Dimension X: The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury, adapted by Ernest Kinoy)

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Martian Chronicles

This adapts the following into a series of short vignettes:

"Rocket Summer": Climate change, rocket-style

"Ylla": A Martian woman dreams of the touch of an Earth man. Her husband turns out not to be into netorare.

"—And the Moon Be Still as Bright": The Earthmen learn that a previous expedition brought chicken pox to Mars, something the Martians have no resistance to. Reactions to this vary.

"The Shore": Humans settle on Mars en masse.

"The Off-Season": An entrepreneur's grand plan for his hot dog stand on Mars are sabotaged by global thermonuclear war on Earth.

"The Watchers": Most of the humans head back to the dying Earth for some reason.

"There Will Come Soft Rains": used as a frame for

"The Million-Year Picnic": In this version the family that gets incinerated in the original version of "There Will Come Soft Rains" instead flees to Mars, where the father seems hopeful that they will form the basis of the new population there.

Interesting creative decision to cram so many stories into just 30 minutes.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I remember reading the collection and concluding that the stories weren't necessarily 100% in the same continuity.

[daev.livejournal.com]

Some of the early ones couldn't possibly be, like the one where an astronaut comes to Mars and is sent to a Martian shrink, who refuses to believe either the Earthman or his own eyes. (Weren't there a lot of "psychologists are impervious to reason and evidence!" stories back in the day?)

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Well, he had a rather strong reason for not believing (I wonder how they could distinguish between severe hypochondriacs and people with actual symptoms?)