Review: Bradbury, Martian Cronicles

As a collection of sketches for all the works an artist will create in his lifetime, this is both great and mildly disappointing: there is almost too much of Bradbury revealed in this book. It is as though somebody wrote one of these "Very Short Introductions" to Brudbury in a brilliant fiction format. The ideas to note and cherish are:
- Humans (especially Americans) tend to overlegislate and over-politically-correct to the point of ridiculous: dread the book burning (also Farenheit 451).
- When we cannot have the truth, the dream is the next best thing and many will deliberately turn their faces to make dream seemreal (i.e. pretend a hypnotist martian is your resurrected son).
- Our approach to God (say, a Christian one) is inevitably short-sighted in the context of larger universe (for what is Jesus for Martians? what is sin for someone without flesh?).
- Emigrant's feeling for his motherland would be a thousand times multiplied in an earth-man come to Mars. If the war started, we would all go home.
- There's little one would not do out of loneliness (hypnotic Martian putting on different identities).
- How good we are at destroying the precious castles of history built on foreign lands (e.g. Martian castles, Baghdad castles)!
- AI may have just as much right for life, as we, supposedly non-AI beings, but does it have a reason to be? Is its laughter meaningless, if we planted it there? Who knows if a soul is really anithing to pay attention to.
- Technology that attempts to replace the basic essence of our existence is short-sighted, because a) it will appear ridiculous when we vanish (no people around, but cook breakfast nonetheless), b) we will appear ridiculous if it vanishes (what happened to the self-cooked breakfast?), c) it may create unforeseen disasters - psychological, physical, it may upturn the meaning of being human that each of us kindles in his heart. (also, The Veldt, in Illustrated Man).

Altogether wonderful with lush imagination and seed-like thruths that may soon sprout. Whatever shall we do then?