Bradbury they were dark and golden-eyed to read. Online reading of the book Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed by Ray Bradbury

They were dark and golden-eyed

Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed

Micro paraphrase: What will be the outcome of landing on Mars without the possibility of returning?

The world's first landing on Mars was carried out with the aim of developing new lands. Harry Bietering, his wife Cora and their children Dan, Laura and David are among the pioneers. Harry feels like a grain of salt that was thrown into a mountain river. He doesn't belong here, and he understands it. Bittering foresees trouble, which soon happens.

The next day, Harry's daughter comes running in tears and shows her father a newspaper, from which he learns about the beginning of a nuclear war on Earth and the destruction of all the rockets that brought the necessary supplies for survival on Mars. For several days after this, Harry wanders around the garden, fighting his fear alone. He's terribly lonely.

Suddenly Harry notices strange changes. Vegetables and fruits became somehow different, the roses turned green, the grass acquired a purple tint. Bittering decides to do something and goes into town. There he meets other men sitting quietly. They just laugh at his proposal to build a rocket. Here he pays attention to their appearance. They became tall, thin, and barely noticeable golden sparkles lurked in the depths of their eyes. Looking in the mirror, he notices the same changes in himself.

Harry settles down in the workshop and begins to build a rocket. He agrees to eat only what they grabbed from Earth, but rejects the rest. At night, the unfamiliar word “Yorrt” leaves his lips. He learns from his friend that this is the old Martian name for the Earth. A few days later, Cora says that food supplies from Earth have run out, persuades him to eat a Martian sandwich and go with his family for a swim in the canal. Sitting on the edge of the canal, Dan asks his father to give him another name - Linl. The parents agree.

Approaching an abandoned Martian villa, the wife offers to move there for the summer. That evening, while working, Harry remembers the villa.

Days and weeks passed, and the rocket occupied his thoughts less and less. There was no trace of the former fervor. It scared him himself that he had become so indifferent to his brainchild. But somehow everything turned out this way - it was hot, it was hard to work...

A week later, everyone begins to move into the villas. Something deep inside Harry desperately resists, but under pressure from his family, he agrees to move to the villa until the fall, planning to then get back to work.

Over the summer, the canals dry out to the bottom, the paint falls off the walls of the houses, and the frame of the rocket begins to rust. The family has no plans to return. Looking at the houses of earthlings, Harry's wife and children consider them funny, and people - an ugly people, and are glad that they are no longer on Mars.

They looked at each other, scared by the words that had just been spoken. Then they started laughing.

Five years pass and a rocket falls from the sky. The people who came out of it shouted that the war was over. However, the town built by the Americans is empty. Soon, earthlings find peace-loving Martians with dark skin and golden eyes among the hills. They have no idea what happened to the city and its people. The captain begins to plan future actions, but the lieutenant no longer listens to him. He cannot take his eyes off the hills covered with a gentle haze that turn blue in the distance, behind the abandoned city.

We have a lot to do, Lieutenant! We need to build new villages. Look for minerals, lay mines. Take samples for bacteriological studies. Up to our necks in work. And all the old reports are lost. We need to re-make maps, give names to mountains, rivers and so on. Let's call those mountains the Lincoln Mountains, what do you say to that? That canal will be the Washington Canal, and those hills... the hills could be named after you, Lieutenant. Diplomatic move. And as a courtesy, you can name a city after me. A graceful twist. Why not give this valley the name of Einstein, and that one... are you listening to me, Lieutenant?
What? Yes, yes, of course, sir!

Ray Bradbury

They were dark and golden-eyed

The rocket cooled down, blown by the wind from the meadows. The door clicked and opened. A man, a woman and three children emerged from the hatch. The other passengers were already leaving, whispering, across the Martian meadow, and this man was left alone with his family.

His hair fluttered in the wind, every cell in his body tensed, it felt as if he found himself under a hood from which the air was being pumped out. His wife stood one step ahead, and it seemed to him that now she would fly away, dissipate like smoke. And the children - dandelion fluffs - are about to be blown away by the winds to all ends of Mars.

The children raised their heads and looked at him - the way people look at the sun to determine what time it is in their lives. His face froze.

– Is something wrong? - asked the wife.

- Let's go back to the rocket.

– Do you want to return to Earth?

- Yes. Listen!

The wind blew as if it wanted to scatter them into dust. It seems that in just a moment the air of Mars will suck his soul out, like the marrow is sucked out of a bone. It was as if he had plunged into some kind of chemical composition in which the mind dissolves and the past burns out.

