What has this man from Illinois done, I ask myself when closing the pages of his book, that episodes from the conquest of another planet fill me with horror and loneliness?
~ Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges
in the introduction to the Spanish-language translation of The Martian Chronicles.

In 1950, precisely halfway through a century dominated by scientific endeavor and discovery, Ray Bradbury – the man from Illinois – released this slender volume filled with rocket ships, Martian cities,...