|
I did read this decades ago and I am finding once again some of the great beauty in tales like "Ylla" which is filled with a dream-like loveliness. But there is a horror in "The Third Expedition" originally titled "Mars Is Heaven".
I personally tend to see TTE as a critical response to a particular view of life (but I am sure there are many other ways of interpreting it).
Is the story a means of turning "The American Dream" (or one version of it) into a nightmare? Here we see the small town society with loving parents and friends living in a community filled with love. We see too the deep-seated need of the soldiers for this bonding. It is strong enough to make them abandon the protective discipline and welcome the vulnerability of love. And so they are destroyed.
The vision is tainted. And perhaps so is the ideal.
I wonder if Bradbury also had in mind the Pastoral idealism of some science fiction writers--Jack Finney and Clifford D. Simak in particular come to mind. Simak's best work certainly is far more than a tired attempt to go back to a gentle Utopia and perhaps Bradbury didn't have him specifically in mind, but TTE certainly deconstructs that sort of vision.
|