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''The Martian Chronicles'' is a series of short stories by Creator/RayBradbury collected into a single book, describing episodes from a future history in which Earth sends several manned expeditions to, and eventually colonizes, the planet Mars. (The stories, written in the 1940s and 1950s, depict the planet as habitable and -- initially -- inhabited.)
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''The Martian Chronicles'' is a series of short stories by Creator/RayBradbury collected into a single book, book (published in the UK as ''The Silver Locusts''), describing episodes from a future history in which Earth sends several manned expeditions to, and eventually colonizes, the planet Mars. (The stories, written in the 1940s and 1950s, depict the planet as habitable and -- initially -- inhabited.)
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* AudioAdaptation: ''Literature/WilliamShatnerAndLeonardNimoyReadFourScienceFictionClassics'': Creator/WilliamShatner reads [[AdaptationDistillation abridged]] versions of "Literature/ThePsychohistorians" and "Literature/MimsyWereTheBorogoves", and Creator/LeonardNimoy reads [[AdaptationDistillation abridged]] versions of ''Literature/TheMartianChronicles'' and "Literature/TheGreenHillsOfEarth".
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* KarmicDeath: The [[MoralGuardians officials and bureaucrats]] in "Usher II". If only they had read EdgarAllanPoe,[[note]]Or visited this Tropes site[[/note]] they would have seen all those death traps coming a mile away.
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* KarmicDeath: The [[MoralGuardians officials and bureaucrats]] in "Usher II". If only they had read EdgarAllanPoe,[[note]]Or Creator/EdgarAllanPoe,[[note]]Or visited this Tropes site[[/note]] they would have seen all those death traps coming a mile away.
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* ShoutOut: "Usher II," where a fan of Poe creates an elaborate death-trap based on Poe's best-known gothic horror tales to kill and replace the MoralGuardians trying to destroy literary works. The final line of the story is a direct quote of the final line to "Fall Of the House of Usher."
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* KarmicDeath: The [[MoralGuardians officials and bureaucrats]] in "Usher II". If only they had read EdgarAllanPoe,[[note]]Or visited this Tropes site[[/note]] they would have seen all those death traps coming a mile away.
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* PrefersTheIllusion: [[spoiler: Mr. Hathaway and his too-idyllic family. ]]
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* ArousedByTheirVoice: Walter Gripp imagines Genevieve Selsor as beautiful based on their phone conversations. When they eventually meet, he's dismayed to see that she's actually fat and ugly.
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* AdamAndEvePlot: Subverted in "The Silent Towns". A man wakes up to find that he's been left on Mars by accident after most of the Martian colony has gone back to Earth. He begins dialing phone numbers in a desperate attempt for human contact and manages get in touch with a woman, who he begins to fall in love with (based on their brief phone conversation). When they finally meet, he finds her ''[[FatSlob disgustingly fat]]'', obnoxious, loud, and shallow.
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* AdamAndEvePlot: Subverted in "The Silent Towns". A man wakes up to find that he's been left on Mars by accident after most of the Martian colony has gone back to Earth. He begins dialing phone numbers in a desperate attempt for human contact and manages get in touch with a woman, who he begins to fall in love with (based on their brief phone conversation). When they finally meet, he finds her ''[[FatSlob disgustingly fat]]'', obnoxious, loud, and shallow. When she proposes marriage, he runs away to another city, where he lives happily alone. And if the phone rings, he doesn't pick it up.
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* AssholeVictim: In "Usher II," we have the members of [[CulturePolice Moral Climates]], a pro-censorship organization that has seemingly successfully lobbied for virtually all works of fiction to be banned on Earth. An ex-librarian and an ex-actor, both ruined by their actions, proceed to use robots to kill them in grisly ways referencing works they banned, culminating in the leader being personally dispatched by the librarian via [[BuriedAlive live burial]] in an homage to ''Literature/TheCaskOfAmontillado''. Their fates are horrifying, but one can't help but cheer at the triumph of free speech.
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* IWantMyJetpack: See above, about the first manned expedition to Mars in the distant future year of 1999.
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* IWantMyJetpack: See above, about the first manned expedition to Mars in the distant future year of 1999. Later printings revise this to 2030.
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* KickedUpstairs: One character starts to have qualms about colonizing Mars and leaving no traces of the native culture. In a later story in the collection, it's revealed he was stationed on a farther away planet in the solar system and thus literally "kicked upstairs".
