Chapter Twenty four – The Watchers (November 2005/2036) first appeared in The Martian Chronicles. The colonists witness a nuclear war on Earth, from Mars. They immediately return out of concern for their friends and families.

Chapter Twenty five – The Silent Towns (December 2005/2036) first published in Charm, March 1949. Everybody has left Mars to go to Earth, except Walter Gripp — a single miner who lives in the mountains and does not hear of the departure. At first excited by his find of an empty town, he enjoys himself with money, food, clothes, and movies. He soon realizes he misses human companionship. One night he hears a telephone ringing in someone’s home, and suddenly realizes that someone else is alive on Mars. Missing the call, and several others, he sits down with a phone book of Mars and starts dialing at A.

After days of calling without answers, he starts calling hotels. After guessing where he thinks a woman would most likely spend her time, he calls the biggest beauty salon on Mars and is delighted when a woman answers. They talk, but are cut off. Overcome with romantic dreams, he drives hundreds of miles to New Texas City, only to realize that she drove to find him on a back road. He drives back to his town, and meets Genevieve Selsor as he pulls in.

Their meeting is the opposite of what he had hoped for in his dreams — he finds her thoroughly unattractive (due to her weight and pallor), foolish and insipid. After a sullen day, she slyly proposes marriage to him at dinner, as they believe they are the last man and the last woman on Mars. Gripp decides to run, driving across Mars to another tiny town to spend his life alone, ceasing all contact with Genevieve.

Chapter Twenty six – The Long Years (April 2026/2057) first published as “Dwellers in Silence” in Maclean’s, September 15, 1948. Hathaway (the doctor from the Fourth Expedition) is living retired on Mars with his family, even though everyone else has departed. Hathaway is a mechanical tinkerer, who has wired an old town below their house to sound alive at night with noise and phone calls. One night, he sees a rocket in orbit, and sets fire to the old town to signal the rocket.

Captain Wilder (also from the earlier stories about the Fourth Expedition) finally returns to Mars after twenty years exploring the outer solar system. They land and have a reunion with Hathaway, who is troubled by his heart. Undeterred, Hathaway brings the crew to his house for breakfast. Wilder remarks that Hathaway’s wife looks exactly as she did many years ago, as he knows her real age and knew her in the past. One of Wilder’s crew pales when he sees Hathaway’s children, knowing that the son should be the same age as he. Wilder sends the crewmember off to check some headstones that he saw when they landed. He returns, and says that the adults now before them are buried.

Wilder offers Hathaway a rescue back to Earth, but Hathaway’s heart fails and he dies, begging Wilder not to call his family because they “would not understand.” Wilder then confirms that Hathaway’s wife and adult children are androids.

As Wilder prepares to depart, one of the crew returns to the house with a pistol, but shortly after returns, having been unable to bring himself to kill the robotic family even knowing that they were not truly human. The rocket departs, and the android family continues on with its meaningless daily life.

Chapter Twenty seven – There Will Come Soft Rains (August 4, 2026/2057) first published in Collier’s, May 6, 1950. The story concerns a household in Allendale, California, after the nuclear war has wiped out the population. Though the family is dead, the automated house that had taken care of the family still functions.

The reader learns a great deal about what the family was like from how the robots continue on in their functions. Breakfast is automatically made, clothes are laid out, voice reminders of daily activities are called out, but no one is there. Robotic mice vacuum the home and tidy up. As the day progresses, the rain quits, and the house prepares lunch and opens like a flower to the warm weather. Outside, a vivid image is given: the family’s silhouettes were permanently burned onto the side of the house (as occurred at Hiroshima) when they were vaporized by the nuclear explosion. That night, a storm crashes a tree into the home, starting a fire that the house cannot combat, as the municipal water supply has dried up and failed.

The title of the story comes from a poem, randomly selected by the house to read at bedtime, also titled “There Will Come Soft Rains”. The theme of the poem is that nature will survive after humanity is gone, reflecting the theme of the story; that even the vast cities of humanity will eventually be reclaimed by nature. In the original story in Collier’s, the story took place 35 years into the future, on April 28, 1985.

