The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land….
Ray Bradbury’s classic story of Earth’s progressive colonization of Mars, and the devastating effects that has on the native population, is a series of chronological vignettes, some of which were previously published as short stories in a variety of magazine publications prior to 1950. The stories are told from both human and Martian points of view over a period of months and years beginning in the then future of 1999 through late 2026.
A firing rocket brings early summer to a wintery Ohio countryside; a Martian wife in a dissatisfied marriage tells her husband of her recurrent dream of a man from Earth coming soon to their planet, prompting her husband to make a decision that will forever effect both humans and Martians; an expedition of men from Earth land to discover a familiar small town and the presence of friends and relatives long dead; a colonist of a later expedition takes exception to the behavior of his fellow crew members to their new home and reacts in the only way that makes sense to him…a way that ends in blood…
Ray Bradbury uses the mysteries of the red planet to shine a mirror at humanity, reflecting our hopes, dreams and propensity for destruction in a series of interconnected tales written with the graceful nostalgia that made him a much-celebrated and beloved author.
