But one of these Firemen, Guy Montag, asks why. In the dystopian future of Fahrenheit 451 (1953), the Firemen have one job: to incinerate books and all they contain, while mindless, big-screen entertainments distract the masses. Bradbury’s saga of the discovery, exploitation, and abandonment of Mars is not at all triumphal, until a second wave of settlers-free at last from earthly oppression and saved from atomic annihilation-pose a fateful question: will human beings be able to make the best of their second chance, as Martians?

Published at the hopeful dawn of the space age, and presented here in the complete, twenty-eight story-chapter form that Bradbury came to prefer, the linked tales of The Martian Chronicles (1950) envision an extraterrestrial future for humankind. This definitive Library of America edition gathers his novels and story cycles of the 1950s and 1960s for the first time. In books that look forward to astonishing futures and backward to evanescent realms of memory, he elevated speculative fiction from the pages of the pulps to the vital center of American literary culture. “I can imagine all kinds of worlds and places,” Neil Gaiman has written, “but I cannot imagine a world without Bradbury.” A master storyteller and visionary champion of creative freedom, Ray Bradbury is one of the most beloved and influential writers of our time. Save $20 when you purchase both Bradbury volumes in a boxed set.

Fahrenheit 451 barnes and noble