Substantive: The Martian Chronicles

The Martian Chronicles stands in my mind as one of the most fascinating studies of alien existence and colonization. It is replete with that nostalgic charm for which Bradbury is so famed, but while certain aspects of this book could be considered Dandelion Wine-light, there is so much more to it than a young boy’s fantasy turned science fiction novel. The very first time we meet the Martians, they are, with a few embellishments, essentially very close to human. Ylla is trapped in an unhappy marriage, they talk of socializing with the neighbors, going to the city, etc. Her husband’s reaction to her dreams of the arriving Earthmen is to react jealously and kill them.

In contrast to something like Speaker, where we explicitly get the notion of This species is not human and cannot be treated as such beaten over our heads, the nature of the Martians and Earthling colonialism is significantly less cut-and-dry. For instance, in the story where the Second Expedition arrives on Mars, the Martians assume they are mentally ill or telepathic hallucinations, and eventually wind up shooting them in apparent self-defense. Also in the Third Expedition, when the Americans are essentially lured into what they see as their childhood homes, only to be murdered and buried. While these are both acts of self-defense (and at least in the first case an argument can be made for a cultural idiom in which telepathic hallucination is an aberration but part of society), the human beings in both cases are not explicit threats, only potential ones. While we can discuss the impending imperialism of this arrival as a terrifying reality, the fact of the matter is that the Martians, at least in the earlier parts of the book, exhibit a frightening method of “shoot first, ask questions later” and in fact lure the Earthlings to their deaths. This involves deliberation, which is, at least in the United States, a requisite for first-degree murder.

And yet, we find later that the Martians have essentially been wiped out, turned into ghosts, by Earthborn illnesses, much in the way of War of the Worlds—and yet instead of the odd sense of relief and triumph that inhabits the final chapters of Wells, we get the sense of this incredible, majestic civilization suddenly wiped out, implying that Earthling and American imperialism—and does it strike anyone else as peculiar that all these settlers seem to be American?—ruins everything beautiful. It reminded, poignantly, of Watchmen (particularly the graphic novel, but the film adaptation is mostly faithful to this), when Dr. Manhattan, standing on the surface of Mars, refuses Laurie’s insistence on the merits of human life. Please forgive that this is from the movie, as I have currently lent out my copy of the book:

"In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon. Just look around you. Mars gets along perfectly well without so much as a microorganism. Here, it's a constantly changing topographical map flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples ten thousand years wide. So tell me: how would all of this be greatly improved by an oil pipeline?"

The Mars in which the Martians once lived is now exquisitely desolate and empty. And then in come these settlers, pioneers, to turn everything into Earth 2.0. And then, in the end, everybody goes back to Earth due to the impending nuclear war, and now Mars, which once had a thriving civilization, is almost completely empty.