The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950, is among Bradbury's best-known works. It depicts a Mars full of wonderful machines, strange vegetation and old canals, populated by an ancient civilization of brown-skinned, golden-eyed Martians. In this, it resonates with with earlier science fiction works about the planet, such as Edgar Rice Burrough's "Barsoom" series and other pulpy stories.
When scientific probes arrived on Mars in the 1960s, their close-up photographs changed our understanding of the planet forever. Mars was found to be dry, cold and seemingly devoid of life. Bradbury's stories have little in common with this newer view of Mars, though his description of the planet having dried-out seas fits with modern evidence that Mars was once much more wet.
Bradbury himself never intended the Martian Chronicles to reflect any realistic state of Mars. He thought the stories should be treated less as science fiction and more like fantasy. "It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time — because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power," he said during a 1999 interview.
Image: Martian surface photograph taken by Viking 2 lander. (NASA)
