50 Fun Facts About The Martian Chronicles

Which Earth disease, carried to Mars by astronauts, kills almost every Martian in The Martian Chronicles?

Chickenpox reaches Mars with the first rockets, so the Fourth Expedition lands to find the cities silent and the Martians dead in their homes.

Which NASA rover's touchdown site on Mars is named Bradbury Landing, after the author of The Martian Chronicles?

Curiosity's touchdown spot got the name on what would have been Ray Bradbury's 92nd birthday, weeks after the author died in June 2012.

A photograph of shadows burned onto a wall in which city inspired Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains?

Hiroshima's preserved shadows became the story's burnt silhouettes of a family, left on one wall of their automated house.

Which horror writer's doomed mansion does William Stendahl rebuild on Mars in The Martian Chronicles chapter Usher II?

Edgar Allan Poe's House of Usher rises again on Mars as a trap for Stendahl's enemies, years after his own 50,000-book library was burned on Earth.

What business does Sam Parkhill open on Mars in The Martian Chronicles, decorating it with glass from Martian ruins?

A hot dog stand is Parkhill's bet on a hundred thousand hungry newcomers, but war breaks out on Earth and the customers never arrive.

At the end of The Martian Chronicles, what does William Thomas show his sons when he promises them Martians?

Their own reflections in the water are the answer: with Earth destroyed, the family who fled it have become the Martians.

Which later Ray Bradbury novel shares the book-burning future described in The Martian Chronicles chapter Usher II?

Fahrenheit 451 followed in 1953, three years after Usher II imagined a great burning of books and one reader's revenge for his lost library.

Which hero's 1931 Sunday comic strips did Ray Bradbury say The Martian Chronicles could never have happened without?

Tarzan, drawn by Harold Foster, shared a creator with the John Carter of Mars tales, and the young Bradbury memorized both to retell to anyone who would listen.

Which Star Trek actor narrated a 1975 record of There Will Come Soft Rains and Usher II from The Martian Chronicles?

Leonard Nimoy's reading resurfaced in 2015, shortly after his death, set to new music on the concept album Soft Rains.

Which Hollywood leading man starred as Colonel John Wilder in the 1980 television miniseries of The Martian Chronicles?

Rock Hudson headed the three-part adaptation, which was filmed at a studio in England and on location on two islands.

Which emotion drives Ylla's Martian husband to kill the first astronaut from Earth in The Martian Chronicles?

Jealousy dooms the First Expedition: Ylla has a romantic vision of the astronaut Nathaniel York, so her husband Yll goes out to meet the rocket armed.

Where do Martians lock up the Second Expedition's crew in The Martian Chronicles?

An insane asylum seems the right place to Martians who think the visitors are hallucinating; a psychologist kills the crew as incurable, then himself.

What does Benjamin Driscoll plant across Mars to thicken the thin air in The Martian Chronicles?

Trees shoot up overnight from Driscoll's seeds, a fully grown forest by morning that later settlers name after him.

Along which water-filled features of Ray Bradbury's Mars does the Thomas family boat in The Million-Year Picnic?

Canals carry the family past six dead Martian cities, and they choose the last one as their new home.

In The Martian Chronicles chapter The Martian, whose shape does a lonely Martian take to live with the LaFarges?

Their dead son Tom, lost to pneumonia years earlier at fourteen, turns up at the elderly couple's door asking only to stay with them.

In The Martian Chronicles, what does Captain Wilder discover about the family living with Hathaway on Mars?

They are androids, built by Hathaway after his real wife and children died of an unknown disease, and Wilder's crew cannot bring themselves to switch them off.

How does Walter Gripp first reach Genevieve Selsor in The Martian Chronicles chapter The Silent Towns?

By telephone: after dialing numbers across an emptied planet, Gripp reaches Genevieve Selsor at a beauty parlor, then drives a thousand miles to find her.

What does Genevieve Selsor show Walter Gripp that sends him fleeing across Mars in The Martian Chronicles?

A wedding dress, offered by a woman who believes they are the last two people on Mars, is enough to make Gripp choose a lifetime alone in another tiny town.

In The Martian Chronicles, which continent do colonists on Mars learn has been destroyed by an accidental atomic blast?

Australia vanishes when a weapons stockpile detonates early, and the radio message that follows urges every colonist to return to Earth.

Which Sherwood Anderson book of linked small-town tales did Ray Bradbury name as his model for The Martian Chronicles?

Winesburg, Ohio struck Bradbury at 24, and he told himself he would love to write a book as good but set on Mars.

Which John Steinbeck novel's short bridging chapters did Ray Bradbury borrow for The Martian Chronicles?

The Grapes of Wrath slips brief scene-setting chapters between its main ones, a device Bradbury first met at nineteen, the year the novel came out.

Which publisher issued The Martian Chronicles after one of its editors suggested linking Ray Bradbury's Mars stories?

Doubleday editor Walter Bradbury, no relation to the author, paid $750 for the outline of the book.

Under which title was The Martian Chronicles first published in the United Kingdom, with slightly different contents?

The Silver Locusts echoes a short chapter about emigrants swarming to Mars, and some British editions swapped Usher II for The Fire Balloons.

Which Argentine author wrote the foreword to Crónicas Marcianas, the Spanish edition of The Martian Chronicles?

Jorge Luis Borges wrote the prologue for the publisher Minotauro, which launched its whole catalogue with Bradbury's book.

Which honor came to Ray Bradbury in 2007 as a special citation naming The Martian Chronicles among his masterworks?

