The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradburry

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Mars. The ‘Red Planet’ has been a source of imagination since Man first looked up into the night sky and wondered if there were others out there in the galaxy. Since the end of WWII, the rise of the Cold War and atomic research, interest in Mars has increased like it never has before. In films, books, television and (more recently) video games, Mars has been imagined countless times over, as a safe haven from a destructive earth, or a source of our impending doom. It represents more fully our fears and hopes than any other global or galactic icon. In this essay I will compare two texts, Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles’ from 1950 , and Red Faction: Guerrilla, a video game developed by Volition Inc., published by THQ and released in 2009 . Despite their differences both in time and form of media, each text imagines Mars through the vein of colonizer and colonized, and explores themes of oppression, culture and control and offering a distinct vision of Mars, years apart but with much in common.

Bradbury’s short stories are set in the then-future of 1999-2026, where Earth is undergoing great turmoil due to the threat of impending atomic war. In the face of this the United States sends men to Mars to explore the planet in the hopes of eventual colonization. The book opens with a single page story titled ‘JANUARY 1999: Rocket Summer’ describing the launch of the first rocket to Mars, and its’ effects on the land around it.
“One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost…and then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town…the icicles dropped, shattering, to melt…the rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land…”
The rocket’s blistering heat counterpoints ...

... middle of paper ...

...t life anew and hope not to repeat the mistakes of the past. And yet, as they are free, they are the only inhabitants of Mars, as the indigenous Martians have long since passed away or fled. As the family in the story looks down into the canal, the father figure tells them that the Martians are in fact still on the planet, as he points to the family’s image reflected in the water . It is a sobering mark that their new freedom comes at a great cost. To rule over others, each text would seem to suggest, is not a right but a duty, that we would guard our citizenry and that of other nations with respect and without cruelty. Freedom is not the purvey of the wealthy or powerful. Through imagining Mars, writers of any time and place can explore these ideas in the hopes that Humanity may learn to make Earth a place more worthy to call home, and a world worth keeping safe.

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