matt_bitonti 's review for:

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

4.0

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Primarily I'd like to critique "The Other Foot." Which seems like a progressive story on the surface but it's actually rife with uncomfortable suppositions and conclusions. First off, it breezes right by the decision to eject all black people (or is it just black Americans) from the planet Earth. That probably wasn't a fun time for anyone. How did that process work, exactly? Take an entire ethnic group, round them up, load them into rockets and shoot them off to Mars? I'm sure they were all so happy to be exiled from the green Earth, sent to a rugged wasteland and have to build from scratch. Then, a couple decades later, the Martians accept the old Earth man without revenge. Sure, they had revenge instincts at first but are talked out of it by the news that everything is destroyed. This is not good news. It's like not only did the Earth kick all the blacks off the planet, then the same geniuses who made that decision, ruined the planet. The Martians not only forgive this man but claim to understand him and welcome all the other Earth refugees as equals? It's a nice thought but for the citizens of Mars to just dissolve their mob, accept the man and forgive him, it's unrealistic. That's not how mobs work. It's almost like Ray Bradbury is implying that the Martians are a higher, more noble evolution of human. Which might make sense if there was more than 20 years between the exile and the war. Let's be real, the real way this would actually go is the Martians would tell the old Earth man to go screw himself. But it raised questions and made me think which is why this book is worth reading.