SF/F July Book Study: The Martian Chronicles

Welcome to the AW SF/F July Book Study! For the month of July we are reading and discussing 'The Martian Chronicles' by Ray Bradbury. Spoilers will be streaking naked through this thread, so beware!

Previous book studies include:

2008:
Ender's Game (August)
Lies of Locke Lamora (September)
A Deepness in the Sky (October)
A Fire in the Deep (November)
Storm Front (December)

2009:
I Am Legend (January)
The Onion Girl (February)
Lord of Light (March)
Small Gods (April)
Beggars in Spain (May)
The Once and Future King (June)
Foundation (July)
The Graveyard Book (August)
Neuromancer (September)
The Last Wish (October)
The Knife of Never Letting Go (November)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (December)

2010:
Battle Royale (January)
Jhereg (February)
Cyberabad Days (March)
Tigana (April)
Next (May)
Perdido Street Station (June/July)
Boneshaker (August)
His Majesty's Dragon (September)
Never Let Me Go (October)
The Child Thief (November)
Solaris (December)

2011:
Lirael (January)
Blindsight(February)
Lavinia (March)
Hugo nominees (April)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (May)
Dawn (June)
Good Omens (July)
The Hunger Games (August)
The Last Unicorn (September)
Ubik (October)
The Colour of Magic (November)
The Caves of Steel (December)

2012
The Princess Bride (January)
The Prestige (February)
Servant of the Underworld (March)
Parable of the Sower (April/May)
Little, Big (June)

Feel free to resurrect any of these threads if you want to discuss that month's book.

My copy's on hold at the library. I'm looking forward to reading this .

I'm only twenty pages in so I don't have much to say about the book yet, though the first chapter, 'Rocket Summer,' is amazing and works as a short story all on it's own.

Also, my library's copy has one of the most Golden Age Sci-fi covers ever. I love it.

http://chamberfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/MC-Space-Wizard.jpg

lorna_w said:

I'm trying (finally got to the point in writing process where I can participate) but I'm not drawn in. It's poetic, certainly, but a little too poetic, and in a way that dates it. I'll try and get more specific about this later, after I've considered why i think that

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It's an older style for sure, but I like it. I like how descriptive it is without being flowery- to me it sounds like a grandparent telling a story to their grandkids.

I'm also really intrigued by the format. Before I started reading the book I thought that 'The Martian Chronicles' was an awfully generic name for a sci-fi book, but now I see that it really is what it says on the tin: it's a series of short vignettes telling the story of Earth's colonization of Mars. Each chapter is like a postcard sent from the same place but different people at different points in time. When I first realized that the book didn't really have a set cast or main character I was worried I would lose interest, but each chapter is so well put together I didn't notice after a while.

lorna_w said:

Also dated: women's roles suck big time, to a degree that has me If I'm reading something this old and the women's roles suck but the writer understands that women are complicated, strong people with good leadership skills and a healthy sex drive, I'm okay with it: they are just writing reality as it was. But I'm not getting that here. I'm just getting the despicable attitudes of the world I was born into, not just on earth but on mars too, for pity's sake...so I may not make it through.

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This ticks me off too. I had hope when the second chapter in had a female MC, but when she grew more and more passive any hope for fully realized female characters began to fade. It's something that pisses me off about a lot of golden age sci-fi writing: these writers could conceive of such amazing futures and yet the gender roles still stayed stuck in the 1950s (something I complained about in my one-person 'Caves of Steel' thread).