Bradbury is himself firm that he doesn't write science-fiction. Nominally about Mars, The Martian Chronicles are really about Ohio. In the first few stories, Bradbury sketches an ancient and alien civilization of golden masks, canals flowing with lavender wine, phoenix flowers, and subtle telepathic arts. Then the entire Martian race is wiped out by the Chicken Pox, and boomtown Americans spread across the terra nullis of Mars, filling the ancient ruins with noise and trash, before a nuclear war on Earth ends the human race. Melancholy and moving, these stories hold up as mood pieces of nostalgia for a simpler time at the dawn of the Space Age, but I wouldn't shelve them among the classics.