THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
by Ray Bradbury
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
2004-2005: 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
“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 wintar 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.
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