Even as I started reading, I was already perplexed - what is this? No, of course they are chronicles, but why are they so... disjointed? Some do not fit with others, and even contradict each other. People appear in one place, disappear without a trace as soon as the chapter devoted to them ends ... No, we're used to other chronicles, not this one.
Ray Douglas Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in 1947.
The fact that the sci-fi component is too straightforward, fantastic did not add to my optimism. Let's leave out even the air and life on Mars, how in the fifties would have known such details, but the fact that every month settlers arrived on it? And in the same month that they left Earth? No. This fiction is not just not scientific, but downright anti-scientific. And you can still resent many in the narrative, starting with the fact that the birds in the beginning was not, and then they appeared and, ending Martian twigs, with the total absence of trees. In general, you can pick on everything, if you wanted to. You can say that the book is hopelessly outdated and read it even a little ridiculous, with today's acquired knowledge. In addition, the structure of the novel? Well, it does not dispose to pleasant reading. All jumping and shifting from one to another and irritating incomprehensible connections.
But there is a grain of wheat among the "chaff". Actually, it's not science fiction at all, but very much even social. The author warns people, drawing a terrible picture of humanity. And these pictures are easy to read.
First of all, the author is clearly irritated by censorship (or maybe criticism). In his chronicles he takes it to the point of absurdity. Here he first talks about what he will develop later in "451 degrees" - all books, films, all works of art, which are aimed at training the fantasy, are ruthlessly withdrawn and burned. Fantasy itself is strictly forbidden, and only realism is allowed in this Martian future for writers and artists.
Secondly, he is clearly disturbed by the speed of technological progress. And the apparent lag from this progress, the moral and spiritual development of mankind. It has invented a way to travel between the stars, while remaining at the same level of spirituality. The main priority is all kinds of comfort and financial well-being. These author's thoughts are particularly vividly expressed in a sketch with a smart house. So what? So the man invented the smart house. What good is it if the man could not figure out how to protect the house from nuclear war?
Third, the manners of his compatriots are severely criticized, up to the point of wanting to physically destroy them, and by the author himself. And this follows from the second. Technically developed and ready to conquer the stars, but morally and spiritually? They are the same hustlers, who see nothing beautiful and behave in the same way as their ancestors, who raided and destroyed Indians in order to build boarded-up barns on the ruins of ancient cities and settle in them with pleasure. Deaf, blind, and not curious. Only profit, only money. Even children play with the remains of Martians. And what a beautiful story of the exodus of the Negroes turned out to be? What a poke in the side of devout Americans. Too bad we don't know where they went. No trace of them was ever found on Mars. At least not by me.
In general, these chronicles are like a series of sketches, not always logical, almost completely unconnected. One can feel that the author was still just getting the hang of it. But most importantly, they encourage reflection. And who knows, perhaps, thanks to them, too, the atomic war has not yet happened.
This article was sponsored by Samuel Yildirim
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