Library binding
$26.64

Mass Market Paperback
$12.99

$12.99

FREE delivery Sunday, January 26 on your first order

Or fastest delivery Tomorrow, January 21. Order within 9 hrs 45 mins

In Stock

$$12.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Payment

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.ca

Sold by

Amazon.ca

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Add gift options

Add to Wish List

Added to

Unable to add item to Wish List. Please try again.

$12.99

FREE pickup Sunday, January 26 on your first order

Or fastest pickup Saturday, January 25. Order within 14 hrs 50 mins

BP LA POINTE

2.8 km | POINTE-AUX-TREMBLES H1A 1R0

How pickup works

In Stock

$$12.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

The enhancements that you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller that you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Payment

Secure transaction

Sold by

Amazon.ca

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (29) from $12.99 FREE Delivery on your first order.

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Colour:

To view this video, download Flash Player

Follow the author

Ray Bradbury

Follow

The Martian Chronicles Mass Market Paperback – April 17 2012

by Ray Bradbury (Author)

4.4 7,002 ratings

4.2 on Goodreads

273,170 ratings

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$12.99","priceAmount":12.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"12","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"uwOgbWEozahit5wNFfjuOqOOCXRYVEv2dJEG1E2YOUh6foK2w4Nd8SlFJGdlCpbL6Ix3pr6L3m9YMI1u7NdZTP9%2FtYS5YvKwEkn7eOgGV3uNlyuJTqpQZWkhhoo1fEv15u1ebbFAY9A%3D","locale":"en-CA","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}],"desktop_buybox_group_2":[{"displayPrice":"$12.99","priceAmount":12.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"12","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"uwOgbWEozahit5wNFfjuOqOOCXRYVEv2dJEG1E2YOUh6foK2w4Nd8SlFJGdlCpbL6Ix3pr6L3m9YMI1u7NdZTP9%2FtYS5YvKwEkn7eOgGV3uNlyuJTqpQZWkhhoo1fEv15u1ebbFAY9A%3D","locale":"en-CA","buyingOptionType":"PICKUP","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

The Martian Chronicles, a seminal work in Ray Bradbury's career, whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage, is available from Simon & Schuster for the first time.

In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America’s preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor— of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a vanished, devastated civilization. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. In this classic work of fiction, Bradbury exposes our ambitions, weaknesses, and ignorance in a strange and breathtaking world where man does not belong.

From the Publisher

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012)

Bradbury was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

Product description

Review

“A modern classic” —The Washington Post

“A giant…One of the country’s most popular and prolific authors.” —Los Angeles Times

“One of the greats of twentieth century American fantasy.” —Newsday

“There is no simpler, yet deeper, stylist than Bradbury. Out of the plainest of words he creates images and moods that readers seem to carry with them forever.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“A wonderful storyteller….Nearly everything he has written is sheer poetry.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From the Back Cover

Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor - of crystal pillars and fossil seas - where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn - first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars...and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1451678193
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (April 17 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781451678192
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1451678192
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 kg
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.48 x 2.03 x 17.15 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #36,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #99 in Science Fiction Anthologies
- #277 in Science Fiction TV, Movie & Video Game Adaptations
- #568 in Alien Invasion Science Fiction

Customer Reviews:
4.4 7,002 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Ray Bradbury

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91, inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, "Live forever!" Bradbury later said, "I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."

Customer reviews

7,002 global ratings

How are ratings calculated?

Review this product

Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the stories imaginative and well-written. They describe the narration as beautiful and emotional, with a fantastic world. The writing style is described as prescient and well-crafted.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

Story quality Writing style

16 customers mention "Story quality"16 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the imaginative stories in this book. They find the narration of the future accurate and emotional at times. The book takes you to a fantastic world where the only limit is your imagination. Readers describe it as an amazing classic that offers an interesting snapshot of 1940s ideas and writing style.

"...standalone, sometimes interconnected stories form a gorgeous mosaic of humanity’s potential — and potential doom...." Read more

"...Enjoy the story, letting your imagination lead you where it may." Read more

"A timeless classic." Read more

"...It's an interesting snapshot of certain ideas of the 1940s, and certainly the writing and imaginative ideas went a long way to getting it the..." Read more

4 customers mention "Writing style"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing style imaginative and well-written. They appreciate the prescient ideas from the 1940s.