They looked at the low Martian mountains, crushed by the weight of millennia. We looked at ancient cities, lost in the meadows, like fragile children's bones scattered in shifting lakes of grass.

“Keep your head up, Harry,” said his wife. - It's too late to retreat. We've flown over sixty million miles.

The blond children screamed loudly, as if challenging the high Martian sky. But there was no response, only the fast wind whistled through the coarse grass.

With cold hands the man picked up the suitcases.

He said this as if he was standing on the shore - and he had to go into the sea and drown. They entered the city.

His name was Harry Bithering, his wife was Cora, his children were Dan, Laura and David. They built themselves a small white house, where it was nice to have a delicious breakfast in the morning, but the fear did not go away. An uninvited interlocutor, he was the third when husband and wife whispered in bed past midnight and woke up at dawn.

– Do you know what I feel? - said Harry. “It’s like I’m a grain of salt and I was thrown into a mountain river.” We are strangers here. We are from Earth. And this is Mars. It was created for Martians. For heaven's sake. Cora, let's buy tickets and go home!

But the wife just shook her head:

– Sooner or later, the Earth will not escape the atomic bomb. And here we will survive.

“We’ll survive, but we’ll go crazy!”

“Tick tock, seven in the morning, time to get up!” - the alarm clock sang.

And they got up.

Some vague feeling forced Bitering to inspect and check everything around him every morning, even the warm soil and bright red geraniums in pots, as if he was waiting for something wrong to happen! At six in the morning, a rocket from Earth delivered a fresh, hot, hot newspaper. Harry looked through it over breakfast. He tried to be sociable.

“Now everything is the same as it was at the time of settling new lands,” he reasoned cheerfully. – You’ll see, in ten years there will be a million earthlings on Mars. And there will be big cities, and everything in the world! And they said that nothing would work out for us. They said the Martians would not forgive us for our invasion. Where are the Martians? We didn't meet a soul. They found empty cities, yes, but no one lives there. Am I right?

The house was swept by a stormy gust of wind. When the window panes stopped rattling, Bitering swallowed hard and looked around at the children.

“I don’t know,” said David, “maybe there are Martians around, but we don’t see them.” At night I seem to hear them sometimes. I hear the wind. Sand knocks on the window. I get scared sometimes. And then there are still cities in the mountains where Martians once lived. And you know, dad, in these cities something seems to be hiding, someone is walking around. Maybe the Martians don't like us showing up here? Maybe they want to take revenge on us?

- Nonsense! – Bitering looked out the window. “We are decent people, not some pigs.” – He looked at the children. – Every extinct city has ghosts. I mean, memories. “Now he was constantly looking into the distance, at the mountains. – You look at the stairs and think: how did the Martians walk along it, what did they look like? You look at Martian paintings and think: what was the artist like? And you imagine this little ghost, a memory. Quite natural. It's all fantasy. – He paused. “I hope you didn’t climb into these ruins and roam around there?”

David, the youngest of the children, looked down.

- No, dad.

They fled from a terrible war. They were looking for peace and quiet for themselves and their children. They wanted to find a new home.

But what other future could earthlings give to the new planet, if not a repetition of history that happened on Earth? Yes, not much time would have passed, and billions of people, big cities and everything in the world would have appeared on Mars - as one of the heroes of the book saw it.

It wouldn't be Mars anymore.

With earthlings would come their passions and fears, troubles and joys, anxieties and sorrows. Not all of them are bad. But they are all earthly. Who said they have a place HERE?

Earthlings would invariably bring their hatred to Mars, from which they would not be able to escape, even after flying “sixty-odd million miles.”

And with it, war would come to Mars.

Mars did not want to die along with earthlings.

He could probably blow away a handful (for now) of aliens, the way we blow away the ashes from our palms.

But the wise ancient Mars was merciful to people.

Were they fleeing the war? Here they will never want to start it again.

People were looking for peace and quiet? He will be in them.

And the new home will become Familiar. For real.

People will get what they came for. Is it bad? Maybe that's right?..

Rating: 10

Here is the World. There were times when people lived here: “they built cities and named them; conquered peaks and named them; crossed the seas and named them.” And then time dissolved them in the dusty soil and disappearing river water, evaporated into the sky with a light fog of memories and scattered among the stars. But the World waited and waited until other people came and began to give new names...

