Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles

September 25, 2012 //

Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles ... Sci-...

The eighth book in our coursera.org science fiction studies is The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. Below is my essay entry for last week:

Through many stories in The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury offers us death, yet underlying that is the deeper theme of living, that we are all immortal in one way or another. Several stories demonstrate this theme of immortality.

“The Third Expedition” touches on immortality when Captain Black and his crew discover everyman’s town on Mars. Grandmother Lustig explains they have been there since they died. “. . . All we know is here we are, alive again, and no questions asked. A second chance.” After their deaths, the crew of the third expedition are tended and buried by the Martians, whose faces shift “like wax”, yet the band plays on, marshalling memories, imagination, music, for example, all things that give us life, back to town forever.

“The Fire Balloons” demonstrates immortality with Father Peregrine, who comes to Mars to offer faith and eternal salvation to Martians, but finds instead that the Old Martians are living forever as lightening and blue fire. (He dares hope to find his long-dead grandfather amongst them.) The Martians have abandoned all that is corporeal and put away their sins. Their vast age is the Truth of their immortality, to be shared one day, by all planets.

In “The Long Years”, Mr. Hathaway has discovered another way to immortality. By the time Captain Wilder encounters him on Mars, Hathaway’s family are long dead, yet they live and thrive. After his own death, a replicated ” . . . woman, two daughters, a son . . . tend the fire, talk and laugh. . .” as he taught them and bid them. Their light shines metaphorically and unceasingly over the Martian seas.

Ray Bradbury wants us to see in his chronicles that in spite of death, life is forever, it goes on in many ways; ancestors, replicas, memories, our children. The last Earthlings discover the first Martians — themselves — giving us assurance that the new Martians will live a million years, in other words, forever.

Cited work

  • Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, Toronto, Canada, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2011. (This edition updated and revised.)

It’s a bit of a curiosity that the edition above is updated and revised — the original dates for each of the chapters have been modernized. That means that the original chronology from January 1999, “Rocket Summer”, through October 2026, “The Million-Year Picnic”, has been moved forward to occur from 2030 through 2057.

I guess that means we didn’t send a manned mission to Mars in 1999, as Mr. Bradbury so hopefully predicted way back in the late forties when he wrote his chronicles.

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The Inner Islands of Rhythm

September 9, 2012 //

sunrise

The sunlight that rises
On a world of surprises,
In the child who smiles
Or the friend who goes miles,
These are the rhythms of love.

The burst of singsong
Of a new morning’s dawn,
For the birth of a child
Or the haunts of the wild,
These are the rhythms of life.

The early day’s break
Or the time that we take,
To reflect on the past
And a future to last,
These are the rhythms for now.

The wealth that we reap
Or the memories we keep,
Like the breeze thru the trees
Or the falling of leaves,
These are the rhythms to come.

— Feb 6,1995

There are some things that you are born with that cannot be taken away. It’s impossible. But sometimes, life’s journey turns out to be a search for them. One of these things is worth — self–worth — a quality that cannot be given to you, and cannot be taken away — it’s innate.

Once you have found your self–worth, you can give it a definition, or not. Your choice. You can share your external experiences with it, or not. Your choice. You can love it, weep with it, or share your joys with it.

Your self–worth will accept you unconditionally. No judgment, no better or worse, no good or bad. These are words that don’t exist in its vocabulary.

Your self–worth is like an inner skin that you can see as clearly as you can see the skin that houses your whole self. But it’s colored with love and joy. If you nurture it, your self–worth, your love of your inner self, will grow and expand until it can touch everything, and everyone around you. You will radiate along with your inner life.

Your eyes will the world as new, your heart will feel with emotions you thought were just fictional, and your body will touch everyone, and everything with warmth.

And all of it will return to you in ways you could not have imagined.

Circle in the moss Your inner self is an island, and an island is a circle. So is your life. The first step you take to walk around it is also the last, is the first. . . And the first can only be defined when you have taken the last.

But there are hundreds of circles in your life, all interconnected like the links of a chain, each one distinct, but all necessary to complete the whole.

No one circle is more important that another, or less. Some of them are links with the past — memories, and others are bonds to the future — hopes and dreams, and the point at which they connect is today – right now.

From your point of right now, you can choose either direction: the past, where you will find memories which should never be judged, but are always a repetition of themselves; or, you can elect to move forward into the future, where memories are your companions, your teachers, your guides, and the challenge is exciting, sometimes demanding, but always — always — the parent of new memories, new worlds, new experiences.

If you choose to look forward, it doesn’t mean you abandon your past. You will find in your journey that each circle, each island, is joined to the next, like the links of the chain of your life.

It is the gift you were born with — your own precious rhythms of life.

— some thoughts,
— Wendy E. Scott
— Feb 15, 1995

note: I wrote the above and sent it to my brother Paul after a lengthy telephone conversation in which he was very depressed, and unhappy about the past, and what he perceived to be lost

 

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