I read The Martian Chronicles by the American sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. It’s all so bleak, dark, and hopeless. Humans can’t figure themselves out or solve their problems on Earth, but they still dare to explore and conquer other worlds on other planets, inevitably bringing destruction and death with them.
What is this book about?
Photo: The cover of the first edition of Ray Bradbury’s anthology The Martian Chronicles. 1950 The Martian Chronicles is not a regular novel, but a series of short stories connected by a common theme. The story begins in January 1999 (Bradbury wrote it in 1950 and boldly looked ahead). The first humans land on Mars, where they encounter intelligent, ancient beings resembling humans but with golden eyes and telepathic abilities. The Martians greet the visitors with mockery and indifference. The first expedition perishes when the Martians use their telepathic powers to instill their own fears in the astronauts, causing them to kill each other. The second expedition is killed by a Martian who takes the form of a deceased relative of one of the Earthlings. However, everything changes when an American couple accidentally lands on Mars, bringing with them a common childhood illness: chickenpox. For the Martians, who lack immunity, this childhood disease becomes a deadly plague. This ancient, proud civilization is destroyed not by laser cannons, but by a simple virus introduced by careless colonists.
After that, mass immigration begins. Earthlings build cities of aluminum and plastic on Mars, lay down roads, and open sausage shops and laundries. The Martian canals dry up, and the silent cities become empty. People try to turn Mars into an American suburb, buying plots, building houses from a catalog, and missing television and baseball. A rebel emerges in the form of the archaeologist Spender, who understands the beauty of Martian culture and tries to stop the Earthlings, but he is quickly killed. Then, an atomic war breaks out on Earth. Most of the colonists return home on rockets, only to die. A few remain. The novel ends with everything on Earth burned down, and families flee back to Mars, but nothing remains of their former lives. The final novella, "A Million-Year Picnic," depicts a family with children arriving at a Martian canal. The father says, "Look, it’s all ours." The children ask, "Are there any people here?" The father replies, "No." The family begins swimming in the warm water, like the first humans on a new Earth. However, this is not a paradise, but a cemetery for both the Earth and Mars.
The motive of escape
Behind all the lofty and romantic words about taking flight, about the greatness of the human spirit, and about the mysteries of the universe, there is a single, unhealthy motive: escape. The characters are desperately trying to escape from themselves. They are trying to escape from their boredom, from their sinful nature, from their crumbling families, and from the emptiness within them. They believe that if they step onto the red sand of Mars, they will become someone they have never been before. In one of the characters, Bradbury puts this idea into the mouth of a man who asks, “What do I have to do, where do I sign, and who do I meet in order to get on a rocket?” In another passage, he says, “Any sane person dreams of getting off the Earth.” These words do not express a desire for exploration, but rather a panicked urge to abandon everything and rush into the void.
Behind all the lofty and romantic words about taking flight, about the greatness of the human spirit, and about the mysteries of the universe, there is a single, unhealthy motive: escape.
However, the problem is not with the place where one lives, but rather with the person who lives there. The location has nothing to do with it. King Solomon summed up all Godless human aspirations, saying, Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2). He continued, Again, I considered all travail, and every right work, that for this a man is envied of his neighbour. This is also vanity and vexation of spirit. (Ecclesiastes 4:4). Changing the scenery does not solve the problem of a corrupted heart.
The Genesis of The Martian Chronicles: a Diagnosis, not Fiction
The Martian Chronicles was born as a patchwork of 27 short stories (in an expanded edition), most of which were written for magazines in the late 1940s. The key moment came in June 1949, when Bradbury was traveling to New York. It was then that he specially composed the connecting parts—“bridges” to hold the disparate stories together. It is in these bridges that the main motive of the book is highlighted: escape. The narrator speaks bluntly of one of the characters:
To get away from wars and censorship and statism and conscription and government control of this and that, of art and science! You could have Earth! He was offering his good right hand, his heart, his head, for the opportunity to go to Mars! What did you have to do, what did you have to sign, whom did you have to know, to get on the rocket?
The novel was published in 1950, at the height of McCarthyism and the Cold War, when America was gripped by paranoia and militarism. Bradbury did not write a laudatory ode to his country. He diagnosed her. And this diagnosis turned out to be prophetic.
The American Man
It is significant that all the characters in the novel are Americans. There are simply no other people in the novel. And this is not an accident, but a harsh artistic idea. In the connecting bridge, “The Shore,” Bradbury writes:
“The second men should have traveled from other countries with other accents and other ideas. But the rockets were American and the men were American and it stayed that way, while Europe and Asia and South America and Australia and the islands watched Roman candles leave them behind. The rest of the world was buried in war or the thoughts of war.”
This is not just a fantasy. This is a surgically accurate diagnosis; it is not an abstract “humanity” that is flying to Mars, but a specific, Western, American kind of person.
