"They reached the canal. It was long and straight and cool and wet and reflective in the night.
"'I've always wanted to see a Martian,' said Michael. 'Where are they Dad? You promised.'
"'There they are.' said Dad, as he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down.
"The Martians were there. Timothy began to shiver.
"The Martians were there - in the canal - reflected in the water.
"Timothy and Michael and Robert and Mom and Dad.
"The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water...." - The Martian Chronicles: The Million-Year Picnic
[Extra Sci Fi Theme] "Hypothetical" by Surasshu
The final cycle of the Martian Chronicles -
- the new Martian cycle - is a redemptive cycle. One about hope.
Not the big broad happily-ever-after kind of hope, but simply the idea that mankind perseveres;
that we may have gone astray, that our missteps may have cost us an impossible amount, but
so long as there are a handful of us alive, there is a chance to learn from our mistakes;
to do it right on the next go-round.
Now, I'm going to argue that the new Martian cycle is exactly one story long.
Others might argue that it's longer - there are a handful of stories that occur after Earth is destroyed -
and it's easy to see all of these as part of one cycle, to lump all of those stories together.
But, thematically, they're very different.
Only the last story is about something other than searching for the wrong answer,
about learning from the past, rather than looking to old familiar solutions.
Only the final story, "The Million-Year Picnic," is truly about the future.
I call this one a single story cycle, because it's that important,
and it's that much a break from the rest of the book.
For all the ideas that Bradbury has explored across the collection,
this feels like the moment where he finally gets to say
what's been on his mind this whole time.
"The Million-Year Picnic" is a simple story of a fishing trip,
a family getting away for a camping holiday on Mars.
And yet it's clear that that's not quite what's going on.
Only the children are fooled about the purpose of this trip,
and even they can tell that something's up in the way that children do
and are just playing along to make their parents feel better.
Because this is no fishing trip.
They are one of the last families to escape Earth.
The father was a governor,
and he secreted away a rocket to escape Earth in case things ever *really* went south.
He knows there will be a few more escapees, but probably not many more.
All the rockets were used in the war.
Eventually, the parents let the deception slip.
They tell the children that they're here to stay now,
that this is their new home.
And it's here that some of the most telling writing in the book occurs,
for the father starts a bonfire, a literal burning away of the past.
"He laid the papers in a clutter in an old courtyard and set them afire.
"To keep warm, they crouched around the blaze and laughed,
"and Timothy saw the little letters leap like frightened animals when the flames touched and engulfed them.
"The papers crinkled like an old man's skin, and the cremation surrounded innumerable words:
"'GOVERNMENT BONDS; Business Graph, 1999;
"'Religious Prejudice: An Essay; The Science of Logistics;
"'Problems of the Pan-American Unity;
"'Stock Report for July 3, 1998;
"'The War Digest....'
"Dad had insisted on bringing these letters for this purpose.
"He sat there and fed them into the fire, one by one, with satisfaction,
"and told his children what it all meant." - The Martian Chronicles: The Million-Year Picnic
He burns away all of the things that we think matter, but don't really matter.
All the things we think make up our lives, but don't really make up our lives.
It's a radical break with the humanity of the rest of the book,
the stripping away that must happen before something new can begin.
But he goes on to tell his children what that fire meant.
He says,
"Life on Earth never settled down to doing anything very good.
"Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness,
"like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets,
"emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines.
"Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth.
"That's what the silent radio means.
"That's what we ran away from." - The Martian Chronicles: The Million-Year Picnic
To me, this is Bradbury's thesis,
and it's easy to see this as an anti-technology stance at first, but that's not what he's saying.
The key idea here isn't *that* we went wrong,
it's *how* we went wrong,
emphasizing machines, instead of how to run the machines.
That's the real point.
Not that technology is bad, but
that it's not an end in and of itself,
that how we use it is what matters,
that we should have spent more time thinking about our humanity,
about how these devices might expand it,
how these new marvels come with responsibility to use them well...
... to use them for the betterment of ourselves,
rather than to play to our basest nature.
The real point is that
it's easy to get caught up in a world where we get lost in a universe of science and engineering,
forgetting to make sure that our art and our humanities and our philosophy keep up,
forgetting that that second half is what makes the tools that science and engineering bring us, useful.
What make them more than distractions,
more than the playthings of trolls and tyrants,
that if we don't ask ourselves that most primary question, "Why?"
with each new thing we build, we're doing it wrong.
But so long as a few of us are alive, there is always a hope
There is always a chance to start down the right path, to reset the cycle, and to go back to the beginning,
to the most fundamental part of ourselves.
There is always a chance to start asking "Why?" again.
And so we end where we began:
gazing, into the Martian canals.
*Pop* [Extra Sci Fi Theme] "Hypothetical" by Surasshu
[Extra Sci Fi Theme] "Hypothetical" by Surasshu
[Music fades]