An amazingly magical and heartfelt story. About ancient Mars, frozen in anticipation of a new Life, where the wind drives dust from long-standing memories and events. A world ready to open its arms to her. And he doesn’t need conquerors who will come and change everything around, give new names and forget those who lived before them. He waits for the return of his former Glory, changing uninvited strangers to suit himself, offering them in return all his wonders, allowing them to plunge into their slowly flowing rivers and wander along ancient, winding, mosaic paths among still flowing fountains.

An amazing idea of the World, taming aggressive and uninvited guests and making them not just your allies, but peaceful and kind inhabitants, growing roots into the newfound Home. And let the next conquerors arrive with their new names: the planet has prepared for them distant blue mountains that beckon to look at them with golden eyes.

Or is it the other way around - people were able to fit into the new environment and adapt so much that now you can’t tell which of them was born here and which came from afar. And I thought that there is such injustice on our Earth that it cannot do anything about Man, his greed and aggressiveness. Maybe everyone should go to Mars?

Rating: 9

One of the most beautiful stories in world fiction. Moreover, both the idea and its textual implementation are magnificent, written, by the way, in very simple, almost everyday language. The described process of transformation (or rebirth, if you like) of the characters in the story is so captivating that you can tear yourself away from it only after reading the last phrase (by the way, so correct and necessary in the finale of this work that you just want to exclaim again “Bravo, Master!").

Special mention should be made about Mars Bradbury. He is so unusual, so bewitching, so beautiful that if there was a competition among readers for the most beloved literary image of Mars, many would undoubtedly vote for Mars from Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”...

Rating: 10

"They Were Dark and Golden-Eyed" refers to the non-canonical Martian Chronicles. On the one hand, this story is a hymn to personal freedom, on the other, a kind of redemptive ending to all the troubles brought to Mars by people. However, the basis of the story is the idea of the eternal, irresistible cycle of life, passing from one form to another. This is all Bradbury, who invariably preserves a grain of bright hope in the heart of sadness.

Rating: 10

One of my favorite stories in the entire cycle is the quiet, gradually, graceful and inexorable victory of Mars over the invading “strangers”, over earthly vulgarity, rudeness, blindness. A subtle retribution that overtakes people who considered themselves conquerors of new frontiers.

Rating: 10

The idea of this story is amazing in its depth.

People constantly interact with the environment in which they find themselves, and as soon as they forget about their roots, they are absorbed by this environment and cease to be themselves. A simple truth, transformed by the writer into a stunning story of the transformation of people into Martians, fascinates and frightens, captivates and makes you think.

Rating: 10

How much Bradbury sometimes manages to put into his stories. Some may see a story here that the only way to survive is to adapt to changing circumstances. Someone will decide that hidden influence is always stronger and more effective than obvious influence. For some, this is a reminder that you can’t escape from yourself even to Mars. And someone will simply see in this a wise and sad parable about humanity. So, are we really so bad that we are not worth living? Is it better for us to change so much that we lose our essence? Or is it just the insidious, mysterious and beautiful Mars again playing strange jokes on us along with the wizard Bradbury and putting a twist in our eyes?

Rating: 8

Bradbury's poetics are such that he never tries to explain or put everything into pieces. It seems to me that this is not important to him. The main thing is to create a deep emotional mood, mostly kind, a little sad, even if unjust things are happening around. The transition to a new stage closer to cosmic civilization is a completely unknown phenomenon for earthly people, which will entail not only a physical reconstruction, but also a mental one. Refusal from humanity is a sad and sad, and sometimes painful, phenomenon, but it’s good if what awaits you ahead is no less beautiful and emotionally pure and bright than being a man of the Earth. A wonderful story.

Rating: 9

By the way, that's how it will be. Although consciousness determines being, it is much more often and more strongly that being determines consciousness - a fact!

The population of South America is no longer Spanish and does not have much in common with the indigenous Indians, although they are descendants of both. Assimilation with the local landscape and adaptation to living conditions are the driving factors for the birth of new races, and indeed of biological species in general.

And Bradbury is as elegant as always. The story, despite its numerous and deliberate differences from strictly scientific assessments, is a pearl of world fiction. It is clear that a cow is unlikely to grow a third horn, and the wind will not bring understanding of the dead language of the Martians, but the Author consciously makes these assumptions. I would even say that this is poetics, metaphor or hyperbole, if not grotesque. The story is artistic, and the imagery in it is more than convincing.

