# "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:** 7
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 2:47pm 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/1029062/121 "2026-04-10T14:47:21Z")
Opera involves settings removed from the viewers in time and space. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 2:48pm 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/1029062/122 "2026-04-10T14:48:38Z")
A fantasy opera then? because the farmer who’s the chosen one and must rescue the princess is a classic fantasy trope. ---
**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 10, 2026, 2:49pm 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/1029062/123 "2026-04-10T14:49:24Z")
I don’t consider science fiction and fantasy to be separate genres. ---
**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 10, 2026, 2:51pm 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/1029062/124 "2026-04-10T14:51:05Z")
I think that there was a period in the mid-20th century where “science fiction” was considered more reputable than “fantasy”, and so you had fantasy writers writing fantasy stories that had a few irrelevant spaceships or whatever tacked on just so they could claim that they were science fiction. See, for instance, the Pern stories, or Lieber’s “Gonna Roll the Bones”. > [@Alessan](#): > > I don’t consider science fiction and fantasy to be separate genres. They’re definitely closely related, and definitely not completely the same. Whether one calls them “genres” or “subgenres” or whatever is a matter of taste, and of course no matter where one draws the boundary, there will always be edge cases which are near to or straddle the boundary. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 3:24pm 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/1029062/125 "2026-04-10T15:24:33Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I don’t consider science fiction and fantasy to be separate genres. Great. Any theories why they have different names then? ---
**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 10, 2026, 3:33pm 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/1029062/126 "2026-04-10T15:33:51Z")
History. Marketing. The usual. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 4:39pm 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/1029062/127 "2026-04-10T16:39:14Z")
So you believe Libraries, Literary Awards, and Book Stores are all in on it? ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 4:48pm 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/1029062/128 "2026-04-10T16:48:43Z")
I read it many years ago - possibly in high school, which would have made it 50 years ago. Certainly no later than my mid 20s. I don’t remember all that much about it except that there were confusing bits, and it felt very depressing at the end. From what you summarize, that sounds spot on. I’m bemused at the Martian character Ylla - in Bujold’s Vorkosigan books, there is mention of a planet by that name. I wonder if she got it from Bradbury. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 5:00pm 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/1029062/129 "2026-04-10T17:00:32Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Great. Any theories why they have different names then? They’ve certainly been umbrella-ed more than once, hence [speculative fiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction). ---
**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 10, 2026, 5:02pm 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/1029062/130 "2026-04-10T17:02:35Z")
Which also includes, for instance, alternate history, which isn’t really science fiction nor fantasy (but which is also related to both). ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 5:12pm 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/1029062/131 "2026-04-10T17:12:56Z")
Fantasy consists of those narratives which contain events, objects, or circumstances that could not occur in the world as we generally experience it. Science fiction consists of those fantasies in which the fantastic elements are described using terminology taken from one of the fields of science or technology. ---
**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 10, 2026, 5:16pm 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/1029062/132 "2026-04-10T17:16:45Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > “I like squamous.” Too much for me. I take them one squamou at a time. > [@Alessan](#): > > History. Marketing. The usual. Exactly. Publishers have readers as clients. Readers normally have specific tastes and often reject anything other than those. The audiences for science fiction and fantasy overlapped, but as seen even in this thread, the two tastes often had profoundly different and determined readerships and they wanted easy ways to distinguish between them. Fantasy as a marketing genre distinct from sf is usually credited to July-Lynn and Lester Del Rey, who edited the Del Rey imprint for Ballantine Books from 1977, starting with Terry Brooks’ Tolkien pastiche _The Sword of Shannara_. Del Rey is also credited with raising the percentage of women who read the f&sf genre to more than half. And now dominating fields like paranormal romance and romantasy. Designating genre on covers goes back a long way. Dell paperbacks in the 1940s had a keyhole logo on the front cover. For mainstream fiction it was left empty, but it featured an eye (private eye) to signal a mystery, a cattle skull for westerns, a heart for romance, a steamship for adventures and a quill and pen for historical fiction. They did so few f&sf titles that no marker was ever developed. