4.5 stars, rounding up to 5. I have to make a confession, here: this is the first time I've read Bradbury. I know, I know. I'm a science fiction writer myself, and he's one of the canon, and so forth. But the truth is there's an awful lot out there in the world that I want to read and I hadn't got around to him yet. Well, it was worth the wait. Some of the stories are a little dated, of course, and that's hardly to be avoided considering, but the language here is so beautiful it more than makes up for it. The prose is just gorgeous - full of colour and imagery and that sense of wonder that's (supposed) to characterise the best science fiction.

And when you have prose that lovely, it works even better in service of something sad. These are not happy stories. They're stories of bigotry and destruction and invasion, the long slow disappearance of a civilisation, and humans are the bad guys. It's awful. The stories here are awful. Painful to read, many of them, but really just so good. And that final story - these two families planning to repopulate the planet, when of course they can't. Genetics are against them, but they're too short-sighted to understand that; they don't know and don't care, are just grabbing at the possible escape. Which is absolutely characteristic of the rest of the book. Humanity has ruined Mars, and has learned nothing.