Did science fiction brainwash us into wanting to go to space? I can remember being a little kid in the 1950s and thinking the most exciting thing I could do in life was to go Mars. Before that I wanted to be a cowboy. If you’re old enough to remember television in the 1950s, most of the shows were westerns. That’s why most little boys back then had Santa bring them a six-gun and cowboy outfit for Christmas. But then we discovered science fiction and Project Mercury, and we traded in our cowboy hat for a space helmet.

My most common daydreams in adolescence after the XXX kind, were about going to Mars. Fantasies about becoming a rockstar came in a distant third. Looking back, I realize how unrealistic my teenage hopes for the future were. I was completely clueless as to what girls wanted, couldn’t carry a tune, and I most definitely didn’t have the right stuff. At seventy-three I see the absurdity of my childhood fantasies, so why didn’t I see them then?

Ray Bradbury is often accused of not being a true science fiction writer. Even as he started selling short stories to science fiction magazines in the 1940s, he knew he didn’t want to be labeled a science fiction writer. Yet, somehow, his very unscientific science fiction from back then has the heart and soul of science fiction, especially his stories collected in The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man.

“The Rocket Man” first appeared in The Illustrated Man and Maclean’s in early 1951. It’s about a 14-year-old boy who cherishes the few days his father is home from space. The father is always going off for three-month tours of duty as a rocket man. He tells the boy and his mother that when he’s in space he can’t wait to get home, but when he’s home, he can’t wait to get back to space. “The Rocket Man” deglamarizes space travel. In fact, the dad eventually asks his son to promise to never go into space.

The main reason Bradbury’s science fiction stories are great is because he sees both the fantasy and reality of science fiction. Bradbury is obviously obsessed with remembering childhood, but somehow, he was wise when young too.

You can read “The Rocket Man” online here.

By the way, the essence of the story is captured wonderfully in Elton John’s song “Rocket Man.” My favorite version of that song is this bluegrass cover:

But the question I want to explore is why did we all want to go into space? What’s so hot about outer space, the Moon, Mars, etc.? Why did we buy into those dreams that science fiction was selling?

My fantasy was always Mars. But Mars is only a planet that a geologist could love. There ain’t nothing there but rocks and cold. Why did reading The Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein make me think the best place in existence was Mars? Why does rereading The Martian Chronicles elicit so much intense nostalgia? And why do I think “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” is the epitomy of Martian fantasies?

Over the decades I’ve come to realize that the fantasies we embrace as young children are ones we seldom give up. That’s why kids who embrace religion when little seldom give up God and Heaven no matter how convincing science and logic are at invaliding their faith. Some people never let go of their Christian fantasies, and I never gave up science fiction fantasies. We’re all delusional.

Brian Collins at Science Fiction & Fantasy Remembrance seemed depressed in his current post. His solution is to read old science fiction and fantasy. That’s been my solution too when I think about the state of the world and U.S. politics. Even as a kid, I never really believed I would go into space, but thinking about it was a wonderful way to soothe the stresses of growing up. And now reading science fiction is the balm for growing old.

James Wallace Harris, 4/1/25

7 thoughts on ““The Rocket Man” by Ray Bradbury”

  1. “But the question I want to explore is why did we all want to go into space?”

    Numerous reasons, of which SF is only one and IMO unimportant reason. Dreams of going into space were around before SF became popular here in the U.S. Look up Konstantine Tsiolkovsky or the British Interplanetary Society or others. I don’t like to say it, but SF content almost always FOLLOWS trends in science by years or decades rather than lead them.

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  2. Pingback: The Rocket Man: An Enduring Science Fiction Classic #SciFiSunday « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers!

  3. Many thanks for this lovely piece about Bradbury. I’ve always loved his work, however one regards it–as SF, or part of a tradition of American fantasy (Hawthorne, Poe, Lovecraft, Bierce, etc.) or both. Even as a boy, I never seriously dreamed of going to outer space, but maybe this was because I was born in 1964 and grew up in the seventies, when the space age was already receding. (There’s a fascinating collection of stories by J.G. Ballard, Memories of the Space Age, on this theme.)

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      1. The book was published by Arkham, so it might be hard to find, but I hope you can find it. (If not, most of the various stories appear in Ballard’s other collections.) The cover has a wonderful painting by Max Ernst. I love it when surrealist art is used to illustrate SFF.

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        2. That would probably include the stories in Memories of the Space Age, but it would be nice to find that particular book, with its focus, and wonderful illustrations–not just the Ernst on the cover, but also the ones inside–not sure who did them.

          By the way, Ballard admired Bradbury’s stories, which is interesting considering how different their work is.

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