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A review by dorinlazar
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
1.0
It was my third try to read this collection of short stories. Definitely not my cup of tea. Reading them was tiresome, felt senseless, as the setting, the contents, the writing style, everything about this collection-of-short-stories-wannabe-novel was painful to read. But I had to soldier on and I sacrificed my time off to try to understand what's all this about.
First of all, Bradbury doesn't know if he writes a novel or he writes a themed short story collection; and sometimes it feels like a novel, sometimes it feels so disjointed that the only possible reason was that there wasn't meant to be a sense of unity between the various chapters, and the only glue is the setting - Mars.
Chronicles is not science-fiction - there's nothing SF about it, and it isn't fantasy either. It is bad fiction with a fictional Mars as setting. A populated Mars, that is. The martians are mind readers, telepaths, and they have a bad case of chicken pox that kills 99.99% of their population. But before chicken pox kills them instantaneously, Earth sends three expeditions without hearing from the previous one, and every time the humans are so feeble-minded that they cannot but fall to the idiotic treatment they receive from the Martians.
The Martians, as I said, are ancient egyptians combined with native americans who have telepathic powers, and some of them are globes of light. The humans are chaotic, feeble-minded and with a destructive appetite, it looks like everyone murders someone at one point of time. But the main star of the show is the ornate writing style that wants to paint an enigmatic picture but fails like a car hitting a wall at 200 kph. The text leaves a ton of questions unanswered, and only those who really want to see something in these short stories.
The humans don't make much sense either. From the feeble-mindedness of the initial „explorers” to the chaotic acting characters that populate the stories, to the „there's a war on Earth, so let's go and die there!”, I have incredible doubt that Bradbury really understood what he was writing about. I spent page after page questioning Bradbury's understanding of human beings in general.
The writer of F451 disappointed me massively here. Stop recommending this book as good science fiction. Stop recommending this book as good fantasy. Stop recommending this book as good fiction too; please, it's bad. But, you know, your mileage might vary. Some might like the tentative purplish prose and the 50s naïve pre-new-age new-age content.
First of all, Bradbury doesn't know if he writes a novel or he writes a themed short story collection; and sometimes it feels like a novel, sometimes it feels so disjointed that the only possible reason was that there wasn't meant to be a sense of unity between the various chapters, and the only glue is the setting - Mars.
Chronicles is not science-fiction - there's nothing SF about it, and it isn't fantasy either. It is bad fiction with a fictional Mars as setting. A populated Mars, that is. The martians are mind readers, telepaths, and they have a bad case of chicken pox that kills 99.99% of their population. But before chicken pox kills them instantaneously, Earth sends three expeditions without hearing from the previous one, and every time the humans are so feeble-minded that they cannot but fall to the idiotic treatment they receive from the Martians.
The Martians, as I said, are ancient egyptians combined with native americans who have telepathic powers, and some of them are globes of light. The humans are chaotic, feeble-minded and with a destructive appetite, it looks like everyone murders someone at one point of time. But the main star of the show is the ornate writing style that wants to paint an enigmatic picture but fails like a car hitting a wall at 200 kph. The text leaves a ton of questions unanswered, and only those who really want to see something in these short stories.
The humans don't make much sense either. From the feeble-mindedness of the initial „explorers” to the chaotic acting characters that populate the stories, to the „there's a war on Earth, so let's go and die there!”, I have incredible doubt that Bradbury really understood what he was writing about. I spent page after page questioning Bradbury's understanding of human beings in general.
The writer of F451 disappointed me massively here. Stop recommending this book as good science fiction. Stop recommending this book as good fantasy. Stop recommending this book as good fiction too; please, it's bad. But, you know, your mileage might vary. Some might like the tentative purplish prose and the 50s naïve pre-new-age new-age content.