Rating: 10

When I got to the part with the three-horned cow, I was hooked. I remembered. I remembered that I heard this story a long time ago on the radio, or perhaps my brother retold it to me, in such an early childhood that it remained not in my memory, but somewhere in the subconscious, at the very border of perception. I remember this cow, I remember how I later dreamed that I was being left alone on a distant desert planet. I remember how I even woke up with tears in my eyes from the resentment of loneliness... But these are memories, however, even without them this story is brilliant! After “poems in prose” filled with beautiful, but still pathos, this story is subtle, polished, simply brilliant. And original, piercing with its idea. And exciting with a range of sensations – alarming, strange. This desert world, in which other unknown creatures previously lived, in which these unknown creatures may still live, is the fear of ghosts, the shadow of dead cities and someone’s invisible presence - in the air, in the mountains, in the changing color of the eyes. This is anxiety about change, and even more so about the indifference of others to these changes. The naturalness of new words and names... This is a wonderful, incredible and exciting idea. Or maybe we are just what surrounds us?.. The story is alarming. He's scary. He is sad. It's incredible and subtle, after all! He is one of those that cannot be retold, and trying to do so is a crime. This is Bradbury, in some ways even scary, frightening with the atmosphere and anxiety of Bradbury’s illogicality, delights me! Chic, bright, attractive and strange, but embracing, story. It’s even a phenomenon, not a story.

Rating: 9

Yes, how much it differs from other Chronicles stories... No, the style, the incredibly beautiful descriptions, and the leisurely style of storytelling, it remains. But some kind of joy, hope appeared. Many stories in the series end badly, there is no perspective, no development for the person. Man creates his own order on Mars, and the order devours man and destroys him completely. But in this story there is a path, a new path. To a new life, through changes that seem scary, because change is always scary. In general, the proverb that “one should not enter someone else’s monastery with one’s own rules” is well illustrated. Here, of course, there is no thought that Mars is alive, that it breathes and changes the people who come. But that’s exactly what I felt here.

And it also seems to be a certain sum of unsuccessful stories-attempts of people to master Mars using the same means =)

A beautiful story, and certainly one of the best in the Chronicles.

Rating: 10

40 years ago I first read this story by Ray Bradbury - it seems, in the magazine “Technology for Youth”, taken from the library of the pioneer camp where I spent the summer. And even then I realized: this story is about me, it predicts for me the fate of a wanderer, forced to settle down where fate has taken him. So, in general, that’s how it turned out...

Just think - 40 years ago, when I first read this story, and soon after it - "451 degrees Fahrenheit", "R is for Rocket" and "Dandelion Wine", their author had already been one of the most famous science fiction writers for 20 years planet, a living classic. And no matter how fashions in science fiction changed later, no matter what “waves” came and went, he remained so for another 40 years - until the very day of his death. And it will remain so, I believe, for hundreds and hundreds of years - as long as people are born who want and know how to read science fiction, even fiction from bygone eras...

Rating: 10

Reading Ray Bradbury in old periodicals, I, already at a more mature age, began to discover this author in a new, different way. And from a completely different, by no means fantastic prose and manner of writing, side. Bradbury has now become for me not just an author of a social genre, but a kind of prose writer - a poet, a singer, who sees the versatility and beauty of what is happening in the everyday everyday things of the monotony of our lives. He notices what an ordinary person completely loses sight of, brushing aside as if from a familiar and boring everyday continuous stream, blurring into monotony. He sees and gives meaning to everything from such a position and in such a sentimental perspective that, forcing us to follow him, he stops the frantic rhythm of our life and opens the reader’s eyes wide to the surrounding everyday life, pointing out its versatility and wonder. The magic and music of life in his works sounds like the rustle of grass and the rustle of falling leaves, where the ringing of such music will pass and will never be repeated again like this, but only with a new sound. And this is worth noticing and appreciating. And that something like this irrevocably slips through our fingers, ordinary people. And this is the true wealth of every person, this is Life. After all, this is precisely the life that is given to everyone for his awareness of himself as an individual and those around him, as a great Miracle that everyone should admire, as if you were still that naive child for whom the world is something huge and beautiful, and not hackneyed and boring. And this wonderful gift, this unique look is given to everyone. And what do we spend it on, how do we use it? But only in such a way that we position ourselves in the stupidest way to society and immediately try to present ourselves in the best possible light in it. Isn’t this stupidity and a complete waste of time, and life in general? We are trying to look somewhere out there, beyond the horizons, for a miracle invented by our rationality and logic. But it turns out that it has always been next to us, with us. It is within ourselves. Ray Bradbury writes and broadcasts about this in many of his most beautiful works.