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* KickedUpstairs: One character The captain of the Fourth Expedition starts to have qualms about colonizing Mars and leaving no traces of the native culture. In a later story in the collection, it's revealed he was stationed subsequently shipped off on a farther away planet in mission to the solar system Outer Planets and thus literally "kicked upstairs".
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* RaceLift: Jeff Spender becomes black in the miniseries to emphasize his empathy with the Native Martians. His race is never specified in the book, but his statement that his parents hated Mexicans for their dark skin implies he's white.
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* SuperiorSpecies: Jeff Spender believes Martians to be this to humans after studying their ruins, hypothesizing among other things that they lived in harmony with the environment and had no conflict between science and religion. The stories that actually feature the Martians, however, show them to be just as flawed as humans.
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A miniseries adaptation was made in 1979, which Bradbury called "just boring," although it was nominated for a HugoAward. A film adaptation is rumored to be in the works as of 2013.
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A miniseries adaptation was made in 1979, which Bradbury called "just boring," although it was nominated for a HugoAward.UsefulNotes/HugoAward. A film adaptation is rumored to be in the works as of 2013.
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* BittersweetEnding: Most of the humankind perish in nuclear war, but few surviving humans settle at Mars to start civilization anew.
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* MarsNeedsWomen: A very literal inversion. The first human to land on Mars is shot dead because a native Martian foresaw that his wife was going to run away with the man.
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* MarsNeedsWomen: A very literal inversion. The first human to land on Mars is shot dead because by a native Martian foresaw whose wife dreamed that his wife was going to she would run away with the man.
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from trope pages
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* BookBurning: "Usher II" alludes to events on Earth where the government sponsored a "Great Burning" of books and made them illegal, which leads to the formation of an underground society of book owners.
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* DeadToBeginWith: Played with in "Mars is Heaven!"
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* HumanityIsInfectious: The Martians (who have psychic abilities of some kind) gradually become infected with human memories to the extent that their entire culture goes insane and is pushed to the point of extinction.
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when it's listed under the subtrope, making an entry for the supertrope that just says "see the subtrope" is redundant
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* AbnormalAmmo: See BeeBeeGun below.
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* PendulumOfDeath: In "Usher II", all of the murders are based on Poe stories. One of the victims is killed by the descending pendulum from "The Pit and the Pendulum".
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* MoralGuardians: "Usher II" alludes to events on Earth where the government sponsored a "Great Burning" of books and made them illegal, which leads to the formation of an underground society of book owners. Those found to possess books had them seized and burned by fire crews. Mars apparently emerged as a refuge from the fascist censorship laws of Earth, until the arrival of a government organization referred to only as "Moral Climates" and their enforcement divisions, the "Dismantlers" and "Burning Crew".
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* MoralGuardians: "Usher II" alludes to events on Earth where the government sponsored a [[BookBurning "Great Burning" of books books]] and made them illegal, which leads to the formation of an underground society of book owners. Those found to possess books had them seized and burned by fire crews. Mars apparently emerged as a refuge from the fascist censorship laws of Earth, until the arrival of a government organization referred to only as "Moral Climates" and their enforcement divisions, the "Dismantlers" and "Burning Crew".
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* AbnormalAmmo: see Bee Bee Gun
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* AbnormalAmmo: see Bee Bee GunSee BeeBeeGun below.
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* WeaksauceWeakness: The Martians are almost completely wiped out by chicken pox. One character muses how wrong this is: "in the name of all that's holy, it has to be chicken pox, a child's disease, a disease that doesn't even kill ''children'' on Earth! It's not right and it's not fair. It's like saying the Greeks died of mumps, or the proud Roman died on their beautiful hills of athlete's foot!"
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* WeaksauceWeakness: The Martians are almost completely wiped out by chicken pox. One character muses how wrong this is: "in the name of all that's holy, it has to be chicken pox, a child's disease, a disease that doesn't even kill ''children'' on Earth! It's not right and it's not fair. It's like saying the Greeks died of mumps, or the proud Roman Romans died on their beautiful hills of athlete's foot!"
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* TedBaxter: Sam Parkhill serves as a violent example of this during the standoff with Jeff Spender. Later in the book, he sets up a hot dog stand, expecting a huge rush of business from an arriving wave of settlers and workers. [[spoiler:Gets his comeuppance when he panics, kills a Martian who was about to give him property titles for half the planet, and then watches the nuclear war begin on Earth.]]
