# "The Martian Chronicles" is either a clumsy fix-up or a brilliant satire, and I'm not sure which but maybe it's both: A very belated book report **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [April 6, 2026, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062 "2026-04-06T12:31:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/41 "2026-04-07T18:25:26Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Others I’m sure as well but those other two came to mind first. Besides those mentioned, there’s Cordwainer Smith (Paul myron Anthony Linebarger), whose Instrumentality of Mankind works all fit into a single future. I wasn’t aware of this until I picked up **The Best of Cordwainer Smith** , which had a timeline for his stories. Until then I’d only read his _Scanners Live in Vain_ and _The Ballad of Lost C’mell_, and didn’t realize that they fit into the same bizarre future. Smith is definitely worth reading, ideally with a copy of _The Cordwainer Smith Concordance_ at your elbow. It’s amazing where he drew inspiration from. I think all “future history”-type constructs eventually fail when their creators aren’t meticulous with times and locations. Heinlein get messed up, for instance, trying to fit Hazel Stone into three novels from three different periods of his writing. Jules Verne messed up with putting _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ and _The Mysterious Island_ in the same world – the timelines don’t work out at all. It makes you understand why Arthur Conan Doyle apparently never went back to check his earlier stories when he referred to them later on. Or why Rex Stout changed Nero Wolfe’s address and the size of his globe. Consistency? Hah! ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/42 "2026-04-07T19:16:06Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I think all “future history”-type constructs eventually fail when their creators aren’t meticulous with times and locations. I think it’s impossible to predict the future accurately at all. The book that I recommend about this is _Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction_ by Dan Gardner and Philip E. Tetlock. I don’t trust any prediction more than five years in the future, even if the forecaster has learned the lesson about forecasting given in Tetlock’s book. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/43 "2026-04-07T19:39:10Z")
This discussion reminds me a little of my Indonesian class where we had to read _Seribu Kunang-kunang di Manhattan_ (A Thousand Fireflies in Manhattan), a collection of short stories by the well-known Indonesian author Umar Kayam. The stories are ostensibly set in Manhattan and feature Americans doing, well, whatever - working, feeling trapped in unfulfilling marriages, and so on. Generally speaking, a very unhappy portrait of society. The students - all of us American - were indignant. “He doesn’t have any idea what Americans are like! We don’t talk like that or respond to situations like that! How DARE this Indonesian characterize Americans that way!” Our instructor had to gently tell us, “He’s not talking about Americans, he’s talking about INDONESIANS. He just set it in America to make it possible to criticize present-day Indonesia [of the time - I think the book dates back to the early 1970s] without actually directly criticizing his country.” Oh. Well then. We felt a little sheepish for not realizing that (but to be fair, none of us were aware of just how dangerous it was to be directly critical of things during Suharto’s repressive reign). So all of you who said Bradbury’s stories are “fables,” I agree. There isn’t breathable air on Mars or many other characteristics found in The Martian Chronicles, for sure. Animals don’t really talk the way they do in fables, for sure. Focusing on any of that is missing the point. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/44 "2026-04-07T19:42:19Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Niven with Known Space which started to hit real issues beginning with Ringworld. Niven had some early stories (One Face, etc) which were proto-Known Space, but he settled into a consistent universe - that then become harder and harder to write in, hence his dropping the subject for a long time after Ringworld Engineers ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/45 "2026-04-07T20:02:42Z")
@CalMeacham was commenting less on the possibility of being correct with predictions and more on the difficulty of keeping the world consistent from story to story. Consider one of the canonical examples from Heinlein’s Future History, “-- We Also Walk Dogs”, where an antigravity device is discovered - the main plot point of the story - and then subsequently forgotten in all the the later stories where it would have come in real handy to have around. Some of those stories, set later in the future history chronology, had been written earlier, and Heinlein didn’t go back and revise them to incorporate antigrav tech, which would have in some cases meant massive revisions. Still good stories. Their predictions are, as you note, wildly inaccurate. They just lack internal consistency between stories set in the nominal same universe. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/46 "2026-04-07T20:21:02Z")
Despite being published in The Past through Tomorrow, I think it’s clear that “We Also Walk Dogs” isn’t part of the future history. It’s not continuity errors; it’s just a completely different continuity. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/47 "2026-04-07T21:52:05Z")
I was a little puzzled by people who considered Bradbury to be a horror writer. Even his dark stories aren’t THAT dark. A few years ago, when Hispanic novelists were jumping onto the Magical Realism bandwagon, I remember thinking, “Why the fuss? Ray Bradbury has been writing these stories for decades!” ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/48 "2026-04-07T21:53:15Z")
Agreed - and it’s a bit tricky to fit “The Long Watch” into the continuity, too. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/49 "2026-04-07T21:53:19Z")
Agreed, easier to make it a one-off, especially when it was under one of his pen names. Nobody ever tries to cram Waldo into a continuity, for example, or something like A Bathroom of Her Own. I’d argue that basically all of the stories collected in The Menace From Earth are unrelated. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/50 "2026-04-07T21:54:59Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > Even his dark stories aren’t THAT dark. “The Small Assassin,” “The Veldt,” and “The Playground” are horror-ish. I’m puzzled why _Cliff Simak_ got a lifetime achievement award from the Horror Writers of America ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/51 "2026-04-07T22:02:20Z")
