I am not an ardent enthusiast of science fiction, but I can usually appreciate the older stuff. Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Ray Bradbury can all be fun little excursions. The Martian Chronicles are an excellent example of such. Bradbury has an incredible imagination. His work is not merely answering, "What if there were little green men?" Rather, he is much more conceptual. He has things to say about human nature, and "life, the universe, and everything."
The Chronicles feature various Earthlings' experiences with the Red Planet. Some stories are connected, some are years apart from each other. Each is profound in its own way. Particularly memorable was a passage detailing the perfection of the Martian religion. Bradbury explains they found the perfect blend of nature and the supernatural, something lacking in the Earth religions. Incidentally, I was just reading an essay of C.S. Lewis' asserting that Christianity does just that.
I was also captivated with the image of a character named Spender. An astronaut on one of the first expeditions to Mars, he is filled with reverence for the planet upon landing and disgusted by the irreverent revelries of his fellow travelers. He runs away and spends time studying the ruins of the Martian culture. He is struck by the profundity of their philosophy. He hatches a plan to create an intellectual utopia on Mars, eliminating any who would spoil his vision, but he himself is killed before he can execute his scheme.
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