Even though this book called Chronicles and its stories are placed within a “real” timeline, the Bradbury’s Mars is timeless. The Martian tales are like shards of mirrored glass that reflect, with a twist, human life. “It’s a place of the subconscious, of the imagination. It’s [...] the blank canvas upon which humans paint their dreams, their nightmares, their greatest hopes, and their deepest fears.” (2)

The time in "The Martian Chronicles" is relative. It is measured by human lives and it mostly goes in circles, “time is not real in a strict sense; what is real is change or process”. (3) The civilization dies, then a new people come to the abandoned lands and all starts anew. Stories AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT and THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS compliment each other in the way that both reveal the world after its inhabitants all gone.

But most clearly the strange flow of the time in Martian Chronicles is shown in the NIGHT MEETING. This story revealed the dream-alike nature of the Mars and its time.
There is a long passage about physical appearance of time and how “time is crazy up here”. (1) The Mars was called a kaleidoscope that constantly changes its timeline shape. And, after Tomas “drove the truck between hills of Time", its flow twisted and he was able to meet the Martian. The description of this meeting feels like Tomas was standing in front of the mirror, so similar those two are. Caught in between past and future, they were "not dead, not alive [...] Two strangers passing." (1) In this strange dream two pieces of Martian different pasts or futures become one just for a minute.

So, through the colourful kaleidoscope of timeless dreams, in these stories readers can see real Martians: “The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water” (1)

  1. Ray Bradbury — The Martian Chronicles. Kindle edition.
  2. thestake.org/2014/01/29/the-backlist-ray-bradbu...
  3. www.philosophyoflife.org/jpl201312.pdf