“The Long Watch”, in itself, would be relatively easy to fit into any given continuity, since the main thing that happens in it is something that doesn’t happen. But it’s definitely in continuity with Space Cadet, and that might or might not fit (especially the depiction of the Venusians). But back to Bradbury, you could call him a horror writer, as long as your definition is expansive enough to encompass existential horror. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/52 "2026-04-07T22:03:41Z")
I do get that feeling of sort of a love-hate relationship with Bradbury’s work. I think the better of his two big sci-fi anthologies is The Illustrated Man and have often found a lot of his work somehow unpleasant to read. Though when it comes to really depressing short fiction I’m still not sure who beats Philip K Dick, at least from what I’ve read of him. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/53 "2026-04-07T22:27:11Z")
For me, the first one to come to mind is Jack Vance’s _The Dying Earth_. Of course, in his case, the world is so bizarre that it’s impossible to complain about continuity, because anything can exist there. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/54 "2026-04-07T23:17:33Z")
I called Bradbury a horror writer because he was a master of psychological horror. If your definition of horror limits it to, say, Lovecraft or Clive Barker, then it would be hard to include him. I’d argue that horror is a much larger field, with not just a spectrum but a multi-dimensional grid of possibilities, exactly like every other genre, including mainstream. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/55 "2026-04-07T23:29:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But it’s definitely in continuity with Space Cadet, and that might or might not fit (especially the depiction of the Venusians). And the existence of the Patrol as a world-wide (system-wide!) organization for peace is hard to square with the many decades of American religious dictatorship, followed by rebellion and a different world-government ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2026, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/56 "2026-04-07T23:36:48Z")
I concur. “All Summer in a Day” doesn’t have blood or gore or monsters or madmen, but I defy you to read it and not feel…disturbed. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2026, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/57 "2026-04-08T00:13:14Z")
Bradbury was undoubtedly a brilliant writer, far exceeding anybody else publishing in the genre magazines at the time. His tragedy was that until he matured and broke out of genre, his best work was barely considered elsewhere. Admittedly, his juvenalia was dreadful, although genre magazines - even _Astounding_ - printed many. Those were simply not his metier. Word sculpture was. SF is writable by teenagers - Bradbury was the same age as Asimov, who broke out five-to-seven years earlier. Feelings and mood require life experience. Why Bradbury peaked in the 1950s, therefore, is mysterious. My gut feeling is that he was a product of the interwar years and the massive changes in society undermined his understanding of humanity. Much like Heinlein’s failure to lift himself out of WWII American exceptionalism eventually turned against him. Just for laughs. We’ve mentioned _I, Robot_ several times. That was published by Gnome Press, which I collect, so I get notices of auctions. Like [this one that just showed up in my email](https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/Nicely-preserved-copy-of-Asimov-s-I,-Robot-331-c-B896E697C7?utm_term=gnome%20press&utm_source=alerts&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=keywordalerts&utm_content=430028&utm_term=430028). I’m not sure if you need to log in to see that copy, but the heading is “Nicely preserved copy of Asimov’s I, Robot” with an estimated sale price of $3-5,000. But the “nicely preserved” book has a dust jacket I wouldn’t handle without tongs. The power of a name. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2026, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/58 "2026-04-08T00:19:45Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > CalMeacham was commenting less on the possibility of being correct with predictions and more on the difficulty of keeping the world consistent from story to story True. Especially if you did not _start_ from a deliberate “worldbuild” perspective. You may have something _general_ in mind about the universe in which you write but you may not have plotted that one story will be a prequel to another, it just came out so that you _could_ use it that way by changing a name, much less been thinking of any sort of “canon” or “lore”. And never mind when you later try to turn everything into a single expanded universe. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2026, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/59 "2026-04-08T00:33:29Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I think it’s impossible to predict the future accurately at all. The book that I recommend about this is _Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction_ by Dan Gardner and Philip E. Tetlock. I don’t trust any prediction more than five years in the future, even if the forecaster has learned the lesson about forecasting given in Tetlock’s book. I’m not talking about prediction – I’m talking about the lesser and (you would think) easier problem of simply keeping your story consistent. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2026, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062/60 "2026-04-08T01:10:27Z")
I think science fiction is very much about prediction (not entirely but a large part of it is). There are many different futures. Each story, novel, or story collection is about one of those possible futures. At best each story can correctly predict one small part of the future that really does happen. The good thing about reading a lot of science fiction is having the chance to think about many of the futures that may happen. You can then think about how we can get some pieces of the good futures and avoid the pieces of the bad futures. There’s a famous statement that the purpose of science fiction isn’t to predict the future; it’s to prevent it. When I search that statement, I find that Ray Bradbury is one of the people who thought that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-martian-chronicles-is-either-a-clumsy-fix-up-or-a-brilliant-satire-and-im-not-sure-which-but-maybe-its-both-a-very-belated-book-report/1029062.md?page=4)