YMMV / The Martian Chronicles

• Fridge Logic: The idea that almost all of the Martian colonists would just abandon the planet to go back to Earth just as a nuclear war is kicking off and the initial flash can be seen from Mars comes across as weird, if not downright idiotic. Especially since the Mars colonies are implied to be fairly self-sufficient and the few who remain are implied to have been left behind or out of contact when everyone else left, as opposed to seeing a return to Earth as suicidal.
• Funny Moments: In "The Silent Towns", Walter Gripp dials a bunch of phone numbers in a desperate attempt to find someone to talk to. After several calls with no answer, he finally hears a voice on the other end of the line...only to find it's just a pre-recorded message from an answering machine owned by someone named Helen Arasumian. He hangs up, but then opts to dial the number again and leave a "message".
  "When Miss Helen Arasumian comes home," he said, "tell her to go to hell."
• Magnificent Bastard: "Usher II":
  • William Stendahl is a wealthy man who fled Earth for Mars to escape Moral Guardians, who several decades had launched the Great Fire, which included Stendahl's own massive collection of books. Along with horror film actor Pikes, whose films were also censored, Stendahl launches an elaborate plan to take revenge. Stendahl first has an architect create a house meant to replicate The Fall of the House of Usher. Next, Stendahl kills Garrett, a member of Moral Climates—even though this person is actually a robot, this doesn't stop Stendahl, who had sent a robot back anyway. Next, Stendahl—who has spent an entire year befriending moral guardians and their ilk—invites many of his enemies to a party. He then kills them in the style of stories from Edgar Allan Poe, while having the real Garrett believe the victims are the robots, when it's the opposite. Finally, Stendahl successfully kills Garrett. Completely and utterly victorious, Stendahl and Pikes leave in a helicopter, while destroying the house in the style of Poe's story.
  • Pikes is Stendahl's indispensable silent partner in his plot to massacre Moral Climates. One a star of the screen called the "man of ten thousand faces" for a thespian talent said to equal is not exceed Lon Chaney, Pikes' films were among the earliest censured by Moral Climates, and was Forced to Watch them burn his own copies. Teaming up with Stendahl and moving to Mars, the duo foresee Moral Climates will attempt to dominate the media of the Red Planet as well, and concoct their plot to prevent that from happening. Pikes designs flawless robotic copies of each of Moral Climates' members, as well as robot versions of characters from works they banned to kill them off, and presides over the ensuing gruesome spectacle dressed as the Red Death. Making his escape with Stendahl, Pikes mockingly eulogizes the fallen censors with the last lines of the original The Fall of the House of Usher.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Due to being published in 1946, there are still very traditionalist views of women, most people apparently still wear fur in the fake 1999 and in 2003, anti-lynching laws and civil rights acts for African Americans and other minorities are barely being passed.
  • Manned space flight to a habitable Mars is common in 1999. It's clearly a different universe than ours, but one that arguably (at least in most elements) could have existed.

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