SOURCE: Gallagher, Edward J. “The Thematic Structure of ‘The Martian Chronicle.’” In Ray Bradbury, edited by Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, pp. 55-82. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1980.

In the following essay, Gallagher underscores the structural and thematic unity of the stories in The Martian Chronicles.

The Martian Chronicles (1950) is one of those acknowledged science fiction masterpieces which has never received detailed scholarly study as a whole. Its overall theme is well known. Clifton Fadiman says that Bradbury is telling us we are gripped by a technology-mania, that “the place for space travel is in a book, that human beings are still mental and moral children who cannot be trusted with the terrifying toys they have by some tragic accident invented.”¹ Richard Donovan says that Bradbury's fear is that “man's mechanical aptitudes, his incredible ability to pry into the secrets of the physical universe, may be...