The Illustrated Man

by Ray Bradbury

He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could bear the voiced murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body.

The Illustrated Man

Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. A peerless American storyteller, his oeuvre has been celebrated for decades--from The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury --a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin--visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body.

The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness ... the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere ... the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets.

Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the Grandmaster's premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.

He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body.

Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. A peerless American storyteller, his oeuvre has been celebrated for decades--from The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is classic Bradbury--a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin--visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body.

The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness...the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere...the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Ray Bradbury's THE ILLUSTRATEDMAN is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the Grandmaster's premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction Fantasy

332 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1951

About the author

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).

The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".

Reviews

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a review once that described Robert A. Heinlein as a creepy old uncle who drinks too much at parties and who makes embarrassing comments, but who everyone likes in spite of his outdated ways – kind of a loveable rogue.

Ray Bradbury, similar but by contrast, is like the dotty old professor whom everyone cannot help but love and who overlook his eccentricities. His stories are as warm and imaginative as a summer afternoon. And all due respect to Fahrenheit 451, which is a fine novel, but I submit that Bradbury’s great contribution to literature arises from his short stories, he is a master of the medium.

And just as Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke are the “Big Three” and are the masters and founders of modern science fiction, Bradbury is an atavist, a throwback to Wells and Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs – he is our last link to a simpler time, before the age of information, before everything was required to be explained in scientific detail.

Where Heinlein will go into great detail to explain the mathematical elements of a hyperspace warp drive and how it affects the space –time continuum, Bradbury would simply write, “and they got in the rocket and went to Mars.”

Beautifully simple and imaginative.

And, let’s just get it out on the table – what about Mars? I think that to Bradbury, Mars was not just the fourth planet, Mars was a representative of “another place”. Mars was the “out there”, was Bradbury’s Neverland, his Wonderland.

The Illustrated Man is a collection of short stories, many that take up from the The Martian Chronicles with his fascination with Mars as an alternate reality, loosely connected with a centerpiece of a tattooed carnival worker whose body art moves and shifts and tells stories.

Wonderfully imaginative, quintessential Bradbury.

*** 2025 reread -

Intoxicating.

This book demonstrates Bradbury's great range while focusing on the the unsettling and arcane portions of his canon.

I especially enjoyed the following short stories of the nineteen published:

The Veldt - one of his most creepy and powerful.

Kaleidoscope - Perhaps my favorite short story from him. Beautiful and scary at the same time, its all about perspective.

The Last Night of the World - quiet and thought provoking.

The Illustrated Man - told like a ghost story.

For fans and this may also be a good introduction to new readers of his work. Highly recommended.

[Adina ( not enough time ) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Illustrated Man is another strong collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. I like that most fit together and form a whole. Although the setting is SF, the themes are more about humanity. It is about family, friendship, war, greed, weakness, love, hate. The tone of the stories is mainly bleak, some of the entries left me quite depressed. Some stories did not age well, but many are still quite relevant.

This is my 3rd Ray Bradbury and my 2nd short story collection by him. He is an absolute champion of the short form. I will try to write something about the stories as I listen to them.

. Prologue: The Illustrated Man 4*
A good introduction to the theme that bring all the other stories together
· The Veldt [“The World the Children Made”] 5*
A rich family buys an automated house who does everything for them. They also have a Nursery, where their children's thoughts become real on the walls. The images start to become too real and violent. Creepy and a lesson in parenting.
· Kaleidoscope 4*
A story about the final moments of a rocket crew after it explodes and they float in space.
· The Other Foot 4*
The last remaining whites on Earth want to migrate to a planet populated only by black people. There is some resentment there.
· The Highway 3*
A man and a woman live near a highway and have no idea what happens with the world.
· The Man 2*
Two astronauts visit a planet one day after it was visited by a "man", who acted similar to a prophet.
· The Long Rain 5*
Some soldiers go mad when they get lost on a planet where it rains all the time
· The Rocket Man 4*
The tall on a family when the father is always away.
· The Fire Balloons
· The Last Night of the World 4*
Creepy
· The Exiles 3*
· No Particular Night or Morning 3*
A crazy guy philosophies about existence
· The Fox and the Forest 2*
· The Visitor · 3*
· The Concrete Mixer ·
· Marionettes, Inc. [Marionettes, Inc.] 4*
A creepy story about replacing people with Marionettes (robots).
· The City [“Purpose”]
· Zero Hour 4*
A creepy lesson in parenting. Do not let them unsupervised for long periods of time.
· The Rocket [“Outcast of the Stars”] 4*
The Illustrated man (Epilogue) 5*

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And I think it's gonna be a long long time
'Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone”

Rocket Man – Elton John – Inspired by a story from The Illustrated Man

Sometimes when I read Ray Bradbury, I feel like I am not worthy.

That was definitely the case this time! Not just a 5 star book – all the starts in the universe!

Bradbury is a master story teller. He is a weaver of the unique and bizarre. His words and stories dig into your brain and set up shop. What once seemed normal . . . what once seemed reasonable . . . will quickly become unstable and other-worldly in the hands of this master. While maybe not every one of the stories in The Illustrated Man will blow you away, I can almost 100% guarantee they will all leave you thinking in their own special way.

While reading this collection, I got into a discussion about how Bradbury writes. That discussion included a side journey into the old Twilight Zone episodes. That is exactly it – every Bradbury story reads exactly like an old episode of the classic sci-fi show. Often, things appear normal and Bradbury will shift them in a slight and unexpected way which takes the story in a way just slightly outside the norm. These shifts are rarely monumental or explosive – just enough to throw off the norm. For example, and this is not one he used, but should illustrate what I mean: he might write a story in a world where the letter A has been banned and go through all the ramifications that might have on the fictional society in his story.

Another huge factor that is obvious in these stories is the affect the world of 1951 (year of publication) had on these stories. You can tell that these stories were written under the pressure of the cold war, nuclear threat, governments in turmoil, Communist fears, civil rights, etc. So much of the world from that time period seeps between the lines. I would almost say that some of this book is in a genre of its own – historic sci-fi. If you have any interest in how the world affected literature in the mid-1900s, this would be the perfect case study.

As it is pretty obvious by now, I loved this book! I love Bradbury! I cannot wait until the next one!

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Illustrated Man is written in the iridescent language of those kaleidoscopic tattoos it tells us about…

The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun.

Years pass by but the pictures remain as bright and vivid as new…

The music went up like a flight of pretty birds. He touched the keys like a man moving his hands among the weeds of a wild garden, startling up great soarings of beauty into the hills.

And the revived music still keeps echoing right through the years.

[Sean Barrs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ray Bradbury was an absolute master storyteller whose writing was creative and full of moments of pure bitter irony: he was an imaginative genius, nothing more nothing less.

Bradbury picks the bones of society clean; he gnaws at them until he exposes the reality of the marrow beneath. Each story in here has a piece of wisdom to share, a resolution or disaster that could have been easily avoided if man was not so corrupt in his ways. The more I read of his writing the more convinced I become that he was a misanthrope. Time and time again he creates a situation that is pure and good; yet, somehow man destroys it with his self-obsessed stupidity. And this is his point: humanity is a cancer.

“Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.”

Perhaps that’s why Bradbury looked to the stars. He saw that man was ruining earth, so he looked to give him a fresh start. As with the equally as excellent collection of short storiesThe Martian Chronicles, the planet Mars plays a vital role in the narrative. For Bradbury it represented something new and something clean, a means to rejuvenate and become something more than we are. Within the writing there is a glimpse of hope (an almost extinguished spark) that we can improve and become better; it is faint, though it is there.

“We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.”

