The Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury wrote The Martian Chronicles which is a series of slightly connected short stories rather than a novel.  The stories are science fiction and are set on Mars.  On Bradbury's Mars, humans can breathe the air safely but it's thin, as if Mars were set at 10,000 feet above Earth.  The first third of the book are short stories about humans trying to land and colonize Mars while the Martians stop them.  The middle third regards the  humans settling on Mars because most of the Martians have been killed by a germ brought to their planet.  The final third is the devastation brought by an inter-global nuclear war.  I found it interesting that even though Bradbury wrote these stories in the 1940's, the conflicts and issues he brings up are current events.  In the middle section, there was one story I found very thought provoking.  A minister was trying to convert the Martians. He tried to create religious icons that looked like Martians. At this time, most Martians had died and the few that were left looked like glowing blue globes.  His fellow ministers scoffed, saying Martians are not human and cannot be converted.  They said you can't convert a paramecium because they don't have limbs and are incapable of committing a sin.  The Martians, appearing as blue globes, also don't have limbs and therefore can't commit a sin.  It's not every book that has me contemplating the nature of sin. I'm not a huge science fiction fan anymore, but this was a really good book.