The Illustrated Man (Voyager Classics)
by Ray Bradbury
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Read in June, 2008
Taking into account that most of the stories were written around 1950, I have to respect Bradbury's vision. It's not so much his imaginative inventions of the future world that are interesting, as his future-world characters', with their uncharacteristic of the fifties longings and shortcomings. Though hints of the fifties' attitude surface (women are not treated with much importance), it's largely his apolitical stand which impresses me. There is some allegory hinted at, but vague. Whether or n...more
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Read in June, 2008
I've often struggled against my own shame in reading science fiction - I want not to be ashamed, but the genre remains marginalized and somewhat ridiculed amongst most readers. Ray Bradbury has somehow escapred this stigma of being a sci-fi writer, perhaps by being chategorized as producing "Classics"? I am not sure. At any rate, I really enjoyed this, my first reading of Ray Bradbury.
Some of the stories are awfully dated, which robbed them a bit of the authenticity they may hav...more
Some of the stories are awfully dated, which robbed them a bit of the authenticity they may hav...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
Sci-fi lovers
The illustrated man is covered in tattoos that a witch gave him while he was laid up in bed. They come to life and if you watch them long enough they start to move and tell stories. They can even tell the future. The book is told as stories come alive one night as an unsuspecting man watches.
The stories are all excellent. They were written in the late 1940s & early 50s. It's interesting to see how some of the "future" dates have come and gone already. The themes of some of the ...more
The stories are all excellent. They were written in the late 1940s & early 50s. It's interesting to see how some of the "future" dates have come and gone already. The themes of some of the ...more
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Read in December, 2007
Bradbury's stories come off as a sort of literary twilight zone. Same cold-war paranoia, the same wierdnesses, the same sort of freudian imagery. The quality of the stories are usually good to high (there's a couple of flubs, but they're forgivable.) Unfortunately science fiction does not always age as gracefully as other forms of literature. Bradbury has a way of getting preachy from time to time, and his set-ups are sometimes painfully obvious. Also he can be a little into schtick (I mea...more
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To my mind (and admittedly limited experience) Bradbury is the best of the so-called "classic" sf writers, in that he's not just a "big ideas" kind of guy, he actually knows how to spin a tale. His writing is almost always top-notch, and while many of the stories in here are dated by now, they're still well constructed, with many dazzling passages. There's a story in here called "The Rocket Man" that's easily one of the best short stories I've read in a long time. T...more
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Read in June, 2008
Old sci-fi is old.
A lot of these stories are realllllllllly dated-feeling, especially the one where Mars is colonized by black people. It's always a weird feeling to read science fiction that's set in the future, and have that future be forty years ago already.
I was totally creeped out by the one about the veldt when I was in seventh grade. I can still summon up that creeped-out feeling, but it just doesn't have the punch it did when I was a young impressionable teen.
I finished th...more
A lot of these stories are realllllllllly dated-feeling, especially the one where Mars is colonized by black people. It's always a weird feeling to read science fiction that's set in the future, and have that future be forty years ago already.
I was totally creeped out by the one about the veldt when I was in seventh grade. I can still summon up that creeped-out feeling, but it just doesn't have the punch it did when I was a young impressionable teen.
I finished th...more
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Read in August, 1999
recommends it for:
fans of Bradbury's short stories
This is a powerful collection of short stories. The two that are my favorites are "The Veldt" and "The Fire Balloons." The first time I read this book, I wasn't sure what to expect. Little did I know that it contains "The Veldt," which I has seen on film in my 6th grade Creative Writing class. Even way back then, this struck me as a unique and haunting story, and I am forever grateful to my teacher and good friend Rhonda Selph for introducing me to it. (She pas...more
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Read in March, 2008
On the one hand, Bradbury is a brilliant user of language, and some of these stories are deservedly classics. On the other hand, there have probably been few science fiction writers who have been as actively contemptuous of science as Bradbury. Much of what is wrong with the world is because men don't believe in anything anymore and nobody lives in small towns anymore--and it's all Darwin and Oppenheimer's faults, don't you know?
If he wasn't a great writer, Bradbury might be a horrible writer...more
If he wasn't a great writer, Bradbury might be a horrible writer...more
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recommends it for:
sci-fi shortstory fans
I was dissapointed by this work. First of all, It is nothing more than a collection of short stories, strung together with the thread that a man at a camp fire has tattoo's that come alive and tell stories...cut to already published stories from bradbury that are pretty hit or miss. His prose style is fine, but his future stories seem very dated. most read like parables, and are pretty easy to guess the ending/point, by the end of the first paragraph. if you want to read some great Bradbury, try...more
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Read in January, 2005
recommends it for:
anyone
"The Veldt" is a must-read from this selection. In this story set in the not-too-distant future, the automated appliances and children's toys suck the life (literally and figuratively) out of a traditional family. It makes you wonder if we haven't already begun sliding down that slippery slope.
