AuthorRay Bradbury credits his mother for

encouraging his imagination. She loved films and started taking her son to see them when he was only 3. By age 8, Bradbury had developed a love for both science fiction and the planet Mars. Bradbury wrote his first Martian stories when he was 12. Just before his 21st birthday, Bradbury sold his first story. That began a career filled with bestsellers, awards, and a lasting love of writing.

Author

Man with a Mission Bradbury believes that one purpose of science fiction is to warn about negative things that might happen in the future if care is not taken in the present. Some of his writing reflects his worries about where our society is headed.

Dark They Were and Golden Eyed

Originally published in 1949 under “The Naming of Names”

Setting: Mars in the near future

Mars

Why Mars? Mars = 4th planet from the sun Prime target for space exploration because it’s believed that 3.5 billion years ago, it had water

Percival Lowell observed what he believed to be canals where water once ran

People began to imagine that if there was once water, perhaps there had been life

It became a place of possibility for many who were terrified of the Earth’s own fate

Why Mars?

Truth About Mars

Its gravity is only 38 percent that of Earth. So if you weigh 150 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 57 pounds on Mars.

The air is different: Mars' atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide with traces of nitrogen and argon. Earth's atmosphere is a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and other gases.