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The Martian Chronicles
Ray Douglas Bradbury
The strange and wonderful tale of man’s experiences on Mars, filled with intense images and astonishing visions. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection.
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.
THE MARTlAN CHRONlCLES
RAY BRADBURY
Copyright (#ulink_4b52e760-de6c-58da-9fab-39dc5e68d765)
Voyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd 1951 under the title The Silver Locusts Panther Books 1977 publication also entitled The Silver Locusts
Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1951
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Cover images © Shutterstock.com (figures); Nasa (backround).
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007119622
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007496976
Version: 2015–01–29
Dedication (#ulink_b97c4524-f4e3-50ae-9595-1ed6fcde0a38)
For My Wife Marguerite
with all my love
Epigraph (#ulink_a66e176e-30f9-5500-8afa-0d279dc14286)
‘It is good to renew one’s wonder,’
said the philosopher. ‘Space travel
has again made children of us all.’
Contents
Cover (#uf16f3c68-c01c-520b-b681-d9a7fc0c1b90)
Title Page (#ud5053858-38ac-5349-9e91-6d7a2220a019)
Copyright (#u8687754f-bae1-56d2-80bb-3ac1fa68da28)
Dedication (#ub8001dd7-9627-5e57-bebd-ee914d6a7fc4)
Epigraph (#u31853b29-0b97-5275-9095-555c840c4406)
January 1999 ROCKET SUMMER (#u9aa5794a-05f1-5cc7-a58a-b017ffb24f82)
February 1999 YLLA (#uf3bc4867-2410-5dc0-ae2d-82da03a3d170)
August 1999 THE SUMMER NIGHT (#ub5271cb5-6eeb-5701-ad82-16147ce4e2e8)
August 1999 THE EARTH MEN (#ub7f8f9e5-47da-5348-a024-4da16b8787cd)
March 2000 THE TAXPAYER (#uc3650889-5c52-50a4-a89a-a3174c1d0f6d)
April 2000 THE THIRD EXPEDITION (#u2da894d2-bec7-5e08-a833-5d56f1a29ba7)
June 2001 – AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT (#u33dbdf38-8e1f-5668-bc63-3dd18abf0959)
August 2001 THE SETTLERS (#uc5ccc4ef-613f-5871-bcec-37213f701f4b)
December 2001 THE GREEN MORNING (#uc270b504-bcac-5315-9d09-a014163fb11a)
February 2002 THE LOCUSTS (#u34cb2f0f-35c5-59a1-bed3-dcf300400cf4)
August 2002 NIGHT MEETING (#u3d69aef0-91cc-5a2c-90e6-9985d538116d)
October 2002 THE SHORE (#u12763df4-9710-5d74-9d53-9f0588272dd4)
November 2002 THE FIRE BALLOONS (#ua29bf9b3-5b32-5d97-af73-59d5a71858be)
February 2003 INTERIM (#ue96fea48-7786-52e6-a54d-851c4db0fac1)
April 2003 THE MUSICIANS (#u5318a673-611b-5a4c-8d2f-bd4fa6ad0520)
June 2003 WAY UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR (#u4295f75a-cc00-53ed-842e-70d81f913260)
2004–05 THE NAMING OF NAMES (#u8dc4da5f-43a1-5269-8dc9-29f00276f842)
August 2005 THE OLD ONES (#ud61ff3e0-83b3-5cc1-9d72-31a883320602)
September 2005 THE MARTIAN (#u5ad8e499-985b-5bd9-b01c-942a7ac0f827)
November 2005 THE LUGGAGE STORE (#ucb0cc085-2b23-5563-90c8-6c501b41cfb4)
November 2005 THE OFF SEASON (#ub89c599c-af34-5c71-9d10-f648620bee91)
November 2005 THE WATCHERS (#u1801823e-5c1d-5a8c-9a27-71ae6a990f98)
December 2005 THE SILENT TOWNS (#uca61c16c-e02a-5349-ad61-15ba97152fa6)
April 2026 THE LONG YEARS (#u4c672975-6762-5cee-8006-143837a30777)
August 2026 THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS (#u4e150afa-ffcb-51d1-9350-53def7d17ce5)
October 2026 THE MILLION-YEAR PICNIC (#uad988ae0-5d7d-526c-b958-1993b38c787f)
Keep Reading (#u5706b51f-398c-5840-92b5-e69e80a04c55)
About the Author (#uf77929bd-daba-550d-acfd-2551e288c71f)
Also by the Author (#u0e6dcf5c-51ea-5364-860d-e0a3364d4594)
About the Publisher (#u0769dd65-b06b-5e0a-9d52-87868825cfd8)
JANUARY 1999 (#ulink_c431a71e-4843-500a-b4d3-bb668c621436)
Rocket Summer (#ulink_c431a71e-4843-500a-b4d3-bb668c621436)
One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.
And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer’s ancient green lawns.
Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open air, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.
Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.
The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land …
FEBRUARY 1999 (#ulink_031725db-0820-51dc-a432-ce243cbf595c)
Ylla (#ulink_031725db-0820-51dc-a432-ce243cbf595c)
They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.
Mr and Mrs K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years, and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.
Mr and Mrs K were not old. They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking-room.
They were not happy now.
This morning Mrs K stood between the pillars, listening to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly run on the horizon.
Something was going to happen.
She waited.
She watched the blue sky of Mars as if it might at any moment grip in on itself, contract, and expel a shining miracle down upon the sand.
Nothing happened.
Tired of waiting, she walked through the misting pillars. A gentle rain sprang from the fluted pillar-tops, cooling the scorched air, falling gently on her. On hot days it was like walking in a creek. The floors of the house glittered with cool streams. In the distance she heard her husband playing his book steadily, his fingers never tired of the old songs. Quietly she wished he might one day again spend as much time holding and touching her like a little harp as he did his incredible books.
But no. She shook her head, an imperceptible, forgiving shrug. Her eyelids closed softly down upon her golden eyes. Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.
She lay back in a chair that moved to take her shape even as she moved. She closed her eyes tightly and nervously.
The dream occurred.
Her brown fingers trembled, came up, grasped at the air. A moment later she sat up, startled, gasping.
She glanced about swiftly, as if expecting someone there before her. She seemed disappointed; the space between the pillars was empty.
Her husband appeared in a triangular door. ‘Did you call?’ he asked irritably.
‘No!’ she cried.
‘I thought I heard you cry out.’
‘Did I? I was almost asleep and had a dream!’
‘In the daytime? You don’t often do that.’
She sat as if struck in the face by the dream. ‘How strange, how very strange,’ she murmured. ‘The dream.’
‘Oh?’ He evidently wished to return to his book.
‘I dreamed about a man.’
‘A man?’
‘A tall man, six foot one inch tall.’
‘How absurd; a giant, a misshapen giant.’
‘Somehow’ – she tried the words – ‘he looked all right. In spite of being tall. And he had – oh, I know you’ll think it silly – he had blue eyes!’
‘Blue eyes! Gods!’ cried Mr K. ‘What’ll you dream next? I suppose he had black hair?’
