Hi. I am looking for a short story with a particular plot and I think Mr. Bradbury wrote it. General plot is humans are colonizing Mars. Like in the westward expansion of America, the men went first, settled, got started and then sent for their wifes.

This story has men going to Mars and doing the same thing. The plot as the woman (wife/finance) waiting on Earth for a radio message from her man (husband/finance). She has a friend with her and the story tells of the woman showing the friend a photo of the house the man has built on Mars. It is a replica of a house the woman knows of/lives in on Earth.

It is the ending I remember well. In the last paragraph, the author (Bradbury?) writes how the message/transmission is stripped of words by the distance, electromagnetic interference and maybe some other things. The only word the woman hears is "Love".

If this is not Bradbury, I would still like the story name and author. Thank you.

Now, that is a coincidence, as I just came across this story two evenings ago... The title of the story is "The Wilderness" and it can be found in Bradbury's book of short stories The Golden Apples of the Sun. (And also in the volume Twice 22 which contains the books Golden Apples and A Medicine for Melancholy.)

Since "The Wilderness" was a Martian story published after the first printing of "The Martian Chronicles," it does not appear there, but does anyone know if it is in later editions? I need to know whether to mark it "MC" or "non-MC" on the list.

Boy, do I feel dumb! The story "The Wilderness" is in fact a part of The Martian Chronicles (as well as Golden Apples of the Sun)--I don't know why I didn't think to look for it there in the first place. I'm not sure when the story was added to the book; it was part of the book by 1974, apparently, since the chapter appears in the Heritage Press edition of that year.

Thank you for the replies. My email has been down due to password failure so i did not get any emails sent.