Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories selected by Orson Welles (1949)

Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories, selected by Orson Welles (1949)

At left: Paperback original (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1949), #305, 191 p. Ten short stories with an introduction by Orson Welles. Cover painting by Malcolm Smith. Back cover has a map for "The Million Year Picnic.”

Although the book contains ten short stories, less than half pertain to Mars:

• “Invasion from Mars,” by Howard Koch. This is the script to the radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, which was presented by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air, October 30, 1938.

• “The Green Hills of Earth,” by Robert A. Heinlein, from The Saturday Evening Post (February 8, 1947). A “space bum” wanders around the universe writing songs.

• “Expedition,” by Anthony Boucher, from Captain Future Magazine (1943). The Martians attempt another invasion of Earth.

• "The Million Year Picnic,” by Ray Bradbury, from Planet Stories (Summer 1946). “Another group of fugitives from the grim results of man’s inhumanity to man finds a fairer sanctuary on Mars.” This story later became the final chapter in Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950).

The full list of short stories that appear in Invasion from Mars: Interplanetary Stories is at Locus Online. As a search of Locus’ Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections, Combined Edition, reveals, all of these stories have appeared in other anthologies.