SOURCE: Valis, Noë M. “The Martian Chronicles and Jorge Luis Borges.” Extrapolation 20, no. 1 (spring 1979): 50-9.

In the following essay, Valis discusses Jorge Luis Borges's 1955 prologue to the Argentinean translation of The Martian Chronicles and its insights into Bradbury's work.

It may, at first glance, seem somewhat incongruous to juxtapose Ray Bradbury's immensely popular Martian Chronicles (1950), with the presumably more arcane and erudite Argentinian master of the intellectual puzzle, Jorge Luis Borges. What, after all, do Ray Bradbury and Jorge Luis Borges have in common? One could, of course, remark in very general terms that both have been and are writers of fantasy, that both prefer the short-story format to any other genre, and that both are prolific, especially in penning prefaces and prologs, but having said this, one has not said too much. There is, however, one specific connection they share—a prolog that Borges wrote in 1955 for...