Ray Bradbury- The Silver Locusts- The Martian Chronicles

The Silver Locusts- The Martian Chronicles

Corgi

Ray Bradbury
1950

'“Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?'
'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.”' 

Returning to Ray Bradbury and his seemingly-endless droll science fiction antics, after reading and very much enjoying Bradbury's take on 1984 in Fahrenheit 451 I returned to a short story collection not unlike the first Bradbury book I read, The Illustrated Man. The stories in The Silver Locusts (a book more commonly known as The Martian Chronicles in its native United States, but that's not where I be) were written between 1946 and 1950- or later, depending on the edition of the book you own, mine is the UK original- for various science fiction publications. In this bastardized novel form Bradbury attempted to include thematically similar stories and added around a handful of new ones in an attempt to bring the concept together cohesively. For me, it just didn't work.

The original edition of this collection contains twenty-eight stories, arranged in chronological order to tell the greater story of a suffering and desperate human race attempting to colonise Mars. The stories are split in to three parts; the first selection tell of man's desperate attempts to reach the red planet and escape a nearly totally devastated Earth in the face of nuclear destruction. Those that do make it arrive to encounter the martian race in various ways, but almost all with tragic outcomes. Bradbury writes several of these stories with a heavy emphasis on the Martian's perspective, and as a result quickly establishes the key narrative element of using his alien characters to offer a twisted glimpse into humanity. Though I've only read three of his books, it seems that he has certain concepts that remain paramount throughout his writing; for me, those were boiled down to the essence of a lack of faith in humanity to be able to deal peacefully with others.

As in H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, the downfall of the Martian race is through a lack of immunity to common human diseases, and soon the human colonists seem to have the planet to themselves. Transposing important human issues and history into new visions with new perspectives is an integral part of the best science fiction, I think, and it perhaps wasn't a distant concept to turn the prairies of the newly colonized American west into vast empty Martian deserts. Anything seems possible, in an understated mesh of southern gothic and alien horror genres.

The third act of the collection requires an important plot point to explain, so I'll refrain from that because nobody likes big spoilers, but truth be told it's a continuation of the colonisation theme taken to its natural conclusion, in Oroborous fashion. By this point, though, my interest had bottomed out and it was only stubbornness that forced me to complete the book. Thinking about what left me so cold about The Silver Locusts compared to how much I enjoyed Fahrenheit 451 (a lot) and The Illustrated Man (a bit), it seems to me that the answer lies in the telling of the stories; thinking back over the overarching plot and themes it's a very clever book, and a very well organised collection of cohesive parts, but I couldn't enjoy them. Partly I think because the variety of setting was understandably slim, but mostly because Bradbury failed to make me care about almost any of the characters in the short time they were each granted on the page. Montag, of Fahrenheit 451 is allowed much more space to breathe and grow in what is still a short novel, and existed as a point of identification. The characters of this book mean nothing to me. Perhaps as a Brit rather than an American I just can't bring myself to care enough about thoughts of a new world and the dangers of a fresh civilization.

Ray Bradbury- Fahrenheit 451

My tactic for catching up with my constantly growing to-be-read book pile is to read through the shortest books on the pile. Ingenious

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury
1954 

"There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them."

After reading and enjoying the Ray Bradbury short-story collection The Illustrated Man not too long ago, I found an old, very cool looking retro 1963 Corgi edition of Bradbury's most widely known work, Fahrenheit 451. Running in at a meager 126-pages, Fahrenheit 451 could be accurately described as a novella; it was developed into its final form from two earlier incarnations, the first of which was a short story. For those who haven't heard of this extremely famous sci-fi classic, it's essentially a very carefully and specifically designed parable regarding a fascist, dystopian future that's very similar in tone to Nineteen Eighty-Four (published only six years earlier), yet holds its own as a powerful, meaningful and touching window that contains moments of action, horror and philosophical musing; all the hallmarks of a sci-fi classic.