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 5:50pm 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/1029062/133 "2026-04-10T17:50:29Z")
I recall Carrie Vaughn (who has written a bunch of stories and novels, including about werewolves) writing that when she started publishing novels, the label of “urban fantasy” did not really exist and it came as a surprise to her, for several reasons, to be identified as an “urban fantasy author” (she dates “urban fantasy” to around 2007); a few years after that she was being asked about what is urban fantasy and why is it so popular; then by 2016 she had noticed that “urban fantasy” had been “done” for the last couple of years and advised writers interested in the genre to call their book a supernatural mystery/thriller/dark fantasy/whatever… ---
**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 10, 2026, 6:13pm 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/1029062/134 "2026-04-10T18:13:14Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > So you believe Libraries, Literary Awards, and Book Stores are all in on it? Every library and bookstore I’ve ever been to kept their Science Fiction and Fantasy on the same shelf. And why not. If the actual writers don’t care about the difference, why should we? Vance, Zelazny, Silverberg, LeGuin, Moorcock. Wolfe, GRR Martin, Donaldson, Adams - all the best Science Fiction writers also wrote Fantasy, and vice versa. If I like Roger Zelazny, why should I care if the book I’m reading is about science or magic or some unholy combination of both? ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 6:33pm 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/1029062/135 "2026-04-10T18:33:23Z")
Oooh - forgot to mention the bit about Mars being habitable. In a series of stories by Larry Niven, collected in the book Rainbow Mars, an explorer is sent to use a time machine to check out various historical times, including visiting a version of Mars that matches numerous fictional images (including Bradbury’s). I seem to recall that near the end, the reason Mars is dry is that a gigantic space beanstalk-like thing sent a tap root that stole all the water from Mars, leaving it a desert - and the actions of the explorers cause the beanstalk to come after Earth next. As far as fictional images of a planet: anyone remember very early SF which portrays Venus as hot and humid, but habitable? Heinlein did, as did numerous others. Old Venus, published 10 or so years back, is an anthology of stories set in such an image - all the stories were written long after the knowledge that Venus was not and would never be habitable, so it was definitely on the fantasy side of things. ---
**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 10, 2026, 7:00pm 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/1029062/136 "2026-04-10T19:00:21Z")
Peculiar choice of examples, there… I can’t think of any science fiction written by Zelazny, and if he were to try to write science fiction, it’s likely that I wouldn’t enjoy it, since so far as I can tell, his skills as a writer were ill-suited to science fiction. And your list of great authors doesn’t include Tolkien (who never had any interest in writing science fiction) nor Asimov (who probably wrote a little bit of fantasy, but I can’t think of any examples). ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 7:02pm 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/1029062/137 "2026-04-10T19:02:04Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I can’t think of any science fiction written by Zelazny, What about _Doorways In the Sand_? ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 7:13pm 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/1029062/138 "2026-04-10T19:13:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I can’t think of any science fiction written by Zelazny, Lord of Light is science fantasy at the very least - self-proclaimed gods created by technology, descendants of space-faring colonists from Earth. There’s also Damnation Alley. > [@Chronos](#): > > nor Asimov (who probably wrote a little bit of fantasy, but I can’t think of any examples). [Azazel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azazel_(Asimov)). ---
**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 10, 2026, 7:17pm 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/1029062/139 "2026-04-10T19:17:47Z")
I’m not familiar with Doorways in the Sand, but Lord of Light is definitely fantasy. There might be some vague allusions to technology, but none more detailed than “a wizard did it”. ---
**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 10, 2026, 7:18pm 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/1029062/140 "2026-04-10T19:18:11Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Lord of Light is science fantasy at the very least - self-proclaimed gods created by technology, descendants of space-faring colonists from Earth. There’s also Damnation Alley. Zelazny was as much a short story writer as a novelist, and many - maybe even most - of his short stories are at least nominally Science Fiction. If you haven’t read it, here’s “For A Breath I Tarry”, one of my favorite SF stories. xxxx There’s a lot more to Zelazny than the Amber books. [On edit - it seems as though the story was not posted online legally. I’m sorry. Look it up if you can] [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=6) [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=8)