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* TedBaxter: SmallNameBigEgo: Sam Parkhill serves as a violent example of this during the standoff with Jeff Spender. Later in the book, he sets up a hot dog stand, expecting a huge rush of business from an arriving wave of settlers and workers. [[spoiler:Gets his comeuppance when he panics, kills a Martian who was about to give him property titles for half the planet, and then watches the nuclear war begin on Earth.]]
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* BuriedAlive: William Stendhal reenacts [[EdgarAllanPoe "The Cask of Amontillado"]].
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* BuriedAlive: William Stendhal reenacts [[EdgarAllanPoe "The Cask of Amontillado"]]."Literature/TheCaskOfAmontillado".
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* BoldlyComing: In the second short, "Ylla," the eponymous Martian woman has psychic dreams that an astronaut from Earth will arrive, kiss her, and offer to take her home. This drives her husband jealous, and he shoots the astronaut when he lands.
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* NastyParty: In "Usher II", Stendhal and Pikes construct Stendahl's image of the perfect haunted mansion, complete with mechanical creatures, creepy soundtracks, and thousands of tons of poison to kill every living thing in the surrounding area. They then invite the [[MoralGuadians Moral Climate Monitors]] to visit and kill each of them in ways that allude to different horror masterpieces.
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* MoralGuardians: "Usher II" alludes to events on Earth where the government sponsored a "Great Burning" of books and made them illegal, which leads to the formation of an underground society of book owners. Those found to possess books had them seized and burned by fire crews. Mars apparently emerged as a refuge from the fascist censorship laws of Earth, until the arrival of a government organization referred to only as "Moral Climates" and their enforcement divisions, the "Dismantlers" and "Burning Crew".
* NastyParty: In "Usher II", Stendhal and Pikes construct Stendahl's image of the perfect haunted mansion, complete with mechanical creatures, creepy soundtracks, and thousands of tons of poison to kill every living thing in the surrounding area. They then invite the[[MoralGuadians [[MoralGuardians Moral Climate Monitors]] to visit and kill each of them in ways that allude to different horror masterpieces.
* NastyParty: In "Usher II", Stendhal and Pikes construct Stendahl's image of the perfect haunted mansion, complete with mechanical creatures, creepy soundtracks, and thousands of tons of poison to kill every living thing in the surrounding area. They then invite the
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* NastyParty: In "Usher II", Stendhal and Pikes construct Stendahl's image of the perfect haunted mansion, complete with mechanical creatures, creepy soundtracks, and thousands of tons of poison to kill every living thing in the surrounding area. They then invite the [[MoralGuadians Moral Climate Monitors]] to visit and kill each of them in ways that allude to different horror masterpieces.
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* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Genevieve Selsor, in the TV miniseries. In the book she's a FatSlob, airheaded, and materialistic. In the series, she's Bernadette Peters (but still airheaded and materialistic).
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!!This series provides examples of:
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* {{Skeletal Musician}}: Inverted in "The Musicians" where skeletons are used to make music.
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* UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}
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* TheRedPlanet
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"ThereWillComeSoftRains", though set on Earth, is part of the same future history, and is included in some versions of the book.
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A miniseries adaptation was made in 1979, which Bradbury called "just boring."
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A miniseries adaptation was made in 1979, which Bradbury called "just boring."boring," although it was nominated for a HugoAward. A film adaptation is rumored to be in the works as of 2013.
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moved to namespace
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''The Martian Chronicles'' is a series of short stories by Creator/RayBradbury collected into a single book, describing episodes from a future history in which Earth sends several manned expeditions to, and eventually colonizes, the planet Mars. (The stories, written in the 1940s and 1950s, depict the planet as habitable and -- initially -- inhabited.)
As originally written, the sequence begins with the first manned expedition to Mars in the distant future year of 1999. The stories were revised in 1997 to push it back to 2030.
"ThereWillComeSoftRains", though set on Earth, is part of the same future history, and is included in some versions of the book.
A miniseries adaptation was made in 1979, which Bradbury called "just boring."
----
!!This series provides examples of:
* AbnormalAmmo: see Bee Bee Gun
* AdamAndEvePlot: Subverted in "The Silent Towns". A man wakes up to find that he's been left on Mars by accident after most of the Martian colony has gone back to Earth. He begins dialing phone numbers in a desperate attempt for human contact and manages get in touch with a woman, who he begins to fall in love with (based on their brief phone conversation). When they finally meet, he finds her ''[[FatSlob disgustingly fat]]'', obnoxious, loud, and shallow.