And here there is a bitter irony that eludes Bradbury himself. He wrote his novel in 1949–1950—seven years before the first flight into space of Sputnik (Sputnik-1, 1957) and eleven years before the flight of Yuri Gagarin (1961). In those years, space was pure fantasy, and Bradbury, without even noticing it, shows the very American arrogance that he exposes. He sincerely does not allow the idea that non-Americans can fly into space. For him, “human” and “American” are synonymous. Russians? The Chinese? The Europeans? They just don’t exist in his universe. He writes: “the missiles were American, and the people were American”—and does not ask the question: Why, exactly? Because for him, a man of Western culture in the middle of the twentieth century, it is self-evident that America is the crown of civilization, and the future belongs to it. He criticizes American expansion, but sees nothing beyond it. This arrogance is not malicious intent, but the writer’s blind spot. Therefore, Bradbury, for all his talent and humanity, turns out to be exactly the same “Western man” whose portrait he painted. With his novel, he diagnosed himself, perhaps without realizing it.
With all their baggage—commercial acumen, the habit of remaking the world for themselves, and a complete unwillingness to understand someone else’s culture—the heroes thoughtlessly rebuild Mars in the image of Iowa, import Oregon pine and California mahogany to change the alien world to a familiar form, familiar to their eyes. Archaeologist Spender pronounces a verdict on this type of people:
“When I was a kid my folks took me to visit Mexico City. I’ll always remember the way my father acted—loud and big… And I can see my mother and father coming to Mars and acting the same way here. Anything that’s strange is no good to the average American. If it doesn’t have Chicago plumbing, it’s nonsense…”
The modern "Westerner", Bradbury’s main character, is convinced that changing planets will solve the problem of his suffering on Earth.
Cain, who killed his brother and polluted the Earth with his blood, was cursed and forced to suffer without the opportunity to change planets. The modern “Westerner,” Bradbury’s main character, is convinced that changing planets will solve the problem of his suffering on Earth.
He does not understand, does not want to understand, that a person carries his problems within himself. In his decrepit, sin-damaged heart. And wherever he lands—in the Siberian taiga, on the ocean floor, or on a neighboring planet—he will reproduce exactly the same abomination he fled from. The main problem is not the lack of oxygen that you’re leaving behind, but the absence of God in the soul. The Apostle Paul warned: For the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10), that is, the passion for possession, for consumption. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. (1 Timothy 6:9). These verses contain the exact diagnosis of the “Westerner” described by Bradbury.
Consumerist selfishness and destruction as the norm
The main human problem is immeasurable consumerist selfishness. The phrase, “I want!” is his god. “Not enough for me!” is his prayer. Scientific and technological progress has magnified this selfishness many times, giving him an atomic bomb and a rocket engine. Bradbury puts murderous words into a character’s mouth:
“We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things. The only reason we didn’t set up hot-dog stands in the midst of the Egyptian temple of Karnak is because it was out of the way and served no large commercial purpose.”
A human consumer is ready to turn any miracle into a point of sale. One of the captains naively believes: “We won’t ruin Mars.… it’s too big and too good.” To which the answer follows: “You think not? We Earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.” The respondent was right.
Instead of subduing the beast inside, man tamed the elements outside. Therefore, he can only destroy, corrupt and kill everything he comes in contact with. That’s what happened on Mars. This flourishing civilization of the ancients perished from chickenpox and the axe of the colonizer. That’s what happened on Earth before. Desecrated nature, ever-expanding megapolises, world wars and cataclysms. These will happen wherever an insatiable Westerner sets foot. In Bradbury’s book, people destroy Martians not out of malice, but out of unconscious selfishness—as they did with Indians or with nature. The man in the Chronicles does not correct himself, does not repent, but only transfers his vices to a new territory.
Godlessness as the last step
Bradbury, through the mouth of the character Spender, speaks directly about the loss of faith as the cause of the disaster:
“Like idiots, we tried knocking down religion. We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated out flinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answers to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are a lost people.”
The scariest thing about the Chronicles’ finale is the absence of God and the lack of hope for repentance in the souls of the characters. There is only the bitter realization that man is a destroyer.
The scariest thing about the Chronicles’ finale is the absence of God and the lack of hope for repentance in the souls of the characters. There is only the bitter realization that man is a destroyer. For Bradbury, man is, in fact, a predator. A wolf who looks at everything and everyone—at the forest, at the stars, at his neighbor, at himself—exclusively as prey. On Mars, he exterminates the Martians. On Earth—the Earthlings. And when left alone, a person attacks himself, consuming his own mental and physical resources until they are exhausted.
The Christian answer
One can agree with Bradbury on the diagnosis. Yes, fallen man is just such an egotistical destroyer. But Christ came for this sick, dying “Westerner” (and everyone else) to heal him. The Lord says, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick… I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Matthew 9:12–13).
The problem is not with Mars or the stars. The problem is that people think they are God, and technology is their salvation. We should take care to submit our own hearts to Christ, so that repentance, humility, and obedience would rule there.
A rocket without God is just a beautiful coffin flying into the void. The Martian Chronicles is not a book about space. This novel is a warning, a death sentence to a civilization that has lost God, and with Him, the human image. And this verdict, written seventy-five years ago, sounds even scarier today than it did at the time.