He also built upon his elucidating novel Fahrenheit 451 is the short story ‘Usher II’ creating a tale of revenge in its aftermath. One very disgruntled reader rounds up the government officials, those that passed the book burning laws, and murders them all in a life size re-creation of one of Poe’s most memorable stories. It’s a sharp statement that strikes at the heart of censorship, control and consumerism. It is the words of a man who feared for the future, who feared that one day stories would not be allowed such freedom.

And all this is told through the markings on a man’s skin. I find the idea of the illustrated man, a man who is covered in tattoos that shift and change telling new stories with every dawn, so clever. It allowed Bradbury to enter any story he chose in here; they could be random and it wouldn’t overly matter. This leads me on to my only criticism: he did not really use that freedom as much as he could of. The stories all related to one key theme or idea, and often involved Mars; however, I think he could have done much more and imagined up a selection of more versatile illustrations/stories if he tried.

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[Fernando · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Qué pasaría si es el término operativo para muchos de estos cuentos", dice Ray Bradbury en su prólogo llamado "Bailando para no estar muerto", escrito en 1997 para la reedición de este libro y es verdad.
Todo lo que leemos en ellos tienen implícito ese gran interrogante.
Ray Bradbury, uno de mis escritores preferidos por su brillante y genuina narrativa, siempre me enseña, me deslumbra y es por ello que lo admiro tanto.
Siendo autodidacta desde niño, no necesitó estudiar ninguna carrera de letras, se formó leyendo diez horas por día en bibliotecas públicas, comenzando por la de su pueblo, el ignoto Waukegan en Illinois para transformarse en uno de los padres fundacionales de la ciencia ficción y un ejemplo para muchos autores con el correr de las décadas. Todo lo que se desprende de su pluma es pura y verdadera magia.
Desde la publicación de sus míticas "Crónicas Marcianas" allá por 1951 que lo posicionan en el candelero literario hasta esa novela fabulosa y brillante llamada "Fahrenheit 451" y a partir de muchísimos libros de cuentos y novelas, la figura de Bradbury fue agigantándose hasta transformarse en un modelo a seguir para aquellos entusiastas escritores que quisieron probar suerte con la ciencia ficción.
Su amor por el planeta Marte y su avidez de conocimiento del espacio y el universo fueron determinantes para transformar su mente en una verdadera usina generadores de fantásticos cuentos de ciencia ficción con la particularidad de que siempre supo mostrar el costado humano ante la tecnología, la ciencia y el espacio, y especialmente de cómo estos elementos afectan (muchas veces de manera adversa) a las personas.
En los dieciocho cuentos que conforman "El hombre ilustrado", Bradbury destila magia, aventuras, acción, pero también reflexión, recogimiento, planteos y dudas. Nos hace pensar seriamente, más allá de cohetes espaciales o visitante marcianos, quiénes somos y cómo nuestra naturaleza humana nos define y condiciona.
Estos cuentos, además de ser muy variados en sus temáticas, tienen los ingredientes exactos para no aburrir el lector sino todo lo contrario: atraerlo para llegar al final.
Independientemente de otros grandes expositores del género como lo son Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, o Úrsula le Guin, este gran autor descolla por su permanente apuesta al humanismo versus la fría tecnología.
Anticipando la realidad virtual, tan habitual en nuestros tiempos, nos encontramos con el escalofriante relato llamado "La pradera". Esas pantallas son tan reales. Lo que sucede en la habitación de esos niños, recreando tan vívidamente la vida salvaje del África culminará en un verdadero frenesí de locura que atrapará a sus padres.
Tenemos el caso del cuento "Calidoscopio", con esos astronautas cayendo por el espacio luego de la explosión de su cohete. En el le damos una atenta mirada a la pequeñez que somos los seres humanos en el vasto universo.
Un gran cuento de este libro se titula "El otro pie", y debido a él Bradbury tuvo una gran resistencia por parte de mucha gente porque este cuento, que parece conectar con el cuento "Un camino a través del aire" de "Crónicas marcianas" dado que el autor enfrenta al racismo, subiendo la apuesta: se pone del lado de los negros (consideremos lo que sucedería en los Estados Unidos en la década siguiente), los defiende y a su vez nos enseña a que no debería existir ningún tipo de diferencia alguna entre los seres humanos.
Un grupo de astronautas es enloquecido por una lluvia interminable y devastadora en "La larga lluvia". Aquí es donde más afianza Bradbury el impacto psicológico que ese elemento les genera a sus personajes.
Si algo caracterizó a Bradbury fueron su constante alegatos en contra la guerra y la utilización de las bombas que tanto daño causaron en la población desde las que cayeron en Hiroshima y Nagasaki, pasando por el napalm destructor de los norteamericanos en Vietnam como en eso que se llamó "Guerra Fría", con su constante amenaza latente de una inminente guerra entre Rusia y los Estados Unidos. El grito discordante de estos alegatos pueden sentirse claramente en los cuentos "La larga lluvia" y "El zorro y el bosque" y tienen una efecto notable en el cuento "La mezcladora de cemento".
O tal es el caso de la pareja que espera "La última noche del mundo", un cuento corto cargado de una tensión psicológica notable que pasa del personaje al lector en el que Bradbury nos plantea la inquietud de cómo reaccionaríamos si eso pasara.
"Los desterrados" es para mí el mejor relato del libro. Simplemente brillante y solo podría salir de su inventiva genial. Las brujas de Hécate, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens y Ambrose Bierce, que han sido algunos de los escritores que Bradbury tanto admiraba son homenajeados en este relato brillante.
La trama argumental gira alrededor de que los autores se han refugiado en Marte porque saben que en el año 2020 se ha dictado una ley en la Tierra que primero prohibió sus libros fueran leídos para luego disponer que se quemen. Una vez destruido el último libro, el autor desaparece para siempre. De esta manera los autores, liderados por Poe se proponen asustar a los astronautas que aterrizan en Marte para quemar los últimos doscientos libros. Con hechizos y conjuros lucharán por no desaparecer.
Este cuento se relaciona directamente con Fahrenheit 451, dando la impresión que puede haber servido como inspiración para ampliar el concepto en su novela.
En cuentos como "Una noche o una mañana cualquiera" o "El hombre del cohete", Bradbury expone la cuestión de como el espacio afecta a los hombres sean astronautas o residentes en Marte. Desnuda nuestra precaria condición humana y obviamente nos deja pensando. A punto tal que terminamos dándole la razón.
"Marionetas S. A." es otro de los mejores cuentos del libro. Corto, pero de una intensidad apasionante acerca de un robot creado exactamente igual a la persona original por una empresa y que posee un final digno de Edgar Allan Poe.
"Casas inteligentes", al igual que en el cuento "La pradera" nos vuelve a mostrar el tema de los avances tecnológicos, mientras que en el otro cuento las enormes pantallas virtuales son el eje central, aquí es una ciudad inteligente, casi viva y en estado de alerta la que actuará en contra de astronautas que llegan de la Tierra, pero que para ella son los intrusos. Nuevamente el final es impactante.
El escalofriante cuento "La hora cero" alterna entre inocentes niños y una invasión marciana con una reminiscencia a la novela "El señor de las moscas". La forma en que los niños se transforman en auténticos objetos malvados y ominosos crea una auténtica atmósfera de suspenso y terror culminado de manera infartarte.
El cuento más bello del libro de llama "El cohete", en el que un pobre chatarrero que nunca pudo viajar a Marte construye un cohete de aluminio para hacerle creer a sus hijos que hará un viaje real. En este cuento Bradbury apunta a las cosas bellas de la vida, que son precisamente las más pequeñas y a la vez más importantes como el amor hacia nuestros hijos. Este relato está adornado de una dulzura especial y logra que uno como lector nunca se olvide de él.
Para el final, nos encontraremos con el cuento que le da el título al libro, de características terroríficas, en el que un hombre enfrentará su destino a partir de que una vieja bruja le llena el cuerpo de tatuajes que cobran vida. Ese hombre ilustrado es el que se encuentra el narrador sin nombre al principio del libro y de él se desprenden estas maravillosas y sorprendentes historias.
Dijo Ray Bradbury: "Espero encontrarme con H. G. Wells o tener la compañía de Jules Verne. Cuando trabajo en un espacio viviente entre los dos, entro en éxtasis."
Dichosos nosotros los lectores que tenemos la inmensa suerte de disfrutar de semejante éxtasis leyendo libros como este.

