the human colonization of Mars between the years 1999 and 2057, Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” is one of the classics of science fiction, and one of the first science fiction books to be seen as art. Bradbury’s lyrical prose style illuminates these tales, elevating them above the work of his contemporaries.
While the Mars he depicts is very much an early twentieth century vision of Mars, with canals and Burroughsian Martian natives, it remains one of the greatest works of science fiction, and has never been out of print since its initial publication. About half the stories in it had been published previously as short stories; the other half were original, and later editions contained still more new stories of Bradbury’s Mars.