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Research and Extend Choose one of the following topics to research: author Ray Bradbury, the series called Bradbury 13, or the history of radio plays in general. Find one interesting fact using an online source. Write it down along with the search terms you used.
RAY BRADBURY: This is Ray Bradbury. Join me for the next thirty minutes on a tour through time and space. Come along to the far future. Follow me into a strange past. With stories that almost could be, or might have been. Real or unreal, this is Bradbury 13.
[sound of wind blowing]
NARRATOR: As long as the rockets had spun a silver web across space, Harry Bittering had been able to accept Mars. But now, the web gone, the rockets lying in jigsaw heaps of molten girder and unsnaked wire on Earth, people from Earth left to the strangeness of Mars, the cinnamon dusts and wine airs. This was the moment that Mars had waited for. Now, it would eat them. Ray Bradbury’s “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed.”
[sound of a rocket landing]
TIM: What was that?
HARRY BITTERING: Just a bump. It means we’ve landed.
LAURA BITTERING: Landed? We’re here?!
HARRY: Yes. Get your things together, kids.
PILOT: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mars.
[cheering]
PILOT: On behalf of the crew, we wish you all a long and prosperous stay here. Good luck.
HARRY: We’ll need it.
CORA BITTERING: Everyone set?
KIDS: All set!
CORA: We’re ready, Harry.
HARRY: Well, ready or not, here we come.
[sound of wind blowing]
TIM: Wow… look at the wind blow.
HARRY: Let’s get back on the rocket and go back tonight.
CORA: Why, Harry?
HARRY: Just listen!
[wind continues to blow]
CORA: It’s just wind! We had wind in Boston.
HARRY: It’s eaten away the hills and the cities. Look!
CORA: Chin up, Harry. We’ve come at least sixty five million miles to get here. Let’s make the best of it.
HARRY: You’re right. We’ll make the best of it. Right kids?
KIDS: Right.
HARRY: Come on, we've got a house to build.
[scene change]
CORA: [whispering] Harry? Are you awake?
HARRY: [yawning] Yeah, I’m awake.
CORA: I think I’m finally getting used to the wind. It took me a few months but now I think I’d miss it if it wasn’t there.
HARRY: Glad you like it. Cora, sometimes I feel like a salt crystal in a stream being washed away. We don’t belong here. Oh for heaven’s sake, Cora, let’s buy tickets for home.
CORA: We can’t go back.
HARRY: Well of course we can.
CORA: One of these days the bomb will fix it so there is no more Earth. Then we’ll be safe here.
HARRY: Safe and insane.
CORA: Come on. I’ll fix you a nice Earth breakfast.
[scene change]
CORA: Here ya are! Bacon and eggs. Runny yolks, just the way you like them.
HARRY: Thanks. Say, you seen the paper?
CORA: What’s it say?
HARRY: Another seven hundred from Earth. Colonial days all over again.
CORA: [laughing] I’ll say.
HARRY: Another year and they’ll have half a million Earthmen on Mars. Big cities, everything.
CORA: Good! Maybe you’ll like it better.
HARRY: Maybe. The point is they said we’d fail. They said the Martians would resent our invasion. But did we find any Martians? Not a living soul! Oh, we found their empty cities. But not one living Martian.
Answer the following questions.
a. In the short story, how does the author let readers know that bombs have blown up all of Earth’s rockets?
b. What audio elements does the radio play add to that scene?
All Answers 1
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Research note
- Interesting fact: Ray Bradbury’s story "Dark They Were, and Golden‑Eyed" was first published in 1949 and was later collected in The Martian Chronicles (1950).
- Search terms I used: "Dark They Were, and Golden‑Eyed first published 1949", "Dark They Were and Golden Eyed Thrilling Wonder Stories", "Ray Bradbury Martian Chronicles contents"
Answers
a) How the author shows the rockets were blown up
- The narrator tells readers directly with vivid, concrete description. Lines such as “but now, the web gone, the rockets lying in jigsaw heaps of molten girder and unsnaked wire on Earth” and the contrast with “As long as the rockets had spun a silver web across space” make it clear the previously intact network of rockets has been destroyed. Bradbury uses metaphor (“silver web gone”) plus sensory, destructive imagery (“jigsaw heaps,” “molten girder,” “unsnaked wire”) to show the rockets were blasted and ruined.
b) What audio elements the radio play adds to that scene
- Wind sound effects (repeated “sound of wind blowing”) — creates Mars’s eerie atmosphere and the sense of desolation.
- Rocket sound ( “sound of a rocket landing” ) and pilot announcements — give immediacy to the arrival and contrast with the narrator’s description of destroyed rockets on Earth.
- Crowd/cheering, character voices and dialogue, and small domestic sounds (yawning, whispering, serving breakfast) — these make the family’s reactions and ordinary life tangible, heightening the emotional contrast between the characters’ optimism/normalcy and the narrator’s ominous description of destroyed Earth rockets.
- Use of silence and sustained wind between lines — lets the narration’s images land and emphasizes emptiness.
Together these audio elements turn Bradbury’s descriptive lines into a lived, atmospheric scene: the soundscape reinforces the ruined, lonely Mars the narrator describes while the actors’ voices ground the listener in the characters’ immediate experience.
- Interesting fact: Ray Bradbury’s story "Dark They Were, and Golden‑Eyed" was first published in 1949 and was later collected in The Martian Chronicles (1950).
- Search terms I used: "Dark They Were, and Golden‑Eyed first published 1949", "Dark They Were and Golden Eyed Thrilling Wonder Stories", "Ray Bradbury Martian Chronicles contents"
Answers
a) How the author shows the rockets were blown up
- The narrator tells readers directly with vivid, concrete description. Lines such as “but now, the web gone, the rockets lying in jigsaw heaps of molten girder and unsnaked wire on Earth” and the contrast with “As long as the rockets had spun a silver web across space” make it clear the previously intact network of rockets has been destroyed. Bradbury uses metaphor (“silver web gone”) plus sensory, destructive imagery (“jigsaw heaps,” “molten girder,” “unsnaked wire”) to show the rockets were blasted and ruined.
b) What audio elements the radio play adds to that scene
- Wind sound effects (repeated “sound of wind blowing”) — creates Mars’s eerie atmosphere and the sense of desolation.
- Rocket sound ( “sound of a rocket landing” ) and pilot announcements — give immediacy to the arrival and contrast with the narrator’s description of destroyed rockets on Earth.
- Crowd/cheering, character voices and dialogue, and small domestic sounds (yawning, whispering, serving breakfast) — these make the family’s reactions and ordinary life tangible, heightening the emotional contrast between the characters’ optimism/normalcy and the narrator’s ominous description of destroyed Earth rockets.
- Use of silence and sustained wind between lines — lets the narration’s images land and emphasizes emptiness.
Together these audio elements turn Bradbury’s descriptive lines into a lived, atmospheric scene: the soundscape reinforces the ruined, lonely Mars the narrator describes while the actors’ voices ground the listener in the characters’ immediate experience.
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