Foolish Oats

For the first fifty-odd pages, I was underwhelmed by Bradbury's words. The stories were jagged and inconsistent to one another, the flow of the pages choppy and rough. As the chronicles progressed, however, I began to see Bradbury's talent under new light. Stories built slowly upon one another, and became meditative and reflective. His ability to critique the social and political unrest of the 1950s as a detached and futuristic problem became clear. Setting the stories to begin in the late 1990s, and spanning into the 2020s, it was as if watching the ominous future of Earth for myself. The story begins with a focus on Mars, and the Martian race that inhabits the red, exotic planet. This focus shifts, as it was bound to do, to the pigheaded colonization of Mars by its earthly visitors. Though this was a somewhat predictable shift, it was unfortunate nonetheless. Within a few stories the entire Martian race became a thing of the past, an incomprehensible myth for the human settlers. How disheartening to see our race continuously portrayed as frightened, misguided bigots.