Chapter Twenty eight – The Million-Year Picnic (October 2026/2057) first published in Planet Stories, Summer 1946. A family saves a rocket that the government would have used in the nuclear war and leaves Earth on a “fishing trip” to Mars. The family picks a city to live in and call home. They go in and Dad burns tax documents and other government papers on a camp fire, explaining that he is burning a way of life that was wrong. The final thing to go on the fire is a map of the Earth. Later, he offers his sons a “gift” in the form of their new world. He introduces them to Martians: their own reflections in a canal.

Chapter Nineteen – Usher II (April 2005/2036) first published as Carnival of Madness in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1950. “Usher II” tells of Bradbury’s and other writers’ fear of censorship. A literary expert named William Stendahl retreats to Mars and builds his image of the perfect haunted mansion, complete with mechanical creatures, creepy soundtracks and the application of many tons of poison to kill every living thing in the surrounding area. He is assisted by Pikes, a film aficionado and former actor whose collection was confiscated and destroyed by the government and was subsequently banned from performing. When the Moral Climate Monitors come to visit, Stendahl and Pikes arrange to kill each of them in a manner reminiscent of a different horror masterpiece, culminating in the murder of Inspector Garrett in a sequence reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”. When Stendahl’s persecutors are dead, the house sinks into the lake as in Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

Bradbury hints at past events on Earth, set in 1975 – 30 years prior to the events in “Usher II.” A government-sponsored ‘Great Burning’ of books is described, followed by the emergence of an underground society of citizens possessing small hoardings of books, the ownership of which had been declared illegal. Those found to possess books had them seized and burned by fire crews. Mars apparently emerged as a refuge from the fascist censorship laws of Earth, until the arrival of a government organization referred to only as “Moral Climates” and their enforcement divisions, the “Dismantlers” and “Burning Crew”. Bradbury would reuse the concept of massive government censorship (to the point of abolishing all literature) in his book Fahrenheit 451.

In 2010 Los Angeles artist Allois, in collaboration with Bradbury, released an illustrated copy of Usher and Usher 2 double feature.

Chapter Twenty – The Old Ones (August 2005/2036) first appeared in The Martian Chronicles. It is a very brief prelude to the following story, describing the immigration of elderly people to Mars.

Chapter Twenty one – The Martian (September 2005/2036) first published in Super Science Stories, November 1949. LaFarge and his wife Anna have forged a new life for themselves, but they still miss their dead son Tom. A night thunderstorm startles the elderly pair, who see a figure standing outside their home in the rain. Anna retires to bed afraid, while LaFarge believes that somehow, Tom is standing before him. He leaves his house unlocked.
That morning, “Tom” is busy helping Anna with chores. LaFarge sees that Anna is somehow unaware of Tom’s death, and after speaking privately with him, LaFarge learns that “Tom” is a Martian with an empathic shapeshifting ability: it appears as their dead son to them.

Later that day, Anna insists on a visit to the town. “Tom” is deathly afraid of being so close to so many people. LaFarge promises to keep him close, but at the town they become separated. While searching for “Tom”, LaFarge hears that the Spaulding family in town has miraculously found their lost daughter Lavinia. Desperate to avoid a second devastating heartbreak to his wife, LaFarge stands outside Spaulding’s home and finds “Tom” now masquerading as Lavinia. He is able to coax “Tom” to come back, and they run desperately back for their boat to leave town. However, everyone “Tom” passes sees a person of their own — a lost husband, a son, a criminal. The Martian, exhausted from his constant shape-changing, spasms and dies.

Chapter Twenty two – The Luggage Store (November 2005/2036) first appeared in The Martian Chronicles. The story of Mars and its inhabitants is continued in a discussion between a priest and a luggage storeowner. Nuclear war is imminent on Earth, and the priest predicts that most of the colonists will return to help.

Chapter Twenty three – The Off Season (November 2005/2036) first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1948. On Mars, former Fourth Expedition member Parkhill has opened a hot-dog stand, when a lone Martian walks in. Parkhill panics and kills him. Suddenly, numerous Martians appear in sand ships. Parkhill takes his wife to his own sand ship and flees. The Martians catch up and give Parkhill a message: he now owns half of Mars. Unfortunately, the fleet of rockets filled with “hungry customers” won’t be coming to patronize his restaurant, as the nuclear war has begun on Earth.