edition, and the 1997 edition of The Martian Chronicles. Plot In Independence, Missouri, a woman, Janice Smith, expects a telephone call at midnight from her fiancée Will on Mars. He has already purchased a home on Mars identical to her home on Earth. His response after the long delay due to the distance to Mars is incomplete due to natural interference so, she only hears him say "love". Smith contemplates being a pioneer as the women before her, and then falls asleep for the last time on Earth. June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air Publication history First appeared in the first edition of The Martian Chronicles and not included in the 1997 edition. The work later appeared in the July 1950 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories after five major magazines rejected the manuscript drafted in 1948. Bradbury explained that the drafting of "Way in the Middle of the Air" was a common way he used writing to address his emotional state affecting him at a moment. He recalled in a 1962 interview that he was so upset about the circumstances of African-Americans in the United States that "I put them in rocket ships and send them off to Mars, in a short story, to rid myself of that tension". Publication of "Way in the Middle of the Air" in 1950 was groundbreaking for a science fiction story even though the work is considered limited by providing only the viewpoint of white Americans. 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." Even with the story's limitations, Robert Crossley suggested that it might be considered "the single most incisive episode of black and white relations in science fiction by a white author." Plot "Way up in the Middle of the Air" is the story about Samuel Teece, a white racist and terrorist hardware store owner in an unnamed town in the Jim Crow era American South of 2003, and his efforts to dissuade the African-Americans in the town area from emigrating to Mars. Teece and a group of white men sit on the porch of his hardware store when they see a flood of black families and others marching into town with their belongings. One of the men