* TheAloner: See AdamAndEvePlot. Initially, he's overjoyed - all the homes are abandoned, and he's able to eat and drink and smoke what he wants, and even carts around town with a wagon filled with money, for the hell of it. When he realizes he's alone, he breaks down and cries, and focuses solely on his attempt to reach a 'seductive voice' that calls telephones regularly. When he finally finds the owner of the voice - one FatBastard - he drives the hell away and is very content in being alone.
* AnyoneCanDie: The series has characters dying left and right from the beginning. Then the [[spoiler:nuclear war]] begins, and the previous death counts [[FromBadToWorse get put in perspective]].
* ApocalypseHow: Class 2/3 for the native Martians [[spoiler:and Class 4-6 for Earth.]]
* BecomingTheMask: "The Martian" is about one of the natives ''trying'' to do this.
* BeeBeeGun: The Martians use a gun that shoots live bees, the idea being that the moral responsibility for the actual killing is laid on the head of the living projectile, and the gun-wielder's role is mitigated to that of an accomplice. Proves every bit as effective as earthly firearms, which is lampshaded in the TV series by the turned human who states "...then I offered him my weapon, but he said he already had one..."
* BigCreepyCrawlies: The praying mantis machine in "Night Meeting".
* BroadStrokes: Not all of the stories were originally intended to be in the same continuity, so this is applied. The native Martians are described ''very'' differently in some of the earlier stories than they are later on.
* BuriedAlive: William Stendhal reenacts [[EdgarAllanPoe "The Cask of Amontillado"]].
* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: [[spoiler:The population of Earth is wiped out by a nuclear war, but the people on Mars survive.]]
* CassandraTruth: Nobody ever believes the captain of the second expedition when he says he is from Earth.
* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: The Martians' civilization. Most of the elements seem like a fantastic version of Egypt, with books written in hieroglyphs that sing when you touch them, houses built of crystal pillars and traveling using flocks of birds, all in the middle of a great desert.
* CulturalPosturing: Spender believes the aliens developed their society far better than we did; he's not afraid to explain how to Captain Wilder. Oddly enough, the actual Martians never do this.
* EarthThatWas: [[spoiler:The population of Earth is wiped out by a nuclear war, but the people on Mars survive.]]
* FromBadToWorse: Near the end of the short stories, there are only a few more than a hundred Martians left, the majority of humans abandoned Mars, and Earth is at war. [[spoiler:Then Earth goes boom.]]
* GhostPlanet: Mars after the native Martians die out.
* GhostTown: In "The Silent Towns", Gripp walks around one and samples the abandoned services.
* HumansThroughAlienEyes: Yll calls the human in Ylla's dream "a misshapen giant"; both characters are confused by the strange appearance of the Earth man.
* IWantMyJetpack: See above, about the first manned expedition to Mars in the distant future year of 1999.
* InvoluntaryShapeshifter: In "The Martian", the titular character shifts between forms depending on which character looks at it. The other Martians seemed to have more self-control.
* KillEmAll: Near the end of the stories, almost every major character meets this fate.
* KickedUpstairs: One character starts to have qualms about colonizing Mars and leaving no traces of the native culture. In a later story in the collection, it's revealed he was stationed on a farther away planet in the solar system and thus literally "kicked upstairs".
* LiteraryAllusionTitle: "And the Moon Be Still as Bright", a quotation from Creator/LordByron's "So We'll Go No More A-Roving".
* LotusEaterMachine: The Martians are able to use their mental powers to create illusions based off of memory.
* MarsNeedsWomen: A very literal inversion. The first human to land on Mars is shot dead because a native Martian foresaw that his wife was going to run away with the man.
* MasterOfIllusion: Some of the Martians, particularly in "The Third Expedition".
* NukeEm: The war on Earth has a '''lot''' of poorly thought-out nuke use.
* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Cross-species disease is a major plot point in "And the Moon Be Still as Bright".
* OnlySaneMan: Subverted in "The Earth Men." While the Martians seem insane in how they ignore the significance of the astronauts being explorers from a different world, it's revealed [[spoiler:they think the astronauts are just insane Martians projecting illusions with telepathy.]]
* PatchworkStory
* RealityBleed: "Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed"
* TheRedPlanet
* ReplacementGoldfish / RidiculouslyHumanRobots: [[spoiler:Mr. Hathaways's family.]]
* SandIsWater: The Martians had sand ships.