This story is sad and beautiful at the same time. And he wonderfully notices and shows how the common man changes at the social, psychological and biological levels under the influence of the external environment and surrounding conditions. And Bradbury did this, as always, not in a boring professorial-scientific manner, but in his poetic-lyrical style. Just as at the end of the story, he talks about the arrival of Civilization, conquistador-like rude and monotonously stupid.

Rating: 9

The idea that earthlings eventually turn into Martians seemed strange to me: the eyes become golden, the skin becomes dark, the English language becomes Martian. Even an earthly cow grows a third horn, that is, it turns into a Martian cow. Science fiction writers usually don’t write about how earthlings, assimilating, turn into aliens. Moreover, Bradbury does not even explain what exactly turns earthlings into Martians: Martian air, Martian food, or some kind of Martian radiation.

Rating: 9

Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed

N. Gal, heirs, 2016

Edition in Russian. Eksmo Publishing House LLC, 2016

* * *

The children raised their heads and looked at him - the way people look at the sun to determine what time it is in their lives. His face froze.

– Is something wrong? - asked the wife.

- Let's go back to the rocket.

– Do you want to return to Earth?

- Yes. Listen!

They looked at the low Martian mountains, crushed by the weight of millennia. We looked at ancient cities, lost in the meadows, like fragile children's bones scattered in shifting lakes of grass.

- Heads up, Harry! - said the wife. - It's too late to retreat. We've flown over sixty million miles.

The blond children screamed loudly, as if challenging the high Martian sky. But there was no response, only the fast wind whistled through the coarse grass.

With cold hands the man picked up the suitcases.

He said this as if he was standing on the shore and had to go into the sea and drown.

They entered the city.

But the wife just shook her head:

– Sooner or later, the Earth will not escape the atomic bomb. And here we will survive.

“We’ll survive, but we’ll go crazy!”

“Tick tock, seven in the morning, time to get up!” - the alarm clock sang.

And they got up.

Some vague feeling forced Bitering to inspect and check everything around every morning, even the warm soil and bright red geraniums in pots, as if he was waiting - what if something bad happens?! At six in the morning, a rocket from Earth delivered a fresh, piping hot newspaper. Harry looked through it over breakfast. He tried to be sociable.

“Now everything is the same as it was at the time of settling new lands,” he reasoned cheerfully. – You’ll see, in ten years there will be a million earthlings on Mars. And there will be big cities, and everything in the world! But they said nothing would work out for us. They said the Martians would not forgive us for our invasion. Where are the Martians? We didn't meet a soul. They found empty cities, yes, but no one lives there. Am I right?

The house was swept by a stormy gust of wind. When the window panes stopped rattling, Bitering swallowed hard and looked around at the children.

“I don’t know,” said David, “maybe there are Martians around, but we don’t see them.” At night I seem to hear them sometimes. I hear the wind. Sand knocks on the window. I get scared sometimes. And then, there are still cities in the mountains where Martians once lived. And you know, dad, in these cities something seems to be hiding, someone is walking around. Maybe the Martians don't like us showing up here? Maybe they want to take revenge on us?

- Nonsense! – Bitering looked out the window. “We are decent people, not some pigs.” – He looked at the children. – Every extinct city has ghosts. That is, memories. “Now he was constantly looking into the distance, at the mountains. – You look at the stairs and think: how did the Martians walk along it, what did they look like? You look at Martian paintings and think: what was the artist like? And you imagine this little ghost, a memory. Quite natural. It's all fantasy. – He paused. “I hope you didn’t climb into these ruins and roam around there?”

David, the youngest of the children, looked down.

- No, dad.

“But something will happen,” said David. - You will see!

*** * ***

This happened on the same day. Laura walked down the street with unsteady steps, all in tears. Like a blind woman, she staggered and ran up onto the porch.

- Mom, dad... there is war on Earth! “She sobbed loudly. – There was just a radio signal. Atomic bombs have been dropped on New York! All interplanetary rockets exploded. Rockets will never fly to Mars again, never!

- Oh, Harry! “Mrs. Bithering staggered and grabbed hold of her husband and daughter.

– Is that right, Laura? – Bitering asked quietly.

“We’ll be lost on Mars, we’ll never get out of here!”