Set at an undefined point in a United States of the future,  Guy Montag has a very important job in the community; he is a fireman, and like any good fireman his job is to set fire to books, which are all now completely illegal. In this world, people don't read, enjoy nature, or listen to and converse with each other, they simply watch hideous amounts of television and obey the state. Guy's life and sense of self begin to unravel like Orwell's Winston Smith, as his eyes begin to open to the oppressive fascism around him. Montag can't resist exploring the nature of the books he's supposed to be burning, learning more about the situations that led to the nature of this world, and, somewhat inevitably, finally becomes an enemy of the state.

Bradbury presents a very liberal agenda here, but it's such a clear and sensible one that anyone who objects to it would have to be an idiot. Guy Montag is a likable, believable character who becomes a hero of a type, and (unlike Nineteen Eighty-Four) leaves the book on a positive, optimistic note (well, not for everyone, but I won't spoil), and Bradbury brings passion and craft to his philosophies. The key to the books success for this read was Bradbury's ability to create, in a small amount of space, an intriguing world environment containing occasionally-horrifying science fiction that isn't overburdened with excessive detail. The short nature of the book creates more intrigue and mystery, and as Guy Montag becomes a normal (by out standards) person with aspirations of freedom, this mysterious society as a whole becomes a faceless enemy.

Fahrenheit 451 is one of the most memorable sci-fi books I've ever read, and I recommend it not only to fans of the genre but to anyone interested in this sort of dystopian parable influenced by Orwell and Aldous Huxley. It's short and sweet (well, proverbially), contains interesting characters, and enough horror and drama to push the meaning and philosophy forward at a quick pace.

Ray Bradbury- The Illustrated Man

The Illustrated Man

Doubleday

Ray Bradbury
1951

"If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed with all his sulphurous color, elongation, and anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man's body for his art. The colors burned in three dimensions. They were windows looking in upon fiery reality. Here, gathered on one wall, were all the finest scenes in the universe, the man was a walking treasure gallery. This wasn't the work of a cheap carnival tattoo man with three colors and whiskey on his breath. This was the accomplishment of a living genius, vibrant, clear, and beautiful." 

My first exposure to the work of the highly prolific and well-respected sci-fi author Ray Bradbury went rather smoothly with this, an anthology of previously published thematically-linked short stories given a new framework to link them together. I'm not a fan of sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi, but I do appreciate how the unlimited scope and opportunity for imagination can be used by talented authors to enhance their philosophies beyond that of normal drama, and also how perhaps less naturally talented writers can still make an impact and write an interesting story through a striking imagination. After reading this book, I'd initially place Bradbury in the middle of this; perhaps lower on the totem than the likes of Arthur C. Clarke or William Gibson, but talented enough to strike a chord with the reader through coming up with stories with a greater meaning than they initially present.

The framework involves the story of the eponymous illustrated man and a narrator who meets him; a tattooed vagrant whose magical body art twists and turns to show a multitude of animated stories. It's not particularly important, but does help a little to link these stories as warning prophecies of the future. The book comprises of eighteen short stories of varying quality and imagination. A few of them, such as 'The Veldt' (a 'smart' house with a holographic nursery that gets stuck on an unsettling scene), 'Marionettes, Inc.' (a man tries to use a life-like animatronic doll of himself to escape his wife's obsessive nature) and Usher II (in an Orwellian book-burning future, a man escapes to Mars to build a real version of Poe's House of Usher, using it to kill those who come after him) are conceptually brilliant, and Bradbury's decent prose is enough to bring them to life and imprint them on the reader's memory. Others, though, are bland and a little repetitive, focusing on similar themes and ideas that left no memorable imprint for me.

While I believe that this collection would be better if trimmed of the excess fat, overall the themes are similar and strong enough to justify the concept, and Bradbury's straightforward and consist ant style of prose contributes to an impressive feeling of often downbeat, sinister parable-telling, with a hint of foreshadowing towards a self-brought end to humanity. But, while it's a little silly to complain about a short-story collection featuring too much content, the concept is watered down through the weaker offerings and prevents The Illustrated Man, in my mind, from being a true genre classic; though I'll definitely get back to Bradbury at some point.