The Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury definitely had a disapproving view of the human race. He seems to believe that there are very few humans who have any thought for the preservation of life. This book has humans being the death of Martians, along with our own race. Humans don't even truly get to make contact with the Martians before we destroy them. One thing I approved of in this book was that it wasn't through war that we killed them; it was through sheer ignorance and a presumptuous attitude that the Martians even want to have anything to do with us.

I actually really liked this book because of its depth. Humans tend to assume that any other race that may be out there will want to meet us. But what if they would rather be left alone? What if we may be their destruction without even knowing it? This view of humans going to Mars and killing the whole civilization without trying and without a care just for our entertainment or pleasure is extremely humbling. A whole world has died, and the humans just move right in and take over to make it their own. They've destroyed their own world so they just move to a new one without changing anything and begin destroying it, too. In the end, they kill themselves off and miss the point behind it all. One race, our race, through selfish desires is shown as capable of killing two worlds without compunction and without even realizing it. In the span of 27 years, our race is capable of destroying everything they've worked centuries to gain. It really makes you stop and think of where our world is headed.

One of my favorite stories in this book was "Usher II". "Usher II" is about how, in essence, imagination is banned. All the books that offend some group or other have been destroyed. These are works of literature from authors like Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, books that have made an impact on our society, books that make the reader think of the implications, books that don't cast the world in a perfect light. These works, the works that truly matter, the works that don't agree with one doctrine or another, these works about thinking and dreaming, that weren't strict fact, were banned and burned. "Usher II" has a group of people whose job is to find and destroy anything that falls into this category in a house on Mars, appropriately named the House of Usher,  enjoying a night surrounded by the very things they are trying to destroy. Hypocrites, every one, who don't even know what it is they are getting rid of. The story ends with the man hosting the party killing the guests in various means that come from the books they are getting rid of. None of them know what is coming because none of them have bothered to read the books and see if they really should be forgotten. They just chose to listen to what the government told them without ever finding out the truth for themselves. They all died for it.