The Pulitzer Prize board called Bradbury a lone voice among his peers in facing what total atomic destruction would mean.

Which American poet's 1918 anti-war poem gave its title to the Martian Chronicles chapter There Will Come Soft Rains?

Sara Teasdale imagined nature settling into peace, indifferent to mankind's extinction, and in the chapter an empty house reads her poem aloud to nobody.

Which Romantic poet wrote the poem at the heart of The Martian Chronicles chapter —And the Moon Be Still as Bright?

Lord Byron sent the poem to a friend in a letter at twenty-nine, and another of his lyrics is sung by spellbound Martians earlier in the book.

Which Canadian astronaut and former space station commander introduced a 2015 edition of The Martian Chronicles?

Chris Hadfield put the book's staying power down to its beautiful Martian landscapes and the idea that people may one day call Mars home.

Ray Bradbury argued The Martian Chronicles endures because it is really which kind of story, not science fiction?

Myth, he argued, outlasts the science and machines that date other stories, which is why even physicists forgive his Mars its breathable air.

Which American network aired the Martian Chronicles miniseries in January 1980, having commissioned it with the BBC?

NBC showed it in three episodes running just over four hours in total, and Bradbury himself judged the result dull.

Which author of I Am Legend wrote the screenplay for the 1980 television miniseries of The Martian Chronicles?

Richard Matheson's own vampire novel had already reached the screen twice by then, as The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man.

On which Mediterranean island was the 1980 television miniseries of The Martian Chronicles partly filmed?

Malta shared location duties with Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, while the studio scenes were shot at Shepperton in England.

Which Broadway star played Genevieve Selsor in the 1980 television miniseries of The Martian Chronicles?

Bernadette Peters played her as a woman who stayed on Mars because she could not take all her clothes back to Earth, a twist the book never had.

Which Planet of the Apes actor played Father Stone in the 1980 television miniseries of The Martian Chronicles?

Roddy McDowall, best remembered as Cornelius and Caesar in the ape films, played the missionary priest from the chapter The Fire Balloons.

In the 1980 miniseries of The Martian Chronicles, which Greek god gives his name to the crewed Mars rockets?

Zeus missions replace the book's numbered expeditions, and the first one lifts off from Kennedy Space Center on a Saturn V.

Which video game hides a household robot that recites the poem behind Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains?

Fallout 3 puts the robot in a ruined Georgetown house, where it recites the verses in the bedroom of children who are long gone.

Which publisher of Tales from the Crypt adapted several Martian Chronicles stories in Weird Science and Weird Fantasy?

EC Comics began by lifting two Bradbury stories without asking; he answered with praise and a polite request for payment, and authorized adaptations followed.

Which My Fair Lady songwriting team did Ray Bradbury turn down when they asked to make The Martian Chronicles a musical?

Lerner and Loewe were refused in the 1960s, and the only musical version Bradbury ever authorized was a full-length opera decades later.

Which Fourth Expedition crewman starts killing his shipmates to keep humans from ruining Mars in The Martian Chronicles?

Jeff Spender is repelled by his crewmates' behavior in a dead Martian city, and decades later a former shipmate still visits his tomb every year.

Which US state is the setting for the lone automated house in Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains?

California's fictional city of Allendale lies desolate around it, yet the house keeps cooking breakfast and announcing the date to nobody.

What do William Thomas and his wife pretend their family's rocket flight to Mars is in The Martian Chronicles?

A fishing trip is the cover story, but the parents are fleeing war on Earth, and the father soon blows up the rocket so nobody can trace them.

In The Martian Chronicles chapter The Musicians, what do settlers' boys turn into instruments in dead Martian towns?

Bones of dead Martians become the boys' toys, in ruins their parents have forbidden, before the Firemen come to burn what is left.

In The Martian Chronicles, what form do the Martians called the Old Ones take when missionary priests seek them out?

Blue globes of light, in the chapter The Fire Balloons, tell the priests they are already free of sin and send them back to preach to the settlers.

What do the Martians hand Sam Parkhill shortly before Earth erupts in war in The Martian Chronicles?

Grants to half the planet arrive as scrolls, and that same night Parkhill and his wife see an explosion on Earth in the sky.

What term describes a novel like The Martian Chronicles that is stitched together from previously published stories?

Fix-up refers to the changes an author makes so that separate stories read as one book; Bradbury also wrote short bridging pieces to link his.

Under which title did The Third Expedition, a chapter of The Martian Chronicles, first appear in Planet Stories?

Mars Is Heaven! was chosen by fellow science fiction writers in 1970 as one of the best short stories published before the Nebula Awards existed.

Which group leaves for Mars in Way in the Middle of the Air, the Martian Chronicles chapter cut in 1997?

Black Southerners build a rocket of their own in search of a better life, in a story that five major magazines had rejected.

Which playwright's poem To Celia supplies the words of the old English song Ylla sings in The Martian Chronicles?

Ben Jonson published the poem in 1616, and the Martian Ylla sings it in English, a language she does not understand, as the first rocket nears.

Which NASA probe returned the first close-up pictures of Mars, a world nothing like the one in The Martian Chronicles?

Mariner 4 launched in 1964, yet the book kept selling anyway: more than three million copies by September 1979.

What Martian vehicle, bought at an auction, does Sam Parkhill use to flee his visitors in The Martian Chronicles?

A sand ship carries Parkhill and his wife away, and he shoots up ruined crystal cities as they pass, until three more ships catch him.