In Bradbury's short story “The Million-Year Picnic” the survivors from the nuclear holocaust plan to set up their own colony on Mars and recreate a peaceful society of their own. This plan for their own peaceful society is one that is highly unlikely. The reason for this is that the more the population grows, the more variety of people and ideas that will spread. Like the political parties from Revolutionary America, the larger they grew, the more ideas spread, and split up into the many political parties of today. Similarly, the more people produced, the more ideas will arise, and arguments are impossible to avoid. Human nature will not allow this dream of a utopia to ever come true. Even if they are aiming for a peaceful society, not a perfect world, the arguments between people will amplify and become much larger than they are and eventually split up the people on Mars. This goal for a new, peaceful society on Mars is one that will most likely not happen as a result of growing numbers dividing up into different groups.

Furthermore, it displayed in “The Summer Night” the thousands of dead bodies and dead cities that the children wandered through for fun. Almost every story had the death of a person, whether it be a Martian or human being. The only positive sense in the book of expanding and conquering new land was the story “Way in the Middle of the Air,” in which the slaves escaped their lifestyle and was able to go to Mars. This is very similar to how the Americans escaped from the British in order to start a new life with a clean slate and do whatever they want to do. Other examples of this negative sense of conquering was shown in “The Musicians,” where the kids would play in the dead city and make it a game as if they were hiding the fact that they went to the city, and play in it before the Firemen came to burn it down. The final example for this negative sense was in “The Locusts,” where it portrayed large numbers of humans arriving at Mars and disrupting the natural beauty it once had.

We seem to be depicted as idiots trying to purposely confront the intruder as if he would accept us or we would naively think that extraterrestrials are in human form at least. Such is the case for the opening of War of the Worlds. The piece however is timeless in that we would still be awestruck and dumbfounded if such an event were to occur. If there would be no white flag raised in the face of danger as had been raised to greet the threat then we would deploy another means and that to would probably be just as inefficient.

Working is now an integrated part of greater London but that was the stage for a meteorite hit that proved to be more of a flying saucer crash landing, in the late 18 hundreds. One can appreciate the slow detailed effort at the unraveling of the mystery landing and the coming alive of whoever inhabited the ship. One can appreciate the obscure point of view detail of the heat ray being deployed against the crowd of curious observers. It all tells us of what would actually happen were there ever an accident of that magnitude somewhere on the planet. Then again there are avid readers who believe we have already been visited.