Movie/TV Talk - The Martian Chronicles

For my final post of this themed month, I’ll be heading back to ‘ole Ray Bradbury. In 1980, NBC aired a 3-part mini-series of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. As you can tell by that year, I didn’t see it when it aired. I did get to watch some of it back in the 90’s. I think it was on the Family Channel. I’ve heard a variety of things about it before I saw it last night. I did recognize a few folk from the miniseries. Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowell (Planet of the Apes), Bernie Casey (I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka) and Nicolas Hammond (The Amazing Spider-Man TV show) all had roles. Apparently, Ray Bradbury himself said that the miniseries was “just boring.” Whether it actually is or not, I’ll get to that below.

Book Review - The Martian Chronicles

So, Ray Bradbury… Yeah, I got nothing on him. All I know about him is that he was apparently an awesome author. He’d written his fair share of novels and short stories. I’m not sure if I’ve read many works by the man. I’ve probably seen most of his stories adapted to television or movies. I know I haven’t read Fahrenheit 451. That’s definitely on the reading list for this year.

I don’t remember when I first heard about The Martian Chronicles. I probably found out about it at a book fair, one of the stories was in our reading books, or  the television mini-series that was released in the 70’s. Either way, I found out about it eventually because I finished reading it some time ago. The Martian Chronicles was released in 1950. From what I’ve read, it’s made up of a series of short stories that have been cobbled together.  It’s had some revisions since then. Some stories were added or taken out. Some revisions also have it taking place in the mid-2000’s instead of the beginning of the 21^st century.

The Martian Chronicles

Author: Ray Bradbury

BRIEF BLURB: The book talks about how Earth tries to colonize Mars.