The book projects American society immediately after World War II into a technologically advanced future where the amplification of humanity's potentials to create and destroy have miraculous and devastating consequences.

The outcomes of many stories raise concerns about the values and direction of America of the time by addressing militarism, science, technology and war-time prosperity that could result in a global nuclear war (e.g., "There Will Come Soft Rains" and "The Million-Year Picnic"); depopulation that might be considered genocide (e.g., "The Third Expedition", "—And the Moon Be Still as Bright" and "The Musicians"); racial oppression and exploitation (e.g., "Way in the Middle of the Air"); ahistoricism, philistinism, and hostility towards religion (e.g., "—And the Moon Be Still as Bright"); censorship and conformity (e.g., "Usher II").

Jeff Spender, a crew member with the Fourth Expedition, becomes repelled by the others' ugly American attitude as they explore a dead Martian city and begins to kill the others for their disrespect of the ruins.

A tall tale concerning Benjamin Driscoll, who Johnny Appleseed-like, is an emigrant who is threatened to be returned to Earth because he has difficulty breathing due to the thin Martian atmosphere.

"Night Meeting" is the story of Tomás Gomez, a young Latino construction worker on Mars, who drives his truck across an empty expanse between towns to attend a party, and his encounters along the way with an elderly gas station owner and a Martian who appears to him as a phantom.

The mayor tells the priests that the Martians look like blue "luminous globes of light" and they saved the life of an injured prospector working in a remote location by transporting him to a highway.

As in "Ylla" the Martians understand Father Peregrine's fond memories of his grandfather and the Fourth of July celebrations they shared together involving fire balloons before and after the Crucifix lands on Mars.

According to Isiah Lavender III, "Bradbury is one of the very few authors in [science fiction] who dared to consider the effects and consequences of race in America at a time when racism was sanctioned by the culture.

As the migrants pass the store, Teece's wife, accompanied by the wives of other men on the porch, asks her husband to come home to prevent their house servant, Lucinda, from leaving.

Garrett watches additional killings performed in a similar manner that he remembers from Poe's "The Premature Burial", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and one other from "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".

LaFarge goes into town to find the boy and meets Mike who tells him that Joe Spaulding and his wife found their daughter, Lavinia, on Main Street while buying their theater tickets.

The shop owner tells the priest of the hundred thousand new emigrants expected in the coming months and Peregrine comments that the travelers will be needed on Earth and that they'll probably be turning back.

The Parkhills hope to become wealthy because one hundred thousand new emigrants are expected to arrive to establish Earth Settlement 101 nearby, though Elma points out that the new inhabitants will be Mexican and Chinese nationals.

At two o'clock in the morning, colonists receive a message that war had begun, that a stockpile of nuclear weapons "prematurely" detonated destroying the Australian continent, and that Los Angeles and London had been bombed.

In the abandoned home, he obtains a colony telephone directory and starts calling the listed numbers in alphabetal order but stops after contacting a woman's automated message service.

Hathway tells Wilder that he visits Jeff Spender's tomb annually to pay his respects, and about Sam Parkhill's hot dog stand which was abandoned a week after opening to return to Earth.

An unoccupied, highly automated house of the McClellan family that stands and operates intact in a California city that is otherwise obliterated by a nuclear bomb, and its destruction by a fire caused by a windstorm.

The title of the story was taken from Sara Teasdale's anti-war poem "There Will Come Soft Rains" originally published in 1918 during World War I and the 1918 Flu Pandemic.

"The Million-Year Picnic" is the story of William Thomas, a former governor of the state of Minnesota and Alice, his wife, and three sons, who traveled to Mars to escape war under the parents' pretense that the family is taking a fishing trip.

William remotely detonates the family's rocket that causes a great sound, throttles the boat faster to drown out the noise and collides with a wharf and stops.

The family settles around a campfire and William explains how he purchased the rocket when the Great War started and hid it in case he needed to escape Earth, as Edwards did too.

[23] The author said the stories took their form as combinations of component "Martian pensées" which were "Shakespearian 'asides,' wandering thoughts, long night visions, predawn half-dreams" honed in a manner inspired by the perfection of Saint-John Perse.

The idea of using short vignettes, intercalary chapters, and expository narratives to connect the full-length Chronicle stories, their role in the overall work, and the literary style used to write them, Bradbury said were "subconsciously borrowed" from those in The Grapes of Wrath, which he first read at age nineteen, the year the novel was published.

[35] In an introduction to a 2015 edition of the work, Canadian astronaut and former International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield speculated on the continuing popularity of the work, attributing it to beautiful descriptions of the Martian landscape, its ability to "challenge and inspire" the reader to reflect on humanity's history of related follies and failures, and the popular idea that someday some people will come to accept Mars as being their permanent home.

[41] In 1988, the Soviet Armenian studio Armenfilm produced the feature film The 13th Apostle, starring Juozas Budraitis, Donatas Banionis, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, based on The Martian Chronicles.

[47] The work received its initial readings from the Harriet Lake Festival of New Plays at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater in 2006,[48] and was presented in workshop form in the inaugural season of the Fordham University Lincoln Center Alumni Company in 2008.

[51] Three scenes were presented as a workshop production with immersive staging, directed by Carlos Armesto of Theatre C and conducted by Benjamin Smoulder at Miami University, Oxford OH on September 17–19, 2015.

This truncated version contained elements of the stories "Rocket Summer", "Ylla", "–and the Moon Be Still as Bright", "The Settlers", "The Locusts", "The Shore", "The Off Season", "There Will Come Soft Rains", and "The Million-Year Picnic".

A BBC Radio 4 adaption, produced by Andrew Mark Sewell as an hour-long programme and starring Derek Jacobi as Captain Wilder, was broadcast on June 21, 2014, as part of the Dangerous Visions series.

Rock Hudson starred as Wilder, Darren McGavin as Parkhill, Bernadette Peters as Genevieve Selsor, Bernie Casey as Jeff Spender, Roddy McDowall as Father Stone, and Barry Morse as Hathaway, as well as Fritz Weaver.