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genius!: 16 short sci-fi, horror and/or fantasy stories, linked by the concept that each story is represented by the animated tattoos on the Illustrated Man's body. All 16 tales are very very good, I kid you not! 8.5 out of 12.

[Mario the lone bookwolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Bradbury a second and third time is like exploring a natural wonder, finding more and more details and interconnections and wondering more and more about how something like this can be both created and function so well.

The amazing thing is that, while recalling the short stories after getting absorbed by them, one realizes that there is often no real violence, many outer plots, explosions and kidnappings. Just the inner worlds of the characters and that magnificent all-knowing narrator mixed with this smooth language.

I find it fascinating how family trees of authors influencing each other are forming over generations as in this case with H.G. Wells and Jules Verne who influenced Bradbury, who influenced King, who influenced I don´t how many authors, it might be billions. And how similar the voice of an author becomes if he is in his XYauthor phase as for instance the older Stephen King short stories which remind me of Bradbury. Read all of them!

Tropes show how literature is conceived and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the fuzzy bootie slippers and knit shawls come out, so do the Ray Bradbury books...

As someone who could have made a living as a tattooed lady in a sideshow a hundred years ago, I am completely enamored of this short story collection's structure: one tale for each drawing on the titular Illustrated Man. In tattoo culture (whatever than means), people like me who have a lot of ink are sometimes called "tattoo collectors", and I thought a lot about that expression as the Illustrated Man shifted in his sleep, showing the reader his collection of stories. I know not all tattoo collectors do this, but all my tattoos have a story. So far, they've stayed put...

The playroom of a smart-house that eats the parents, the writers and characters of fantastic stories living in exile on another planet, a couple facing the end of the world together quietly, a failed planetary invasion, a father taking his family on a trip unlike any other... In those stories, Bradbury explores the idea of technology disconnecting us from our lives, that in our very last moments only love will truly matter, that forgiveness is a greater power than oppression, that without imagination, we are nothing, and that we should remember to cherish those who care for us. And even if those themes weren't powerful, the incandescent, dreamy prose and occasional bite of acidic humor is enough to make this bittersweet collection a treasure. The ones that truly stood out were "The Other Foot", "The Rocket Man", "The Last Night of the World", "The Exiles" and "The Rocket", but there was not one bad story in this book.

The is a definite Cold War anxiety in those stories, when the menace of nuclear war seems like it's just around the corner, yet some of those stories feel eerily relevant. "The Other Foot" especially so, and a note in the introduction mentions that Bradbury cold not get it published in the United-States for many years. I can't say I am surprised, but simply sad at the depth of denial human beings can sink to. This was a man ahead of his time in many ways...

I don't know if Rachel Bloom is entirely right about Bradbury having been the greatest sci-fi writer in history, but he might just have been the sci-fi writer with the biggest heart in history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG38V...

[Apatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"... he was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. When his flesh twitched, the tiny mouths flickered, the tiny green-and-gold eyes winked, the tiny pink hands gestured. There were yellow meadows and blue rivers and mountains and stars and suns and planets spread in a Milky Way across his chest. The people themselves were in twenty or more odd groups upon his arms, shoulders, back, sides, and wrists, as well as on the flat of his stomach. You found them in forests of hair, lurking among a constellation of freckles, or peering from armpit caverns, diamond eyes aglitter. Each seemed intent upon his own activity; each was a separate gallery portrait."

How did he do it? Ray Bradbury had an uncanny ability to describe things so vividly that my mind automatically generates clear hi-def image even as I read the words. As if Bradbury conjured images with his words rather than just writing them.

Since his passing a few months ago I have been on a little Bradbury binge, I started with started with Something Wicked This Way Comes, then The October Country, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and now The Illustrated Man. As with a lot of his works The Illustrated Man is more science fantasy than science fiction, the science in his stories are often very suspect but Bradbury never wanted to write hard sf, he left that sort of thing to the likes of Asimov/Clarke/Heinlein, who were masters of the form. He wanted to write about humanity in his imagined scenarios. The whys are always more important than the hows for him.

My favourite cover, I always like the "on the nose" ones.

Mars is Bradbury's go-to planets for aliens and rockets the space vehicle of choice. So, this being an sf collection Mars and rockets are featured in most stories, no FTL drives here probably because all the stories take place within our solar system (mostly just Earth and Mars - with one exception). There are 18 stories here, wrapped within a great frame story featuring the titular Illustrated Man, he of the weird animated tattoos so beautifully described in the quoted paragraph above:

1. The Veldt - Featuring one of Bradbury 's favorite plot devices, the auto-house (AI controlled houses). When a virtual reality nursery insist on showing an African veldt with hungry lions I think an appropriate modern tagline for this story would be "Shit Just Got Real". A tale of bad parenting and over indulging kids, I don't think Bradbury would have liked to live in an auto-house.

2. Kaleidoscope - After a rocket fall apart while in space the astronauts begin to float off in all directions. Here death is shown to be a great leveler. Also a rumination on the "quality of death", regret, redemption, and peace of mind as the end approaches.

3. The Other Foot This seems like a sequel to "Way in the Middle of the Air" from The Martian Chronicles. Mars has been entirely colonized by black people for 20 years. One day a rocket arrive with a crew of whites, will all hell break lose? I like the way the kids are all excited about seeing their first white people.

4. The Highway - The world ends except in countryside, where the rural protagonist's scope of the world is defined by his immediate pastoral settings. A simple life + ignorance = bliss

5. The Man - Rumours of the Messiah on Mars, not so much the Second Coming as the First such arrival, you gotta have faith-a-faith-a-faith.

6. The Long Rain - This is actually my favorite story in this collection, it is set on Venus (for a change) where it pelts down with rain all the time, very visceral, especially as it was raining when I was reading it.

7. The Rocket Man Yes, this song inspired Elton John's hit of the same name. A sad story about an astronaut so addicted to space he forsakes his family.

8. The Fire Balloons - Sentient and enlightened Martian balloons. Short short stories shouldn't be described at length!

9. The Last Night of the World - What it says on the tin but without any scene of explosions or death and destruction. It's just like any other day really.

10. The Exiles - The year is actually mentioned here, it's 2120 and Man is about to arrive on Mars. Unfortunately it is already occupied by the witches from Macbeth and other creatures from supernatural tales banned on Earth. This story is similar in theme to Fahrenheit 451.

11. No Particular Night or Morning - This story reminds me of the old philosophical question "When a tree falls in a lonely forest, and no animal is near by to hear it, does it make a sound?" I suspect only self centered (and insane) people would believe things don't exist when they are not around.

12. The Fox and the Forest - The single time travelling tale here, a nice couple hounded by some kind of "time police", not on Mars incidentally.

