Let's Go to Mars!

If he hasn't already, I suggest that Elon Musk read The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.  

Today under the genre of "speculative fiction," The Martian Chronicles is a series of short stories about Earth’s quest to inhabit Mars. It reads as a novel with chapters covering a series of expeditions to the planet during the turn of the 20th-21st century. The book came my way recently through a friend who had purchased a copy for his grandson who hasn't got around to reading it. So he lent it to me. 

First published in 1950, the Chronicles are eerie and provocative, fun and imaginative. I read them in college in an English Department Science Fiction class. Writer Ray Bradbury himself showed up in our class as a guest. That was a benefit of attending Cal State Fullerton in 1968. We were near the L.A. movie and television media hub. Several of my classes, as part of the new Communications major, featured guest professionals from the industry who opened themselves to discussion.

There were maybe 30 people in the small classroom and Bradbury enthusiastically entertained us with stories about creative and commercial writing. He had penned the screenplay for the movie, Moby Dick (1956), based on the classic novel by Herman Melville, starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. 

He talked about his novel Fahrenheit 451, titled after the temperature at which a book will burn. He had checked his source on that. Published in 1953, "451” tells of a nation that rids itself of literature or anything else that might criticize or place the current government in a bad light. Sound familiar?

Coincidentally, my daughter Vanessa, a school administrator and teacher, is currently reading 451 with a student she is tutoring. “She’s very bright, only 12-years-old.”

I am impressed by the student’s age as well as the idea that  Bradbury’s stories continue to be read, especially today when we need to hear them, as a reminder of man’s dreams and mistakes.

Bradbury wrote his stories shortly following the atomic bombs that demolished Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Fear of nuclear war was real. The horrors of fascism were also fresh in the Western World.

A master of the English language, his prose soars. I found myself looking up word after word. Full of incessant screen time today, we are not embracing the power and depth of words as we once did. AI may further take us down the road of robotic thinking at a time when we need more imaginative trails to explore.

Which is the true power of Bradbury's work. In the SciFi world he was considered soft on science, but strong on poetic sensibilities and prescient thinking. 

Perhaps Musk did read The Martian Chronicles, and that's why he's so eager to exit Earth. But did he read enough to discover what happened on Mars?