He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He won numerous awards for his works including a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1977, the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. His books include The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Bradbury Speaks. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 600 stories, poems, essays, plays, films, television plays, radio, music, and comic books. At the age of fifteen, he started submitting short stories to national magazines. But if they can, then they'll experience science-fiction at its best: not CGI explosions & battles & endless action, but the interplay of ideas & emotions, inviting the viewers to look at their own lives, and to think about what they really want from the gift of existing, however briefly, in this miracle of the Universe.Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois on August 22, 1920. Again, not everyone will be able or willing to make the leap & overlook the flawed surface of this mini-series.

And in the final two stories - 'Night Meeting' & 'The Million-Year Picnic' - this is depicted in scenes that have stayed with me for close to 4 decades now, for their sheer beauty & wisdom. This is shown to especially good effect in the slow growth of Colonel Wilder (a quietly effective Rock Hudson), whose initial misgivings about what Earth will do to Mars leads to his own eventual transformation.

And yet, both in the idealized Martians, and in the few humans who respond to the wonder of the Martian landscape & philosophy, we're shown what we could be, if only we could transcend our own pettiness, greed, and driving fears. It is, in fact, a sometimes scathing, sometimes sorrowful exploration of the human condition, and particularly human weakness.

This is as much fable, parable, allegory as it is anything else: a study of the human propensity to opt for the crass over the sublime, the material over the spiritual, ugliness & power over beauty & harmony. Of course, it was never hard science to begin with, so complaining about the unscientific depiction of Mars & the behavior of the Earthmen is utterly beside the point.

And that would be a shame, because the heart & soul of Bradbury's book is alive & well here, and still both thought-provoking & emotionally satisfying. Anyone coming to this 1980 adaptation of 'The Martian Chronicles' for the first time will undoubtedly be put off immediately by the special effects, which were so-so even then, and the slower, more cerebral pace of the narrative.

Ray bradbury theater the martian