13. The Visitor - A telepathic man arrive on Mars, he has the ability to conjure up illusions of places, sight and smell. Makes him all too popular among the sick sufferers of "blood rust" who have been cast off from Earth. Reminds me of a story from The Martian Chronicles called "The Martian".

14. The Concrete Mixer - Martians invade earth and become corrupted by our numerous vices and follies. The single humorous story in this book I think. Particularly satirical of the American way of life.

15. Marionettes, Inc. - Do Marionettes dream of electric sheep? This is an early example of the sf trope of replacing people with robot or android copies. Veteran sf readers will not be surprised by the ending, but it is still a great little story about what makes us human and the way we treat each other.

16. The City - The single scifi-horror story here about a living AI city. If we don't reap what we sow our descendants will do the reaping, or may be we reap what our ancestors sow? Surprisingly violent and graphic story. May be this is my favorite story in this book. Any way, it's just great!

17. Zero Hour - Reminds me of the M. Night Shyamalan's movie Signs. Also about the peril of bad parenting (again), I think. More creepy kids.

18. The Rocket - A sweet but not too saccharine story about a poor junkyard family. The image of an inert silver rocket standing in the junkyard is particularly evocative.

After that we are back with the eponymous Illustrated Man, in nice and creepy closer. And look how long I have gone on and on!

Not the strongest Bradbury collection I think, but still a must-read for fans of the late great author, of sf stories, and of decent reads in general.


"Sexy" Rod Steiger version 🤣

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bradbury's classic short story collection includes some Golden Age gems and some duds too:

- Prologue: The Illustrated Man - 3/5 - framing story that starts off the collection
- The Veldt - 5/5 - you can take the kids out of the veldt, but you can't take the veldt out of the kids
- Kaleidoscope - 3/5 - dying astronauts' final thoughts and wishes
- The Other Foot - 5/5 - what happens when a rocket brings a Caucasian to an African-American settlement on Mars (written in 1949 prior to the Civil Rights Movement)
- The Highway - 3/5 - a contrast in perspectives regarding Armageddon
- The Man - 3/5 - praise Jebus
- The Long Rain - 3/5 - "We've been through every kind of rain there is." (Forrest Gump)
- The Rocket Man - 3/5 - Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Rocket Men
- The Last Night of the World - 2/5 - Think about it. What if it's the last day on Earth for you? For someone you love? What if that's true?
- The Exiles - 4/5 - Will the real Martians please stand up?
- No Particular Night or Morning - 1/5 - 12 pages of ranting about object permanence.
- The Fox and the Forest - 4/5 - time travel AWOL
- The Visitor - 4/5 - And I thought it was bad when I had to fight my daughter for the remote
- The Concrete Mixer - 2/5 - interesting idea but too long and overbearingly critical
- Marionettes, Inc. - 4/5 - lighthearted story about spousal robot replacements
- The City - 4/5 - When the lights go down in the city
- Zero Hour - 5/5 - Nice twist on an alien invasion story with laugh-out-loud dark humor
- The Rocket - 3/5 - outer space family vacation
- The Illustrated Man - 3/5 - fat, tattooed and angry is no way to go through life, son
- Epilogue - 3/5 - finale of the framing story

There's also an Introduction written by the author in 1997 contained in the newer editions of this collection.

[Char · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say that hasn’t already been said?
Phenomenal.

[jenoodle✮⋆˙ · Rating 3 out of 5]

‧₊🕷️˚ ⋅ "𝗪𝗲'𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀, 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗲'𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗱𝗮𝘆" ‧₊🎱˚.

˚.☎️ⵢ₊˚. WOAH. JUST WOAH. After 6 months of reading this ever so slowly I have FINALLY and I mean FINALLY finished it. And what can I say? This book was honestly such an experience depending on where I look at it. Some stories in it I HEAVILY enjoyed and was immersed in, while some were just flat out confusing and made my mind feel like it was speeding on a highway at a hundred miles per hour. HOWEVER, if you are into astrology or space or anything like that you would love this book since most of the stories in here are related to that. While this book wasn't the typical genre I would read, I did enjoy some of them and I think three stars would be a fair rating. I MEAN THE FIRST STORY DEFINETLY SUCKED ME IN HAHA ˖⁺.💋˚₊ ‧

‧₊✨˚ ⋅ “𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗸𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲.” ‧₊💫˚.

┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈
🖤 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝: IN MY CLASSIC ERA GUYSSS 🤠🙈 READING THIS WITH MY POOKIE ALEXX 〰️ I’m reading way too many books rn 💀

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ray Bradbury was a Luddite. For a guy who is primarily remembered as a science fiction writer, he sure hated science and technology. He claimed that his most famous novel, Fahrenheit 451, was not, as most thought, an indictment of censorship, but a warning against the dangers of the (then new) technology of television. That is a continuing theme in this collection — mistrust and outright hostility to technological progress.

In The Veldt, a family is destroyed by the labor saving and entertainment technologies of their model home. In The Man, (a straight-up ode to religious faith) Bradbury actually stated that the scientific method is a sad substitute for the faith that it replaced. In The Exiles, Bradbury presented scientific progress and imagination as mutually exclusive, and painted a bleak portrait of the men of science:

“They haven’t the imagination, those clean, young rocket men with their antiseptic bloomers and fishbowl helmets, with their new religion.”

In both The Other Foot and The Highway, the stories turn on civilizations that destroyed themselves by Atomic Warfare. (The Highway explicitly depicts the advantage of being a pre-technological culture for surviving the atomic apocalypse.) In the balance of the rest of these tales, Bradbury never focused on the wonders of science and discovery, but always on its dangers and the alienation that it wrought.

Bradbury was at his best when writing odes to nostalgia (like his beautiful Dandelion Wine) or dark and weird tales (like his excellent collection The October Country). And there are a couple tales here that shine through it that vein. Kaleidoscope is a poignant tale of astronaut’s last minutes and their thoughts and radio conversations as they float alone through space to their doom. The Long Rain is an effective horror story, set on Venus, that uses the environment as the monster. Even The Veldt, though I object to its implied theme, is effective as a horror story. Bradbury certainly could write, even if he had the conservative heart of an anti-progress inquisitor.

[Frank Hidalgo-Gato Durán · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es siempre un placer leer a Bradbury. Este libro me lo había leído con unos dieciocho años y hoy, con cuarenta, lo releí porque como sabéis, con la madurez se miran,se escuchan, se sienten las "cosas" de una manera diferente, sí. Digamos que,comenzamos a llevarnos mejor con la sabiduría. Y, ¿por qué comienzo de esta forma a hablaros de este libro? ¿Quizá porque su ciencia ficción sea así de melodiosa, de sutil? Incluso mientras escribo esta pequeña reseña, deseo alejarme lo más posible de la entropía que apresa a este mundo,sí, el nuestro.
¿Y si regreso a los años cincuenta?, donde incluso las exigencias del género de ciencia ficción, se basaban más en los hechos, que en los datos, o en los mecanismos y el tecnicismo? Por aquel entonces no necesitaba uno "explicar" tanto, solo bastaba con una prosa elegante y una manera de contar las historias como el típico cuento que escuchabas de niño para ir a dormir.
Me voy a Marte.Me voy a construir un cohete con los motores de un simple camión, y lo haré en apenas unas horas. Tan solo me va a costar 3 mil euros hacerlo, y cuando me lleve allí y me aburra, lo utilizaré para irme a Venus, y luego hasta Plutón, y, quien sabe.Quizá incluso alcance la gasolina para regresar a la Tierra, y contaros sobre tales aventuras. Adiós. Hasta pronto.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I was a science fiction fan as a kid, I did not read any stories by Ray Bradbury ( born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, IL--died June 5, 2012 in Los Angeles,CA ) until I was in high school and short stories of his were anthologized in literature textbooks. Later, I came to appreciate his wonderful writing style, almost poetic. His emphasis in his speculative fiction was on human nature and not on technology. The collection of his stories in this book reflects his interest in and concern for humanity above all else.
A lot of the stories in this book were ones I had already read, which I expected. My favorite Bradbury is also one of the first short stories of his that I read--"The Long Rain," a story of the struggle for survival by humans on the Planet Venus. This is not the hellishly hot Venus that we know from science (since he wrote the story) but a jungle world of unending rain... Another one that is among my favorites is in this collection--"The Other Foot," in which Mars has been colonized by "Negroes" who fled the segregated South. Now, the whites are coming...And "The Rocket Man." Following "Captain Kirk's" trip into space, I envision The Rocket Man as William Shatner, not the young Shatner who played Kirk, but a somewhat older Shatner (but not as old as the actor who went into space!).
I was delighted to discover a story I hadn't read before and it's a standout--"Zero Hour." The kids are playing a game about spacemen. The adults don't pay much attention--it's just kids' games, right? How did I miss this story? I should have read this book decades ago! Well, better late than never!

