SOURCE: Eller, Jonathan. “The Body Eclectic: Sources of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.” University of Mississippi Studies in English 11-12 (1993-95): 376-410.

In the following essay, Eller traces the creation of Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, particularly the influenceson the book.

There is an intriguing five-year gap between the time that Ray Bradbury first envisioned a book about people on Mars, and the time that he rediscovered that intent and produced his remarkable first novel, The Martian Chronicles. Bradbury's new introduction to the Fortieth Anniversary Edition recalls the crucial moment of rediscovery, a New York luncheon in June 1949 with Don Congdon, Bradbury's literary agent, and Doubleday editor Walter I. Bradbury (no relation). At the urging of California writer Norman Corwin, the twenty-nine-year-old author had traveled to New York from Los Angeles with fifty new stories and enough money to stay at the YMCA for a week. It was an exciting...