And for a long time no one said a word, only the early evening wind rustled.

“Alone,” thought Bitering. “There are only a measly thousand of us here.” And there is no return. No refund. No". He became hot with fear, he was sweating, his forehead, palms, and his whole body became wet. He wanted to hit Laura and scream: “It’s not true, you’re lying! The rockets will return! But he hugged his daughter, stroked her head and said:

– Someday the missiles will break through to us.

- What will happen now, father?

- We'll do our job. Cultivate fields, raise children. Wait. Life must go on as usual, and then the war will end and the missiles will arrive again.

Dan and David walked up onto the porch.

“Boys,” the father began, looking over their heads, “I need to tell you something.”

“We already know,” said the sons.

For several days after this, Bitering spent hours wandering around the garden, alone fighting his fear. While rockets were weaving their silver web between the planets, he could still put up with Mars. He kept telling himself: if I want, I’ll buy a ticket tomorrow and return to Earth.

And now the silver threads are torn, the rockets lie in a shapeless pile of melted metal frames and tangled wires. The people of Earth are abandoned on an alien planet, among the dark sands, in the heady wind; they will be hotly gilded by the Martian summer and put away in the granaries of the Martian winter. What will happen to him and his loved ones? Mars was just waiting for this hour. Now he will devour them.

Clutching the spade in shaking hands, Bitering knelt near the flowerbed. “Work,” he thought, “work and forget about everything in the world.”

He raised his eyes and looked at the mountains. These peaks once had proud Martian names. The earthlings who fell from the sky looked at the Martian hills, rivers, seas - all of this had names, but for the aliens everything remained nameless. Once upon a time the Martians built cities and gave names to the cities; climbed mountain peaks and gave names to the peaks; sailed the seas and gave names to the seas. The mountains crumbled, the seas dried up, the cities turned into ruins. Yet the Earthlings secretly felt guilty when they gave new names to these ancient hills and valleys.

End of introductory fragment.

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I want to live on Mars!

Both thought. He looked at his wife. She was tall, dark, slender, like her daughter. She looked at him, and he seemed young to her. Like the eldest son....They turned away from the valley. Holding hands, we silently walked along the path covered with a thin layer of cold, fresh water.

The fairy tale scared me as a child. There was a feeling of melancholy, hopelessness, and predetermination of events. Now it's just the opposite impression. Even deliberately exaggerated details (in the workshop he built a rocket from scrap material) are perceived differently: funny against the backdrop of degeneration into other creatures. There is no feeling of doom: life goes on and will be better, more interesting.

They fled from a terrible war. They were looking for peace and quiet for themselves and their children. They wanted to find a new home.
But what other future could earthlings give to the new planet, if not a repetition of history that happened on Earth? Yes, not much time would have passed, and billions of people, big cities and everything in the world would have appeared on Mars - as one of the heroes of the book saw it.
It wouldn't be Mars anymore.
With earthlings would come their passions and fears, troubles and joys, anxieties and sorrows. Not all of them are bad. But they are all earthly. Who said they have a place HERE?
Earthlings would invariably bring their hatred to Mars, from which they would not be able to escape, even after flying “sixty-odd million miles.”
And with it, war would come to Mars.
Mars did not want to die along with earthlings.
He could probably blow away a handful (for now) of aliens, the way we blow away the ashes from our palms.
But the wise ancient Mars was merciful to people.
Were they fleeing the war? Here they will never want to start it again.
People were looking for peace and quiet? He will be in them.
And the new home will become Familiar. For real.
People will get what they came for. Is it bad? Maybe that's right?..

One of the best, and perhaps the best, work of fiction of small form that I have read. Ray Bradbury differs from his colleagues in that he approaches the text not as a creator who knows all the ins and outs, but as a dreamy, talented teenager. Every step is a discovery. Every page is a new secret. While getting married, gaining experience, getting to know the world from different sides, the author inexplicably kept his “inner little boy” unclouded. It seems that death itself does not know how to approach him.
"They Were Dark and Golden-Eyed" refers to the non-canonical Martian Chronicles. On the one hand, this story is a hymn to personal freedom, on the other, a kind of redemptive ending to all the troubles brought to Mars by people. However, the basis of the story is the idea of the eternal, irresistible cycle of life, passing from one form to another. This is all Bradbury, who invariably preserves a grain of bright hope in the heart of sadness.

Bradbury they were dark and golden-eyed to read. Online reading of the book Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed by Ray Bradbury

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