[Bionic Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the best collections of Ray Bradbury's short stories. A diverse mix, linked with his ingenious device of the illustrated man. Expect Bradbury's uniquely characteristic style and brilliantly imagined pieces. A man who consistently thinks outside the box.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked about half of the stories and did not like the other half. So I would give this collection 2.5 stars. Although I am not a regular reader of science fiction, I did read The Martian Chronicles on recommendations from Goodreads review(s), and liked it immensely (I gave it 5 stars). Some of the stories in The Martian Chronicles seemed to be timeless, even though they were written in the late 1940s. In contrast a number of these stories written around the same time period seemed to be either dated, and/or I did not find them to be all that interesting. Both of those observations are admittedly subjective, and certainly Ray Bradbury is a great author.

There was one short story, The Exiles, that had 3 things that interested me:
1. In this story written in 1949, the year 2020 is referred to! “…War begets war. Destruction begets destruction. On Earth, a century ago, in the year 2020 they outlawed our books”).
2. In this story, books are burned by the authorities. Much like in Fahrenheit 451 that was published one year after this collection.
3. In the same story, a captain of the ship who is on his way to Mars pulls out books from his vault in which he tells his crew members Martians are killing some of them on the rocket using techniques derived from these books. Names of the books and authors are mentioned. I just found it interesting…sort of a Who’s Who of the macabre and spooky and scary. Here is the passage:
From the captain: “Twenty nights I was stabbed, butchered, a screaming bat pinned to a surgical mat, a thing rotting underground in a black box; bad, wicked dreams. Our whole crew dreamed of witch-things and were-things, vampires, and phantoms, things they couldn’t know anything about. Why? Because books on such ghastly subjects were destroyed a century ago. By law. Forbidden for anyone to own the grisly volumes. These books you see here are the last copies, kept for historical purposes in the locked museum vaults. of the 19th and 20th century of the supernatural.”

Smith bent to read the dusty titles:
“Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe; Dracula by Bram Stoker; Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; The Turn of the Screw by Henry James; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving; Rappacini’s Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; An Occurrence at Owl Creek by Ambrose Bierce; Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll; The Willows by Algernon Blackwood; The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum; The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft. And more! Books by Walter de la Mare, Wakefield, Harvey, Wells, Asquith, Huxley—all forbidden authors. All burned in the same year that Halloween was outlawed and Christmas was banned!”

The Illustrated Man is presented as a prologue to the collection and is a short story at the beginning and end of the collection. He unwittingly had tattoos drawn on parts of his body by a witch and he is roaming the earth to seek her out, I guess to destroy her, because she has destroyed his life. He meets some people, they like him, but then they stare at his illustrated body covered with intricate drawing that turn into little movies of a sort and they see themselves in the movies being hurt and/or killed, so they tell the Illustrated Man to get the hell away from them. The 18 stories in this collection are on his body.

Of the 18 short stories, the ones that I gave 2.5 stars or higher (half of them) were:
• The Veldt, 3 stars
• Kaleidoscope, 4 stars
• The Other Foot, 3 stars
• The Highway, 2.5 stars
• The Visitor, 2.5 stars
• Marionettes, Inc, 4 stars
• The City, 4 stars
• Zero Hour, 4 stars
• The Rocket, 3 stars

The paperback version of this book, first published in 1952, as of 1972 had gone through 26 printings.

Reviews (from among many!):
https://www.sfsite.com/07b/man13.htm
From blog sites:
• http://www.conceptualfiction.com/illu... (I did not know this: It is worth remembering that this author, whose life spanned the period from the introduction of the Model T Ford to the most modern and streamlined hybrid vehicles, never learned to drive a car. He is a proud technophobe who also scorns computers, the Internet and ATMs.
• http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2014...
• https://robbinslibrary.wordpress.com/...

[P.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A banquet of flavoury and colourful short novels delicately put together.


The French Gallimard edition


The Contents :

Introduction : Dancing, So As Not to Be Dead
Prologue: The Illustrated Man
🟊 The Veldt
🟊 Kaleidoscope
🟊 The Other Foot
🟊 The Highway
🟊 The Man
🟊 The Long Rain
🟊 The Rocket Man
🟊 The Fire Balloons
🟊 The Last Night of The World
🟊 The Exiles
🟊 No Particular Night or Morning
🟊 The Fox and The Forest
🟊 The Visitor
🟊 The Concrete Mixer
🟊 Marionettes, Inc.
🟊 The City
🟊 Zero Hour
🟊 The Rocket
🟊 The Illustrated Man
Epilogue


Matching Soundtrack :
Out of Season - Soft Machine

[Pau · Rating 5 out of 5]

En una maravillosa introducción Ray Bradbury nos confiesa que el escribe para no morir, y a su vez nos hace una pregunta que se repite en varias ocasiones, "Qué pasaría si...? Es una pregunta a la imaginación, una pregunta que Bradbury se hizo durante toda su vida, y tan sólo hay que leer sus cuentos y novelas para saber que se trata de uno de los escritores más imaginativos que han existido.

El Hombre Ilustrado es una de esas antologías legendarias que muestran la poderosa creatividad y originalidad de un Maestro escritor como fue Ray Bradbury. ¿Qué pasaría si tu cuerpo estuviera cubierto de tatuajes con cada historia que has visto en tu vida? Así es El Hombre Ilustrado, uno de los personajes más famosos creados por Ray Bradbury para este clásico de la Ciencia Ficción.

El Hombre Ilustrado. Compuesto de dieciocho relatos entrelazados, refleja las obsesiones más conocidas de su autor: cohetes, Marte, quema de libros (tema que aborda a fondo en su novela distópica Fahrenheit 451) y no solo eso, sino que estas narraciones escritas durante la década de 1950 tratan temas tan actuales como el racismo, la dependencia excesiva de la tecnología o las desigualdades económicas.

¿Qué pasaría si delegásemos la educación de nuestros hijos en la tecnología? "La Pradera" nos habla de las posibles consecuencias. ¿Seríamos capaces de reconocer a un Mesías si lo tuviéramos ante nuestras propias narices? En "El Hombre" leemos sobre materialismo y fe ¿Y si supiéramos que estamos a punto de morir sin poder hacer nada para evitarlo? Vemos diferentes formas de afrontar esta situación en "Calidoscopio".

Esto y mucho más nos ofrece El hombre ilustrado. Racismo y venganza en "El otro pie", el cumplimiento del deber y la búsqueda del placer en "El zorro y el bosque", las desigualdades económicas y el amor a la familia en "El cohete", éste último lo destaco porque me parece uno de los relatos más bonitos que he leído en mi vida…El autor plasma todo ello con un sentido de la maravilla extraordinario y una sencillez pasmosa.

