'Mars is Heaven!'

[cyberghostface]

"My first real experience with real horror came at the hands of Ray Bradbury – it was an adaptation of his story 'Mars is Heaven!' on Dimension X. This would have been broadcast around 1951, which would have made me four at the time. I asked to listen, and was denied permission by my mother. 'It's on too late,' she said, 'and it would be much too upsetting for a little boy your age.' ... I crept down to the door to listen anyway, and she was right: it was plenty upsetting... I didn’t sleep in my bed that night; that night I slept in the doorway, where the real and rational light of the bathroom bulb could shine on my face." -- Stephen King, Danse Macabre

This comes from Weird Science #18.

It is the 1960s and the first spaceship from Earth is landing on Mars. The crew are shocked to discover a Rockwellian small town, eerily similar to those they left on Earth. The strangely familiar people in the town believe it is 1926. Crew members soon discover old friends and deceased relatives in the town.

Comments

[blues32]

Man, people are way too trusting in these stories. If your dead relatives appear before you in an old fashion town on another planet...there are some questions that should be asked and some answers not accepted. "Why are you alive and on Mars?" should not be brushed aside with, "Well, why were we alive and on Earth before?" That is not a question that should be answered with a question.

[numeronone]

I recall a young adult book of my childhood with a similar premise - Robin Jarvis' "Deathscent". The big concept was that a selection of people from the Elizabethan era (including Queen Bess herself and all her court) were somehow transported to a habitable moon, there to recreate their society. It was never explained whether they were alien abductees, clones, what have you. Or what had happened to Earth...

[mister_terrific]

And to think this isn't the most terrifying Bradbury story I've ever read!

"...it was when the jellyfish called you by name..."

"And then, some idiot turned on the lights."

[blues32]

I recognize that last one. "The witch came to harm and this is her arm..."

[zenfrodo]

Oh hell, I'd totally, mercifully, forgotten about that nightmareish "turn on the lights" tale until now.:runs screaming in terror:

The comic tale, though -- wasn't it in one of Bradbury's Martian tales anthologies first? S Is For Space, maybe?

[mister_terrific]

I went through my collection and I can definitely attest it's in The Martian Chronicles under "The Third Expedition". It might be elsewhere too, I can't say.

The jellyfish line came from "Skeleton" in The October Country, BTW.

[zenfrodo]

Thanks. 😁 Memory's definitely the second thing to go when one gets old...along with all the books that friends borrow over the years & never return.

I found Martian Chronicles over on archive.org, spent a wonderful day rereading, and I'd also forgotten how much it was a scary horrific bundle of terror, especially to a grade school kid in the 1970s.

[numeronone]

I swear EC did another story like this where Venus turns out to be hell. As memory serves, it involved an astronaut hugging Hitler.

[lissa_quon]

Yep - I was confused for a moment that this wasn't that story.

[ladymidath]

Ray Bradbury was my gateway into science fiction and speculative fiction. This is one pof my favourite stories.

[redmagpie]

it does feel like the lesson here is 'don't invade mars'

[blues32]

They didn't even try to invade, they were just exploring.

[mazway_75]

I remember that radio show which is actually "X Minus 1." The turn is so many accepting except a doctor who relates he lost everyone he loved in the Holocaust and is told someone named "Anna" is coming. The problem, as he tells the captain is that there is no Anna, she was just someone he hallucinated in his mind and only reading his subconscious could they know about it.

Plus freaky how they have the voice of the Martians shifting and ending of the captain on the radio pleading with Earth not to send anyone else as they start breaking down the door. Good adaptation of it.