THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES by Ray Bradbury

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES

by Ray Bradbury

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES

by Ray Bradbury

Copyright 1946, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1958 by Ray Bradbury.

Copyright renewed 1977 by Ray Bradbury.

A Bantam Spectra Book / published by arrangement with Doubleday.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Doubleday edition published May l950

Science Fiction Book Club edition / November 1952

Bantam edition / June 1951

New Bantam edition / October 1954

Bantam paperback edition / September 1979

All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-553-27822-3

The characters and the incidents in this book are entirely the product of the author’s imagination and have no relation to any person, place, or event in real life.

For my wife MARGUERITE with all my love

CHRONOLOGY:

January 1999: ROCKET SUMMER

February 1999: YLLA

August 1999: THE SUMMER NIGHT

August 1999: THE EARTH MEN

March 2000: THE TAXPAYER

April 2000: THE THIRD EXPEDITION

June 2001: –AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT

August 2001: THE SETTLERS

December 2001: THE GREEN MORNING

February 2002: THE LOCUSTS

August 2002: NIGHT MEETING

October 2002: THE SHORE

February 2003: INTERIM

April 2003: THE MUSICIANS

June 2003: WAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR

2004-05: THE NAMING OF NAMES

April 2005: USHER II

August 2005: THE OLD ONES

September 2005: THE MARTIAN

November 2005: THE LUGGAGE STORE

November 2005: THE OFF SEASON

November 2005: THE WATCHERS

December 2005: THE SILENT TOWNS

April 2026: THE LONG YEARS

August 2026: THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS

October 2026: THE MILLION-YEAR PICNIC

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“It is good to renew one’s wonder,” said the philosopher.

“Space travel has again made children of us all.”

January 1999: ROCKET SUMMER

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer’s ancient green lawns.

Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.

Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.

The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land …

February 1999: YLLA

They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.

Mr. and Mrs. K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years, and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.

Mr. and Mrs. K were not old. They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking room.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

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