La primera vez que leí a Ray Bradbury fue a través de la novela Fahrenheit 451, la cual me caló hondo y personalmente pienso que es la mejor novela distópica que he leído. Por eso y por diferenciarse de otros grandes autores de Ciencia Ficción, poniendo en el centro "lo humano" en cada una de sus novelas lo considero uno de los mejores escritores del género de todos los tiempos.

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of Ray Bradbury's earliest collections of short stories, and the concept behind is quite brilliant. On an early September day in Wisconsin, the unnamed narrator meets the eponymous Illustrated Man - a wandering carnie with incredible images tattooed across his body. They are detailed, colorful and mysterious, and able to move on their own; the narrator counts eighteen different illustrations, each depicting what the Illustrated Man claims to be the future.

Unfortunately, both the concept and character of the Illustrated Man is never expanded upon - and the Illustrated Man is nothing more than a framing device for eighteen unrelated stories (most if not all of which were published previously). The stories themselves have nothing to do with the carnival, the Illustrated Man and his life - all are set in the future, and explore universal themes via science fiction. In Kaleidoscope, a group of astronauts shares their last moment as they float through empty space after their rocket blew up; The Long Rain has a group of explorers marooned on Venus, struggling to find shelter from constant rain which has soaked them to the bone. A man purchases a robot identical to himself so that he can go on a vacation to Rio in Marionettes, Inc.; Mars has been colonized entirely by black people in The Other Foot, who plan to institute racial segregation and Jim Crow laws for white travelers who are bound their way from earth.

They're good, engaging stories, and it's difficult to pick a favorite - thought if I had to I think I'd pick The Rocket, which is about Fiorello Bodoni - a poor junkyard owner who has finally saved enough money to be able to afford his lifelong dream - a trip to outer space. However, the money can only buy one ticket, and Fiorello and his family have to choose who will go. I found this story to be the most touching and memorable of all in its simplicity, and a great way to conclude the volume.

Luckily, Bradbury himself considered the Illustrated Man to be too good to waste, and later made him one of the antagonists in his famous novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes - but I still wish that the stories would revolve more about his character. I was expecting stories more in tone and theme with Bradbury's other collection, which I read and reviewed last year and recommend highly - The October Country. The Illustrated Man is not a bad collection by any means - just don't expect pumpkins, carnivals and Halloween when you'll begin to read it.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I shall remain on Mars and read a book.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man



Ray Bradbury is forever connected to my youth. He is 180-proof literary, pulp, scifi nostalgia. I remember reading him for fun, reading him anthologized, reading him again and again. I permanently dented my aunt's couch one summer reading Vonnegut and Bradbury. I've recently returned to him as a father and an adult and get to re-establish connection to this great writer of American pop-lit. His stories (and books as well) are part of our modern psyche. He was the original rocket man. Not the first star in the night, but the one that tore a bit of the sky open for the rest.

There are no crappy stories here. He wrote about alienation, loneliness, jealousy, racism, and fear in new ways. He was light on scifi (it was a light frame) and heavy on characters, but he kept enough of the pulpy scifi tropes to make you almost unaware of the pill you were swallowing until it was completely absorbed.

Reading these reminded me how little I appreciated Bradbury's prose when I was young. I was a kid, so I was fixated on the story, the surprise, the horror. Now, I read these stories and I think DAMN Bradbury can write the pants off all but the best short story writers. He might not be Chekhov, but on his best days and with his best stories, he isn't far behind.

Stories:
1. The Veldt - ★★★★★
2. Kaleidescope - ★★★★★
3. The Other Foot- ★★★★
4. The Highway - ★★★
5. The Man - ★★★★
6. The Long Rain - ★★★★
7. The Rocket Man - ★★★★
8. The Last Night of the World - ★★★
9. The Exiles - ★★★★
10. No Particular Night or Evening - ★★★★★
11. The Fox and the Forest - ★★★★
12. The Visitor - ★★★★★
13. The Concrete Mixer - ★★★
14. Marionettes, Inc. - ★★★★★
15. The City - ★★★
16. Zero Hour - ★★★★★
17. The Rocket - ★★★★★
18. The Illustrated Man [story & frame] - ★★★★

[Scarlet Cameo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bradbury siendo excelente como siempre, muchos de los cuentos se encuentran en el epítome de la creatividad...en cuanto escriba la reseña daré un aleluya a los mejores.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the great joys of exploring old Science Fiction is coming across stories like the best works in this book, stories that make you wonder how you could possibly have gone so long without reading them.

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451, which is deservedly famous, However to my jaded readers' eye some of his short stories deliver more bang for buck, more emotional punch per word. Of course, not all the works in this book are great or even good, and like almost every short story collection I have read there is the occasional turd floating in what is an otherwise inviting pool.

The first story in this collection however is a gem. Kaleidoscope is a tale of the doomed crew of a ship that has torn open, sending them careening into the vacuum in their spacesuits with no hope of rescue or survival, only radio linking them as they drift further apart

We watch as the men come to terms with their deaths, assess their own lives and reflect on the lives of their fellow crew. There is anger, sadness, regret, joy and acceptance in this poignant and touching tale, and I ate it up.

As an opener for a collection it's a real winner, a genuine classic.

From here we travel around the solar system and into the far future. In The Long Rain Bradbury tells an engaging story of a crashed crew on a Venus where the never-ending rain drives visitors insane, and The City is an interesting tale of a millennia-long search for vengeance.

Bradbury also engages in some particularly interesting explorations of religious faith in a science fiction context. All these ruminations, in The Man and The Fire Balloons, are from a Christian perspective, but Bradbury was raised a Baptist and writes convincingly from the deist mindset. The Fire Balloons in particular is an interesting story of Christian missionaries going to Mars, where they must choose between ministering to the humans there or attempting to convert the strange ethereal natives of the red planet.

Like many of his contemporaries Bradbury's storytelling is refreshingly direct. There's little narrative artifice here, other than some lovely turns of phrase and some silky-smooth writing.

The central binding thread - that the stories are the changing, story-telling tattoos of the 'Illustrated Man' is nice, but both unnecessary and underutilized. The stories themselves stand without the need for a common segue and the tattooed man idea feels tacked on.

Of course, being a short story collection, there are a few weak stories in here, tainting the water somewhat. For me maybe a third of the book is comprised of weaker material. The Veldt - a tale of technology warping children (and our dangerous reliance on tech in general) didn’t really fly for me, and The Highway - a seeming reflection on the differences between city and country life and perceptions of what ‘civilization’ is also left me cold. The penultimate story, Zero Hour also seemed a little trite, although it is hard to tell with older SF whether this is due to so many similar stories having been written since, turning an original idea into cliche.

Being as these stories were written in 1951 there are a few tell-tale anachronisms that are common in works of the era, something that I personally love spotting in SF of this vintage.

The most noticeable of these is the ubiquity of smoking. It seems Bradbury simply couldn’t imagine a world where people without nicotine addicts, and in his stories spaceship crew chain-smoke inside their vessels, and time travellers buy cartons of cigarettes on trips to the past.

Other classic 1950s SF hallmarks are present such as tape decks being used in far-future societies, and advanced machines being comprised of cogs, gears and hydraulics. It all seems very quaint now, although I suppose in a millennia or two we may well look back on Iain M. Banks' super-AIs and field-powered drones as being hopelessly dated.

