SOURCE: Hoskinson, Kevin. “The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury's Cold War Novels.” Extrapolation 36, no. 4 (winter 1995): 345-59.

In the following essay, Hoskinson investigates the link between The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, contending that “though the two fictions are usually read as separate entities, if read as complementary works, they provide a more comprehensive view of a larger whole.”

In a discussion about the thematic content of The Martian Chronicles with interviewer David Mogen in 1980, Ray Bradbury stated, “The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 come from the same period in my life, when I was warning people. I was preventing futures” (83). In this pairing of the two books, Bradbury suggests a deep kinship between the pieces and indicates the probability that they are more than just successive novels in his overall body of work.¹ Though the two fictions are usually read as separate entities, if read as complementary works, they...