* SendInTheSearchTeam
* ShapeShifterSwanSong: The title character of "The Martian" appears to whoever sees him as a lost loved one. When he's surrounded by a crowd of people, who all need to see somebody different, the results are not pleasant.
* TedBaxter: Sam Parkhill serves as a violent example of this during the standoff with Jeff Spender. Later in the book, he sets up a hot dog stand, expecting a huge rush of business from an arriving wave of settlers and workers. [[spoiler:Gets his comeuppance when he panics, kills a Martian who was about to give him property titles for half the planet, and then watches the nuclear war begin on Earth.]]
* ThrowAwayCountry / ShinyNewAustralia: Nuclear war on Earth begins with Australia [[spoiler: accidentally being atomized. As in the ''entire landmass''. The event is so energetic that it casts shadows on Mars. It's not entirely clear why there was anything left to fight over on Earth, or how anyone (or even a microbe) was still alive to fight after that, this might be a case of ScienceFictionWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale.]]
* WeaksauceWeakness: The Martians are almost completely wiped out by chicken pox. One character muses how wrong this is: "in the name of all that's holy, it has to be chicken pox, a child's disease, a disease that doesn't even kill ''children'' on Earth! It's not right and it's not fair. It's like saying the Greeks died of mumps, or the proud Roman died on their beautiful hills of athlete's foot!"
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: One early story, set in the segregated South, is about all the blacks in the area (or the country? it's been a while) pooling their resources to make/buy a rocket to get to Mars. They're never mentioned again through the entire rest of the book.
** Then later, in ''The Illustrated Man'', it is revealed that [[spoiler:they go back to help the survivors of the nuclear war.]]
* TheUnpronounceable: The alien last names are pretty much impossible to pronounce in "The Earth Men", being three letters (Consonant or vowel) in a row.
* {{Zeerust}}: Typewriters are still in use. Most of this is due to the time the stories were written.
----
As originally written, the sequence begins with the first manned expedition to Mars in the distant future year of 1999. The stories were revised in 1997 to push it back to 2030.
"ThereWillComeSoftRains", though set on Earth, is part of the same future history, and is included in some versions of the book.
A miniseries adaptation was made in 1979, which Bradbury called "just boring."
----
!!This series provides examples of:
* AbnormalAmmo: see Bee Bee Gun
* AdamAndEvePlot: Subverted in "The Silent Towns". A man wakes up to find that he's been left on Mars by accident after most of the Martian colony has gone back to Earth. He begins dialing phone numbers in a desperate attempt for human contact and manages get in touch with a woman, who he begins to fall in love with (based on their brief phone conversation). When they finally meet, he finds her ''[[FatSlob disgustingly fat]]'', obnoxious, loud, and shallow.
* TheAloner: See AdamAndEvePlot. Initially, he's overjoyed - all the homes are abandoned, and he's able to eat and drink and smoke what he wants, and even carts around town with a wagon filled with money, for the hell of it. When he realizes he's alone, he breaks down and cries, and focuses solely on his attempt to reach a 'seductive voice' that calls telephones regularly. When he finally finds the owner of the voice - one FatBastard - he drives the hell away and is very content in being alone.
* AnyoneCanDie: The series has characters dying left and right from the beginning. Then the [[spoiler:nuclear war]] begins, and the previous death counts [[FromBadToWorse get put in perspective]].
* ApocalypseHow: Class 2/3 for the native Martians [[spoiler:and Class 4-6 for Earth.]]
* BecomingTheMask: "The Martian" is about one of the natives ''trying'' to do this.
* BeeBeeGun: The Martians use a gun that shoots live bees, the idea being that the moral responsibility for the actual killing is laid on the head of the living projectile, and the gun-wielder's role is mitigated to that of an accomplice. Proves every bit as effective as earthly firearms, which is lampshaded in the TV series by the turned human who states "...then I offered him my weapon, but he said he already had one..."
* BigCreepyCrawlies: The praying mantis machine in "Night Meeting".
* BroadStrokes: Not all of the stories were originally intended to be in the same continuity, so this is applied. The native Martians are described ''very'' differently in some of the earlier stories than they are later on.
* BuriedAlive: William Stendhal reenacts [[EdgarAllanPoe "The Cask of Amontillado"]].
* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: [[spoiler:The population of Earth is wiped out by a nuclear war, but the people on Mars survive.]]
* CassandraTruth: Nobody ever believes the captain of the second expedition when he says he is from Earth.
* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: The Martians' civilization. Most of the elements seem like a fantastic version of Egypt, with books written in hieroglyphs that sing when you touch them, houses built of crystal pillars and traveling using flocks of birds, all in the middle of a great desert.
* CulturalPosturing: Spender believes the aliens developed their society far better than we did; he's not afraid to explain how to Captain Wilder. Oddly enough, the actual Martians never do this.
* EarthThatWas: [[spoiler:The population of Earth is wiped out by a nuclear war, but the people on Mars survive.]]
* FromBadToWorse: Near the end of the short stories, there are only a few more than a hundred Martians left, the majority of humans abandoned Mars, and Earth is at war. [[spoiler:Then Earth goes boom.]]
* GhostPlanet: Mars after the native Martians die out.
* GhostTown: In "The Silent Towns", Gripp walks around one and samples the abandoned services.
* HumansThroughAlienEyes: Yll calls the human in Ylla's dream "a misshapen giant"; both characters are confused by the strange appearance of the Earth man.
* IWantMyJetpack: See above, about the first manned expedition to Mars in the distant future year of 1999.
* InvoluntaryShapeshifter: In "The Martian", the titular character shifts between forms depending on which character looks at it. The other Martians seemed to have more self-control.
* KillEmAll: Near the end of the stories, almost every major character meets this fate.
* KickedUpstairs: One character starts to have qualms about colonizing Mars and leaving no traces of the native culture. In a later story in the collection, it's revealed he was stationed on a farther away planet in the solar system and thus literally "kicked upstairs".
* LiteraryAllusionTitle: "And the Moon Be Still as Bright", a quotation from Creator/LordByron's "So We'll Go No More A-Roving".
* LotusEaterMachine: The Martians are able to use their mental powers to create illusions based off of memory.
* MarsNeedsWomen: A very literal inversion. The first human to land on Mars is shot dead because a native Martian foresaw that his wife was going to run away with the man.
* MasterOfIllusion: Some of the Martians, particularly in "The Third Expedition".
* NukeEm: The war on Earth has a '''lot''' of poorly thought-out nuke use.
* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Cross-species disease is a major plot point in "And the Moon Be Still as Bright".
* OnlySaneMan: Subverted in "The Earth Men." While the Martians seem insane in how they ignore the significance of the astronauts being explorers from a different world, it's revealed [[spoiler:they think the astronauts are just insane Martians projecting illusions with telepathy.]]
* PatchworkStory
* RealityBleed: "Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed"
* TheRedPlanet
* ReplacementGoldfish / RidiculouslyHumanRobots: [[spoiler:Mr. Hathaways's family.]]
* SandIsWater: The Martians had sand ships.
* SendInTheSearchTeam
* ShapeShifterSwanSong: The title character of "The Martian" appears to whoever sees him as a lost loved one. When he's surrounded by a crowd of people, who all need to see somebody different, the results are not pleasant.
* TedBaxter: Sam Parkhill serves as a violent example of this during the standoff with Jeff Spender. Later in the book, he sets up a hot dog stand, expecting a huge rush of business from an arriving wave of settlers and workers. [[spoiler:Gets his comeuppance when he panics, kills a Martian who was about to give him property titles for half the planet, and then watches the nuclear war begin on Earth.]]
* ThrowAwayCountry / ShinyNewAustralia: Nuclear war on Earth begins with Australia [[spoiler: accidentally being atomized. As in the ''entire landmass''. The event is so energetic that it casts shadows on Mars. It's not entirely clear why there was anything left to fight over on Earth, or how anyone (or even a microbe) was still alive to fight after that, this might be a case of ScienceFictionWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale.]]
* WeaksauceWeakness: The Martians are almost completely wiped out by chicken pox. One character muses how wrong this is: "in the name of all that's holy, it has to be chicken pox, a child's disease, a disease that doesn't even kill ''children'' on Earth! It's not right and it's not fair. It's like saying the Greeks died of mumps, or the proud Roman died on their beautiful hills of athlete's foot!"
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: One early story, set in the segregated South, is about all the blacks in the area (or the country? it's been a while) pooling their resources to make/buy a rocket to get to Mars. They're never mentioned again through the entire rest of the book.
** Then later, in ''The Illustrated Man'', it is revealed that [[spoiler:they go back to help the survivors of the nuclear war.]]
* TheUnpronounceable: The alien last names are pretty much impossible to pronounce in "The Earth Men", being three letters (Consonant or vowel) in a row.
* {{Zeerust}}: Typewriters are still in use. Most of this is due to the time the stories were written.
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