Overall though, the good in The Illustrated Man strongly outweighs the bad. I urge you not to wait as long as I did before reading this- several of the stories in here are genuine classics of the genre, and they are well worth your time.

3.5 stars

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Illustrated Man" is a collection of 18 short stories in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. The stories are framed with a narrative about a man from a carnival who has colorful tattoos all over his body. Each tattoo comes to life during the night to tell a story.

My favorite story was "The Rocket Man" narrated by Doug. His father was an astronaut who only returned home for a few days after each three-month journey into space. The father was torn by his love of space exploration and his love for his family. Doug's mother was so worried that her husband would die in space that she detached emotionally, and could hardly enjoy his visits. Doug idolized his father, but he also felt loyalty to his mother. It was a beautifully written story. Elton John's song, "Rocket Man," inspired by Ray Bradbury's story, has been going around my mind since I finished this story.

The stories were written in the 1940s and early 1950s. It was a time when there was both fear and fascination concerning new technology. The political atmosphere included concerns about nuclear war, Communists, civil rights, and the cold war with the Soviet Union. People were thinking about space exploration, especially as an option if the Earth became inhabitable after a nuclear war. Most of the stories have aged well so it's an enjoyable collection to read.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better than I expected and I expected a lot.Like Martian chronicle this is book of sci-fi short stories and like Martian chronicle there is lot more going on beneath the surface.

As with all short story collections not all of stories are same quality and not all deserve 5 stars but even lowest point of this book is pretty damn high.

[Jeraviz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leer relatos de un maestro de la Ciencia Ficción siempre es un buen plan. En esta recopilación me ha sorprendido el mal rollo que transmiten muchas de las historias. No es una lectura esperanzadora precisamente. Creo que casi me ha gustado más que Crónicas Marcianas. Me ha transmitido más cosas.

[Nhi Nguyễn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tập truyện ngắn này đã được Nhã Nam dịch và xuất bản ở VN rồi, tựa đề là “Người Minh Họa”. Nhưng mà giá tiền sách của Nhã Nam dạo này chát quá (à mà thực ra nhìn chung là sách bây giờ mắc, không riêng gì Nhã Nam ^^), thế nên khi thấy thư viện của trường quốc tế nơi mình làm việc có bản gốc cuốn này, là mình mượn về đọc ngay trong dịp nghỉ lễ 30/4 – 1/5, để tiết kiệm tiền mua sách mà lại còn đọc được bản gốc :D

Tác giả của tập truyện ngắn này, như các bạn cũng thấy rồi đó, chính là Ray Bradbury – quý ngài đã viết nên cuốn tiểu thuyết phản địa đàng khiến mình nổi da gà “451 độ F” đó. Trời ơi phải công nhận nha, đọc “451 độ F” – tác phẩm nổi tiếng nhất của Ray Bradbury – là mình đã thấy hay ghê luôn rồi, kiểu cái tầm nhìn và cách tác giả sáng tạo một thế giới tương lai u ám, nơi sách bị đốt bỏ á, nó chân thực và đáng sợ ghê luôn. Mà tới tập truyện ngắn này, thì mình lại tiếp tục được thấy cái tầm nhìn viết truyện khoa học giả tưởng của bác ấy được nâng lên một bậc nữa. Các truyện ngắn trong này đều được viết vào thập niên 40, 50 của thế kỷ 20, nhưng sự tưởng tượng của bác Bradbury thì lại đi trước thời đại rất nhiều; ngòi bút bác ấy vẽ nên tương lai của Trái Đất và khoa học vũ trụ, khi mà loài người phát triển công nghệ vượt bậc để phục vụ cho đời sống của mình, và tiến ra chinh phục các hành tinh khác. Quả là một visionary!

Mặc dù bối cảnh các câu chuyện đều ở một tương lai xa lắc (nhưng không phải là không có khả năng xảy ra), thế nhưng tựu chung lại, nội dung chính mà Ray Bradbury muốn chuyển tải thông qua các truyện ngắn này vẫn chính là tính người và những suy nghĩ, cảm xúc, nỗi sợ, phản ứng của con người trước các hoàn cảnh ngặt nghèo mà họ bị đẩy vào. Dẫu cho có là ở thời đại nào, bao quanh là những máy móc hiện đại, tân tiến, những chuyến đi xuyên vũ trụ hoành tráng như thế nào, thì chúng ta vẫn là những sinh vật đầy phức tạp, với những hành động, quyết định đặc trưng cho bản chất và sự không hoàn hảo của chúng ta.

“The Illustrated Man” hay kinh người luôn các bạn ạ, nhiều truyện rùng rợn phát hãi luôn, mà không phải rùng rợn kiểu truyện kinh dị jump scare gì đâu. Cái cách bác ấy viết truyện giống như thể một tập phim “Black Mirror” hay “The Twilight Zone” vậy á (hay là ngược lại, vì “Black Mirror” và có thể là “The Twilight Zone” ra đời sau mấy truyện này mờ :D), ban đầu sự việc nó cứ từ từ, để cho mình làm quen với bối cảnh và nội dung câu chuyện trước, sau đó càng về sau thì mạch truyện càng tăng lên dồn dập hơn, plot twist được quăng ra, đẩy mọi thứ lên cao trào. Và cái kết của một số truyện thì chỉ gói gọn trong vài câu vài dòng, nhưng cái dư âm thì ôi thôi, hay khiếp lên được. Một số truyện mình đọc không hiểu lắm thì có lên mạng search analysis để ngâm cứu qua. Kiểu này mình nghĩ các bạn nếu không kiếm được ebook bản gốc thì nên mua ủng hộ bản dịch của Nhã Nam đi, vì tập truyện này mình đánh giá còn cao hơn cả “451 độ F” ấy.

Ban đầu mình không hiểu lắm cái tựa đề “The Illustrated Man” là chỉ cái gì; mình cứ tưởng nó là về một người làm nghề vẽ tranh minh họa, ơ mà thế thì liên quan gì tới du hành vũ trụ các kiểu đúng hông? Ai dè đọc vô rồi mới biết, hóa ra “The Illustrated Man” là một người đàn ông làm việc cho một gánh xiếc hóa trang, đang gặp vấn đề với ngoại hình thừa mỡ của mình, rồi thêm bà vợ ghét ổng và hay xỉa xói, verbally abused ổng nữa. Ổng bực mình quá, ngoại hình khiến ổng sắp mất việc ở gánh xiếc, thế nên ổng mới đi gặp một bà nghệ nhân xăm mình, mà thiệt ra là một phù thủy bị mù, để nhờ bả xăm hình khắp người ổng, biến ổng trở thành một nhân vật nổi bật mới trong gách xiếc, hy vọng thu hút khách đến xem. Ai dè những hình xăm bà này vẽ lên người ổng, thực chất là những hình ảnh có thể di chuyển, hiển hiện và biến mất, kể lại 18 câu chuyện trong cuốn sách này (bao gồm cả câu chuyện của Người Minh Họa, mà độ đáng sợ cũng không kém các truyện khác), vì thế mà ổng mới có tên là Người Minh Họa. “The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury – eighteen startling visions of humankind’s destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin.”