This short story among others are compiled and tied together through a man's magical tattoos. His body is covered in tattoos, and they animate to tell each story. Once again, Bradbury's langu...more
This short story among others are compiled and tied together through a man's magical tattoos. His body is covered in tattoos, and they animate to tell each story. Once again, Bradbury's langu...more
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Read in October, 2007
After only recently reading "Fahrenheit 451," this is only my second foray into the stories of Ray Bradbury. Many of the stories, surprisingly, tend to feel a bit dated (in a "quaint" kind of way)...full of rocket ships (which I would imagine as round-port-holed, carrot-shaped vehicles with sweeping, arcing fins) and talk of "Martians." Even though the science may seem mired in the beginnings of the atomic age, the stories themselves are full of timeless wonder (a...more
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A few very good stories, mostly set in the future or in space. "The Veldt" is about a family whose children have become controlled by a virtual reality veldt in their nursery, ending in a horror that pushes the line between fiction and reality. Other stories, such as "The Fire Balloons" and "Last Night of the World" are terrific, exploring broader themes such as religion, race, and all the unanswered questions of the universe that are as strange today as they were 5...more
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Read in January, 1913
To classify Bradbury as amere "science fiction" writer is doing him a grave disservice. Bradbury is a storyteller, a prophet, a seer, a philosopher and a damn good writer. I read this book in highschool and it forever changed the way I see sci fi. I still whip out my dog eared copy now and acgain to re-read 'the rocket man' (which surely must have influenced Elton John) and it touches me all over again. they are "good touches" and not "bad touches" which is why i do
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Read in January, 2000
This is a collection of short stories. Some of them are very creepy and depressing, but there were two of them that I especially liked. I can't remember the names of the two I liked, but one was the story of astronauts who land on a new planet and find that a mysterious person had just visited and the people were all excited about that first visit. And the other is of a father who builds a space ship for his children. Even the depressing stories though were interesting to think about.
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Read in August, 2003
recommends it for:
New readers, and people like me with a thing for tattoos
Again this is another collection of short stories from Bradbury which fit into a larger novel. Many of these shorts appear in his other collections, all of them good. And of course there is always the secret ... the secret of the Illustrated Man, who appears as a character in a couple of his other novels/stories as a symbol of the embodiment of human dreams, desires, secrets and fears. Learn his secret only at the end of this book, though (no skipping, you'll ruin it.)
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one of my favorites - a man walking along a road happens upon a stranger whose skin is completely covered in intricate tattoos. Intrigued, he stares at the inked scenes even after warned not to, and eventually they begin to act out different stories. Not only does this novel have a stellar collection of short science-fiction thrillers (which double as social critiques in true Bradbury form), but the broader tale of the roadside traveler is chilling as well.
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Read in August, 2000
recommends it for:
Everyone.
This book was read to me late at night by a campfire. I only heard the first chapter, but after hearing that I was hooked. Ray Bradbury soon became my favorite author, and this book became my favorite book. His style of writing is very descriptive, poetic, with little dialogue. That's okay, though, as I'm not a talker myself. He was the first author of my young-adult years to inspire me to write short stories. Of course, I copied his style to the T.
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Read in January, 1994
It's been a while since I read this book. I think the last time was the late 90's.
This is a collection of short stories, so it's one of the easier Bradbury reads. Good before-bed book since you can stop after one of the stories has ended.
It's dark, sad and a lot of people die in space. You know, you gotta love Bradbury. He has such high hopes for humanity. =) That being said, it's a wonderful book, 5 stars.
This is a collection of short stories, so it's one of the easier Bradbury reads. Good before-bed book since you can stop after one of the stories has ended.
It's dark, sad and a lot of people die in space. You know, you gotta love Bradbury. He has such high hopes for humanity. =) That being said, it's a wonderful book, 5 stars.
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Read in June, 2008
Again, I'm not usually a fan of short stories. But I am a fan of SciFi and of this short story collection. The stories are loosely held together (really just the intro and epilogue) by a man that appears to a stranger, covered in illustrations that come to life at night. The stranger is seeing each illustration (short story) play out. Ray Bradbury as usual has great foresight of where society can go - usually to Mars.
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One of my all-time favorite collections of short stories. I've read it a half-dozen times at least. The story "The Veldt" was my first foray into Bradbury, back in middle school under the tutelage of an excellent English teacher, and will forever remain one of my favorite pieces of short fiction ever written.
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