Senza dubbio questa raccolta è uno dei capolavori della fantascienza del XX° secolo.
Ho molto appezzato questa nuova traduzione, molto più "fresca" di quelle precedenti che avevo letto in precedenti raccolte.
Bradbury ha il dono innato di unire poesia e fantascienza: si legge con un immenso piacere! ( )

A few weeks ago, fellow blogger Bormgans reviewed one of Ray Bradbury’s most famous novels, and that review piqued my curiosity to revisit one of the classics I read so long ago. These revisitations tend to be somewhat dangerous journeys, because when decades elapse and tastes change you risk being disappointed, but this was not the case with The Martian Chronicles.

The Mars depicted in the Chronicles is not the one we now know thanks to the various unmanned expeditions launched toward the Red Planet, but it’s rather an idealized version of it, with blue skies and canals where waters flow plentiful, where there is a breathable atmosphere - if not as rich in oxygen as the one on Earth - and rains and grass and trees. Where cities, mostly abandoned but still beautiful and whole, dot the landscape as testimonials of a flourishing civilization whose last denizens are either too shy to risk contact or subtly dangerous for the invading humans. Yes, invading, because Bradbury’s Mars is something of an idealized paradise free from the vices that plague humanity and therefore prone to the damaging influence of the new arrivals.

The Martian Chronicles is a collection of short stories rather than a cohesive novel, and these stories are the tiles of a mosaic through which the author delves into the shortcomings of human nature and the dangers of unthinking exploration: observing the attitude of the astronauts who reach Mars in successive waves it’s easy to draw the parallel with the behavior of the adventurers who touched the shores of the New World and proceeded to turn it into a copy of the Old one, while plundering its newfound riches. The most emblematic story in this regard is And the Moon Be Still as Bright, where some of the new arrivals act in a boorishly uncaring manner, breaking Martian artifacts and scattering their trash around: only one of them understands the value of the now-dead original civilization and goes to extremes to preserve its vestiges. The behavior of those uncouth astronauts reminded me of the ugliest form of tourist one can observe all around the world, those who are noisy and disrespectful and are unable to appreciate the beauty of what they are seeing.

Bradbury comes across as quite skeptical about the Earthers’ capacity to overcome their nature and the overall tone of the collection is one of sadness for the inevitabile, i.e. the progressive obliteration of any vestiges of Martian civilization and the “poisoning” of the Red Planet as it’s turned out into a carbon copy of Earth. This choice might have all too easily turned into a moralistic soapbox cautionary tale, but this does not happen (or if it does it’s only a light brush stroke) thanks to the evocative prose that’s able to summon quite vivid images - both in beauty and in ugliness. Humans are portrayed as incapable of learning from their mistakes, and the Chronicles are very far removed from the optimism that, a mere sixteen years after their publication, will inspire Star Trek with the hope that people of different cultures would be able to find some common ground beyond their differences, or that exploring new places might bring a form of mutual enlightening.

Revisiting the Chronicles turned out to be a journey into unexplored territory, because I hardly remembered any details of these stories (a few decades can play havoc with one’s memory…) and I’m glad I retraced my steps and re-discovered a work that, while dated in its outlook and social representation, still feels readable and applicable to many moderns considerations. ( )

Possibly my favourite Bradbury work, this is a seriously transcendent piece of literature, that had a disproportionate impact on my writing and critical faculties. It's not perfect, certainly, int its elements of Bradbury's usual flaws as a writer and in its occasional sledgehammer subtlety yet... that's to request something of the book which it is not, which is surely bad criticism. This is wonderful. ( )

I couldn't begin to tell you how many times I've read this book. No one else can write a short story quite like Bradbury. He has a dark insight into the worst part of humanity, and he can chill you to the bone in a mere two pages. There's a succinct quality to his work. In a single sentence, he can reveal human nature in a way that other writers struggle to do with 500 page tomes. There's a streak of horror in his work as well, and what makes it truly terrifying is that the thing he makes you fear is us. ( )

The Martian Chronicles is one of those titles I saw listed again and again as one of science fiction’s key texts – it ranks sixth on the aggregate list Classics of Science Fiction. But because I thought Fahrenheit 451 was so awfully preachy, it took me 8 years to pick up this other Bradbury title. The lesson here is: never judge an author by one book – The Martian Chronicles indeed is a deserved, enduring classic.

While there is a certain naivety in the book – Earthlings just go and bang on an alien door and introduce themselves, unafraid of pathogens or possibly dangerous Martian mores – and Bradbury doesn’t seem too concerned with realism on that front, the book does manage to evoke a real enough image of certain crucial aspects of the human condition.

It will also delight certain readers The Martian Chronicles is critical of colonialism, American imperialism, consumerism and the nuclear arms race. It was published as The Silver Locusts in the UK, a title that clearly advocates a political interpretation. And yes, in a way, this early 50ies book is ‘woke’ indeed. But as Jesse pointed out on Speculiction, Bradbury does so without overtly preaching or easy dichotomies – is this really the same guy who wrote Fahrenheit 451?

Content aside, what struck me most was the book’s formal power.

(...)

Read the full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It ( )