TELE-MARS - 3 VIEWS

Thanks to 'The Ray Bradbury Theater', there are at least three different Toobworlds in which the events of 'The Martian Chronicles' take place. Proof of this can be found with the character of John Wilder. In 'The Martian Chronicles', Colonel Wilder was played by Rock Hudson.

But the character was recast twice in 'The Ray Bradbury Theater' - George Touliatos played the role in the episode "The Long Years", while Kenneth Welsh was Wilder in "And The Moon Be Still As Bright."

JOHN WILDER
[KENNETH WELSH]

JOHN WILDER
[GEORGE TOULIATOS]

So each of those episodes and the mini-series means that we're seeing "The Martian Chronicles" from three different TV dimensions.

Another example:

TWO DIFFERENT WILDERS
WITH TWO DIFFERENT PARKHILLS

And yet neither of them are of Earth Prime-Time. Bradbury's vision of Mars clashes with what was established in other TV shows like 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents', 'The Twilight Zone', 'The Outer Limits', and of course, 'My Favorite Martian'.

His timeline also skewed wrong with that established in Toobworld, as already recounted here in Inner Toob.

As the years in the real world got closer to the date of death for the Hathaways, one might have thought Bradbury would have pushed it farther into the future. But apparently he remained adamant on that point. And I think I know why......

Bradbury would insist that the only piece of science fiction he ever wrote was "Fahrenheit 451", that everything else was fantasy. By making it impossible for his Martian stories to jibe with the timeline of the real world, they are no longer the possibility promised in science fiction. They are tales of fantasy.

(It's funny - Bradbury would argue that his works were fantasy while Anne McCaffrey would argue that her series of books about the Dragonriders of Pern were science fiction. Yet many fans would hold them both to be the opposite.)

Out there somewhere in the dimension of Earth Prime-Time is the main Toobworld's own "Martian Chronicles"; one that won't clash with the established Martian history.

It just hasn't happened yet....

BCnU!