During the time of its release, The Martian Chronicles was regarded as "science fiction." Today, it's still categorized as such, and this book really does belong there; but if there was a more major genre called "1950's science fiction," then this book would be the leading example.

This book consists of many different short stories, all connected by a time line of events and changes. My interest was perked by the first few chapters, as I kept wondering where the story was heading. After reading the next several chapters, I worried the plots were just going to continue being copies of the previous chapters. Fortunately, the roughness of the mediocre plots seemed to even out as the book progressed. In fact, many things seemed to changed as I continued through the book.

The dialogue of the first several chapters, (not including the first), was at best, very cheesy. The characters were flat, and the language presented was overused. I can tolerate language to a point, but there's another point to where language becomes pointless and repetitive. I almost put this book down because of that fact alone. Still, I chugged through the best I could.

I mentioned earlier that you can tell the time in which this book was written based off several of the themes presented throughout the short stories. One such chapter focused on dark-skinned people, presenting them as still being unrightfully oppressed by arrogant light-skinned people. What was awkward about this was the year in which this story was supposedly taking place. As I don't still have the book, I cannot cite the exact chapter or year, but I know it was near or past our modern-day year, 2009.

Another unusual difference in this piece of literature was the lack of computers - in the entire book. Obviously when this book was written, computers were nearly non-existent. As such, I have not made that a point in my star-rating. Still, this lack of technology presence gave the entire book a very fantasy sci-fi "steam-punk"-type feel. That was quite a different feel. I couldn't really decide whether I liked that or not, hence the mutuality here.

Overall, I give this book two-stars; however, I am still interested in reading something else of Ray Bradbury's works, despite how little I enjoyed this book. Who knows? Fahrenheit 451 may end up on my favorites list!