In yet another eerie prediction of the future, Ray Bradbury captures the strange sense of premonition in his collection of short stories entitled "The Martian Chronicles". There are no central characters of which this piece of literature is based on; rather, it follows the similar tales of different people. The Martian Chronicles opens with a Martian who has dreams of a rocket coming down from the sky containing humans. This marks the first interaction between man and Martian. All over Mars, people begin to hum Earth tunes and have strange dreams. Several other rockets from Earth voyage to Mars until finally, the men are able to survive and settle. The first settlers are rough, but they build churches in little shantytowns just like American towns, because American Bradbury based most of his work on what he knew, which is American culture. News comes from Earth that atomic war is imminent.
Ray Bradbury
Photo of Ray Bradbury.
Mars, 2001, with the southern polar ice cap visibl...All over Mars, people watch, and a radio signal comes to Mars with the words "Come Home." Everyone evacuates. Earth is consumed by atomic war, and a man escapes with his family back to Mars, where he hopes to start fresh and rid himself of the horrors of Earth forever. "I'm burning a way of life," the man notes, "just like that way of life is being burned clean of Earth . . ." (180).
Bradbury utilizes an omniscient point of view to emphasize the differentiation between men and their flaws. By not feeling biased under third or first person narration, the reader can recognize human error. The tone that the author uses is an ominous sense of premonition. Bradbury, like other works, realizes societal problems in America and makes predictions on how such behavior would affect Americans in the future. Generally, Bradbury felt that Earthlings, particularly Americans,