Martian Chronicles E-Book

Michel Dyer

• Herausgeber: BrightSummaries.com
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 29

Beschreibung

What should we learn from Martian Chronicles, this seminal classic of science fiction? Find everything you need to know about this work in a complete and detailed analysis.
You will find in particular in this sheet:
- A complete summary
- A presentation of the main characters such as Captain Wilder and Jeff Spender
- An analysis of the specificities of the work : The science fiction as a total literary genre; An acerbic rereading of the colonization of America; A pacifist and humanist novel
A reference analysis to quickly understand the meaning of the work.

Leseprobe

RAY BRADBURY

AMERICAN WRITER

•Born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, USA

•Died in 2012 in Los Angeles, California, USA

•Some of his works:

°L'Homme illustré (1951), collection of short stories

°Farenheit 451 (1953), novel

°Theatre for Tomorrow… and Beyond (1972), play

Ray Bradbury was a prolific writer who, from the age of 18, published short science fiction stories in fanzines (independent publications, often produced by amateur enthusiasts and aimed at other enthusiasts – hence the word “fan” made up of fan and magazine. The first ones appeared in the United States in the 1930s and were devoted to science fiction). Influenced by Robert Heinlein (American writer, 1907-1988), “dean of American science fiction” and master of the short story, he was the major figure of the genre during the 1950s, alongside Isaac Asimov (American-Russian writer, 1920-1992).

His committed and melancholic texts contrast with the major trends in science fiction of his time, which were sensationalism and comedy. He achieved international fame with Fahrenheit 451, which is still one of the best-known science fiction novels in the world, alongside George Orwell's 1984 (British writer, 1903-1950). Although his career did not enjoy the same success from the 1960s onwards, it is important to note that he is one of the few writers in the genre to have ventured into theatre and even poetry.

MARTIAN CHRONICLES

A FOUNDING CLASSIC OF SCIENCE FICTION

•Genre:fix-up (a collection of short stories arranged in such a way that they can be read together, like a novel)

•Reference edition: Chroniques martiennes, translated from English by Jacques Chambon and Henri Robillot, Paris, Denoël, 2001, 318 p.

•1st edition: 1946 (first short story), 1950 (first complete edition, renewed in 1977)

•Themes : Anticipation, space travel, war, colonialism, aliens

The Martian Chronicles are composed of about thirty short stories (their number has varied according to the editions; in the Denoël edition, there are 28) of very different lengths, the shortest being hardly more than one page, the longest exceeding thirty pages. This disparity can be explained by the very history of the book, which is a fix-up, i.e. the creation of a novel from a set of short stories with similar themes.

The longer stories were all originally published in magazine form and then reworked to fit the overall economy of the novel, while the shorter ones were written later to link the stories together and create coherence. The undeniable success of The Martian Chronicles, which tells the story of how, in the space of half a decade, man colonised and then abandoned Mars, led to an altered reissue in 1997: originally set between 1999 and 2026, the action of the novel was pushed back 31 years into the future, to avoid the so-called “future now past” problem, although this did lead to some chronological approximations.

SUMMARY

The Martian Chronicles