"...snapshot of certain ideas of the 1940s, and certainly the writing and imaginative ideas went a long way to getting it the attention it needed in its..." Read more

"...Imaginative for its time and written with a simplicity that I found pleasantly quaint." Read more

"...Captivated then and captivated now. So prescient, imaginative, and well written." Read more

"...it to all my friends and IM sure they will buy it Bradbury was a very good writer" Read more

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort by reviews type

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Matthew Malowany
A true timeless classic!
Reviewed in Canada on January 2, 2025
Verified Purchase
Despite having been written decades ago, “Martian Chronicles” remains a sharp critique of modern society and our inevitable destiny if we don’t wise up.

Scenes of ugliness and scenes of beauty told in standalone, sometimes interconnected stories form a gorgeous mosaic of humanity’s potential — and potential doom.

Free of techno-speak, Bradbury focuses on human characters and human tales. One of my favourite books. I just finished reading it to my son, and it gave us lots to talk about!

“The Martian Chronicles” should be part of anyone’s literary canon.

Read more

Helpful

Report
Alexandra
Amazing classic
Reviewed in Canada on January 9, 2024
Verified Purchase
The book is great. I ordered the chipest option and usually they have the tiniest font in those. But this one is actually pretty good. The cover was a touch rough in the edges.
I love Martian chronicles since my youth years when I read it first. Bought it to have in my family's library.

Read more

Alexandra

Amazing classic
Reviewed in Canada on January 9, 2024
The book is great. I ordered the chipest option and usually they have the tiniest font in those. But this one is actually pretty good. The cover was a touch rough in the edges.
I love Martian chronicles since my youth years when I read it first. Bought it to have in my family's library.

Images in this review

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Bob
Bradbury. A Seer?
Reviewed in Canada on June 29, 2022
Verified Purchase
Perhaps not the first writer of sci-fi but certainly one of the best. Bradbury takes you to another world and what you “see” is perhaps not as much fantasy-based as it first appears. Certainly the scientific advances we are now witness to alter his1950s vision, but can we truly be sure the future he saw was not influenced with a perhaps an unknown element of foresight?
Enjoy the story, letting your imagination lead you where it may.

Read more

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
c f
As described.
Reviewed in Canada on October 19, 2023
Verified Purchase
A timeless classic.

Read more

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Report
GLENN A. OBRIEN
Terrific sci Fi!
Reviewed in Canada on July 6, 2023
Verified Purchase
Bradbury is the master!

Read more

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Katsu
Hasn't aged well
Reviewed in Canada on November 30, 2017
Verified Purchase
One of the first things that jumps out to a modern fan of science fiction is that there is pretty much a complete disregard for science. Mars is treated like a newly discovered continent - no more different or difficult to get to than Australia from Europe. The different gravity is of no concern to the colonists and everyone can breathe just fine. It's tempting to write that off suggesting that not so much was known of Mars in the 1940s, but that simply isn't the case. In fact, at one point in the story the thinner atmosphere is mentioned and someone endeavours to remedy the situation by planting trees, which only compounds the issue with ignoring science because of course trees don't create new air to add to the atmosphere.

In discussions with other fans of the genre I have been encouraged to set the above aside because Bradbury wrote about people. Unfortunately, if we set all the trappings aside and look at what he is saying about people, it gets even worse. The only people Bradbury seems interested in are white men. There are a couple women in the story, and how Bradbury treats his female characters would be interesting if it weren't so shallow. It's fascinating that he clearly recognizes an unhappiness in women's domestic lives, yet he has no interest in imagining women having any more opportunities or ambitions in the far-flung future than to marry, have children, and be bored with the whole thing. There is one really interesting stories about all the black people (or at least the men) in a particular town in the American south deciding to pack up and move to Mars, but in the end the story was about how all the white folks are caught with their pants down when all the cheap labour decides to pack up and leave. Worse, they are never mentioned or heard from again. A substantial number of black people took off to colonize Mars and there was no mention of what they did or how they got along with the white frontiersmen who made up most of the colony. I suspect that their rocket suffered an unfortunate failure on the way to Mars.

