I’m pretty sure I read this book when I was in my tweens, after I was introduced to the miniseries based on the book. It was at the point when my parents were still bringing home movies for me to watch, before I started exploring my own love of film. I’m sure they simply asked the clerk for a space movie, and they came home with the first installment of the miniseries.

We’ll talk about this later when I revisit the miniseries.

I just finished the book, and I recognize parts of it from my earlier read, but I definitely didn’t understand the themes and ideas at work. I was all about the exploration of space, and meeting alien cultures.

Sure, there’s a little of that in the book, but it predominantly deals with colonialism, the destruction of indigenous cultures, our inherent self-destructive behavior, and the way we ruin our ecology, and then begin to do the same on Mars.

Released in 1950, the story doesn’t have much grounding in actual science, but it does serve very well as analogy. In fact, our introduction to the Martians is a little disappointing. They aren’t so very different from us, and in fact, are a bit of a let down.

The narrative guides us over a twenty year period; expeditions from Earth arrive, one after the other, and it doesn’t go well for them, or the Martians. The Martians use our own nostalgia against us, but much like Wells’ War of the Worlds, we infect them.

One wonders why the reverse didn’t happen.

Man comes to Mars, and slowly tries to remake it in Earth’s image, ignorant of the planet and culture’s history. It’s just another place to muck up as far as most people are concerned. They aren’t invested in preserving their world, just their own greed.

Mars dies. And war is breaking upon Earth.

Bradbury doesn’t offer solutions, he serves up commentary, all ripe for discussion, even now, over seventy-five years later.

Now, having read it, for the second time, and understanding what was going on in the themes, I really want to revisit the miniseries because you have to wonder who thought they could adapt it, and be faithful to the source material.

I like the way Bradbury crafts his tale, Something Wicked This Way Comes remains my favorite of his tales, but this one was a fascinating read. And I like that I got so much more out of it now than I did as a child.