It's an interesting snapshot of certain ideas of the 1940s, and certainly the writing and imaginative ideas went a long way to getting it the attention it needed in its own time to ultimately earn it's place in science fiction history. But any modern-day reader will have to admit one real truth: it hasn't aged well.

Read more

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Amazon Customer
Great
Reviewed in Canada on June 3, 2024
Verified Purchase
Classic sci fi a must read

Read more

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Pablo Cafiso
Great book!
Reviewed in Canada on June 10, 2021
Verified Purchase
As with all his other work, Ray Bradbury will take you to a fantastic world where the only limit is your imagination. Very enjoyable reading.

Read more

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Maud
Science fiction.
Reviewed in France on January 12, 2024
Verified Purchase
A strange book. A book every astronaut should read. It' s confusing. Are we on Mars or on Earth ? Are the characters Martians or Earthians ?

Read more
Report
Phil Knight
A classic
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2023
Verified Purchase
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

I could not help myself. I so much enjoyed Fahrenheit 451, I just had to read this one again. I first borrowed this novel from the school library back in the late 1970s. I loved it so much, it was the first novel I ever bought a copy of and I read it again. When the BBC made a mini series based on the book in 1980, I re-read it. They also brought out a new edition of the book with colour photos from the series in it. I bought that and read it.

One the surface this is just the story of the American colonies on Mars. But it deals with real issues, colonialism, racism, xenophobia, the arms race and nuclear war. It is written in a wonderfully poetic prose style by Bradbury. Here is a taste from the chapter 'The Locusts', which captures beautiful the nature of colonialism and how it writes over the past;

"The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green grass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie stars, and fit green shades to pull against the night. And when the carpenters had hurried on, the women came in with flower-pots and chintz and pans and set up a kitchen clamour to cover the silence that Mars made waiting outside the door and the shaded window."

The most important part of this process is what Bradbury calls 'The Naming of Names' when the newcomers replace the names of ancient places with one's of their invention;

"They came to the strange blue lands and put their names upon the lands. Here was Hinkston Creek and Lustig Corners and Black River and Driscoll Forest and Peregrine Mountain and Wilder Town, all the names of people and the things that the people did. Here was the place where Martians killed the first Earth Men, and it was Red Town and had to do with blood. And here where the second expedition was destroyed, and it was named Second Try, and each of the other places where the rocket men had set down their fiery cauldrons to burn the land, the names were left like cinders, and of course there was a Spender Hill and Nathaniel York Town …

The old Martian names were names of water and air and hills. They were the names of snows that emptied south in stone canals to fill the empty seas. And the names of sealed and buried sorcerers and towers and obelisks. And the rockets struck at the names like hammers, breaking away the marble into shale, shattering the crockery milestones that named the old towns, in the rubble of which great pylons were plunged with new names: IRON TOWN, STEEL TOWN, ALUMINIUM CITY, ELECTRIC VILLAGE, CORN TOWN, GRAIN VILLA, DETROIT II, all the mechanical names and the metal names from Earth. ",
"
I have read dozens of Bradbury's books, but this is the one I keep returning too. The book is unusual in that it is not one big story, but a series of linked short stories which can be read separately. They were first published in magazines. Many years later Bradbury wrote a few more Martian stories. I his hoped they would be included in this volume, but unfortunately they were. Still really enjoyed revisiting this classic.

Read more
Report
Javier
This book is just insanely good, written after World War II and still relevant today.
Reviewed in Germany on September 16, 2022
Verified Purchase
Ray Bradbury is my favourite author so I'm a little biased, but I can't stress enough how beautiful he writes. I strongly recommend you pick up either this book or The Illustrated Man and you'll read it in just a few sittings. It's so good it's hard to stop.

Read more
Report
Nya
Libro arrivato in ottime condizioni
Reviewed in Italy on January 4, 2021
Verified Purchase
copertina flessibile

Read more
Report
Translate review to English
Luis
Excelente libro
Reviewed in Mexico on July 17, 2019
Verified Purchase
El libro es muy bueno al igual que la relación precio-calidad.
A veces puede llegar a ser un poco complicada su lectura en el idioma original, pero no representa un gran problema. Las historias que relata reflejan algunas de las preocupaciones que el autor tenía sobre la época en la que vivió.

Read more
Report
Translate review to English

See more reviews

Image Unavailable

Follow the author