Trong số 18 truyện ngắn trong tập truyện, thì đây là những câu chuyện mình yêu thích nhất, và cảm thấy rằng nó đáng sợ hoặc đáng để suy ngẫm nhất. Kha khá trong số này có thể được chuyển thể thành các tập phim “Black Mirror” hay “The Twilight Zone” luôn đó (Charlie Brooker ơi, bác có nghe cháu nói không thế? :D “Black Mirror” season 5 làm xong chưa mà chưa thấy release gì hết zậy? Nếu bác thiếu ý tưởng kịch bản thì cầm cuốn sách này lên đi nha :D):

- The Veldt: Hãy tưởng tượng trong tương lai, khi mà công nghệ phát triển đến mức con người sống mà không cần tự mình làm bất cứ việc gì. Ngay cả ăn uống, buộc dây giày, vẽ tranh… cũng đã có máy móc làm cho. Và cả căn nhà của bạn sẽ chăm sóc cho bạn bằng cả một hệ thống vận hành tinh vi, việc bạn cần làm chỉ là tồn tại qua ngày :D (nghe đẫm mùi “Black Mirror” rồi đó ^^). Thậm chí bạn không cần đi đâu xa xôi để du lịch, chỉ cần ở nhà và lắp đặt một căn phòng với các màn hình chiếu những hình ảnh các vùng đất khác nhau mà bạn NGHĨ TỚI. Lưu ý nhé, chỉ cần nghĩ tới vùng đất đó là tự động máy sẽ chiếu hình ảnh nơi đó cho bạn. Đó là công nghệ mà cặp vợ chồng trong câu chuyện đã lắp đặt trong phòng trẻ cho 2 đứa con của mình. Một ngày kia, họ vô tình bước vào phòng và thấy màn hình chiếu cảnh đồng cỏ châu Phi, nơi có con sư tử đang ăn mồi, và trông nó như thật vậy. Nỗi sợ càng ngày càng dâng cao khi có những sự kiện kỳ lạ diễn ra trong nhà, cho thấy con sư tử đó CÓ THẬT chứ không phải chỉ là hình ảnh được tưởng tượng ra trên màn ảnh. Vậy sự thật là đâu? Con sư tử ấy có thật hay không? Gia đình này có đang gặp nguy hiểm bởi chính thứ công nghệ những tưởng sẽ mang lại một cuộc sống thỏa mãn cho họ? Hãy chờ đợi đọc đoạn kết nha, trời ơi mình há hốc mồm luôn đó… Sự thật không như những gì bạn nghĩ đâu ahihi :D

- The Other Foot: Hãy tưởng tượng ở thì tương lai, người da đen trốn chạy khỏi Trái Đất, khỏi sự phân biệt chủng tộc và quá khứ phân biệt chủng tộc tàn bạo man rợ từ người da trắng để thành lập một cộng đồng sinh sống trên Sao Hỏa. Một ngày kia, sau khi người da trắng đã tàn phá không còn một mảnh sự sống nào trên Trái Đất, họ phải đáp tàu bay lên Sao Hỏa để xin người da đen cho họ lên đó sống cùng, thì bạn nghĩ những người da đen trên Sao Hỏa sẽ phản ứng như thế nào. Câu chuyện này khám phá cuộc gặp gỡ sau bao nhiêu năm trời “xa cách” giữa cộng đồng những người da đen và một người da trắng đóng sứ giả đến Sao Hỏa. Lẽ dĩ nhiên, xét tới những gì đã diễn ra trong quá khứ và vẫn còn đang diễn ra trong hiện tại giữa hai chủng tộc này, thì sẽ có những người da đen phản ứng quyết liệt, nhất định đòi trả thù người da trắng, đẩy họ vào cảnh sống như tầng lớp bần cùng nếu người da trắng đến Sao Hỏa sinh sống (nợ máu phải trả bằng máu vì những gì người da trắng đã bắt người da đen phải chịu đựng). Thế nhưng, vẫn có những người da đen bảo rằng quá khứ đã là quá khứ rồi, dùng oán thù báo lấy oán thù thì rốt cuộc oán thù sẽ tiếp nối, không giải quyết được gì cả. Sẽ ra sao nếu hai luồng suy nghĩ trái ngược nhau này là cuộc hai người vốn dĩ là vợ chồng của nhau? Và liệu người da đen trên Sao Hỏa có vùng lên trả thù người da trắng? Hãy đọc thì sẽ biết thôi ^^

- The Man: Một vị chỉ huy tàu vũ trụ đáp xuống một hành tinh cùng với các cấp dưới của mình. Họ nghe được tin tại hành tinh này vừa mới có một người đàn ông xuất hiện, có thể chữa lành bệnh cho toàn thể những người đang đau ốm, và ban phúc lành khắp nhân gian (nghe là biết Chúa rồi hen ^^). Vị chỉ huy ban đầu không tin vào sự tồn tại của người đàn ông này, cứ nghĩ rằng đó là trò chơi khăm của một tiểu đội tàu vũ trụ khác. Nhưng sau đó, có vài sự việc xảy ra khiến vị chỉ huy thay đổi suy nghĩ, tin như sấm, nhưng khi đòi người ở hành tinh đó cho mình gặp người đàn ông ấy, thì họ lại bảo người đàn ông ấy đi mất rồi. Vị chỉ huy nhất quyết lên tàu bay, đi khắp vũ trụ để tìm người đàn ông đó, nhưng người đứng đầu hành tinh ấy bảo rằng, ông sẽ không bao giờ tìm được đâu. Câu chuyện này khám phá mối quan hệ giữa con người và đức tin của họ, cùng mặt trái của sự cuồng tín (vị chỉ huy đe dọa và mém tí là làm hại người ở hành tinh lạ, chỉ vì họ bảo ông không thể gặp được người đàn ông), và đồng thời cũng cho chúng ta thấy rằng, càng đi tìm Chúa thì sẽ mãi mãi không thể tìm ra Người, vì Người không ở đâu xa, Người ở chính trong trái tim chúng ta đó.

- The Long Rain: Hãy tưởng tượng bạn đang đi làm nhiệm vụ trên Sao Kim (Venus), giữa một cơn mưa kéo dài cả thiên niên kỷ (ừ, tình trạng thời tiết trên Sao Kim là thế). Nước nhỏ tong tong xuống đầu mình vài phút là đã thấy khó chịu rồi, nhưng trong câu chuyện này, các nhân vật phải chịu đựng tình cảnh nước luôn chảy lên người mình, chảy mãi không thôi, trong khi đi tìm những Mái Vòm Mặt Trời (Sun Dome) được cài đặt ở trên Sao Kim để trú thân, trước khi cơn mưa không bao giờ dứt quật ngã họ và khiến họ đầu hàng. Câu chuyện này lấy một hoàn cảnh ngặt nghèo và dường như không có lối thoát để làm nổi bật cái cách mà những con người khác nhau phản ứng trước tình cảnh đó, và rồi đưa ra những quyết định có thể ảnh hưởng đến việc sống chết của họ. Mình khá thích cách miêu tả và kể chuyện của Bradbury ở truyện ngắn này, rất giàu hình ảnh, khiến mình có thể tưởng tượng ra ngay trước mắt cảnh tượng mưa tuôn xối xả không bao giờ dừng, tương phản hoàn toàn với hình ảnh ấm áp, đầy đủ thức ăn đầy mời gọi của những Sun Dome dường như luôn xa tầm với của các nhân vật.

- The Rocket Man: Câu chuyện này thì lại không có gì đáng sợ hay rùng rợn lạnh gáy cả. Theo mình thì nó là câu chuyện ít mang tính science fiction/dystopian nhất trong số 18 truyện. Ngược lại, nó đi theo hướng một câu chuyện buồn, bộc lộ cảm xúc và suy nghĩ của các nhân vật nhiều hơn. Nhân vật chính là con trai của một phi hành gia (the rocket man), chuyên đi các chuyến du hành bằng tên lửa đến các hành tinh khác nhau trong vũ trụ. Và những chuyến đi này diễn ra rất thường xuyên; nó đã trở thành một niềm đam mê như cơn nghiện đối với người bố. Những khoảng thời gian ít ỏi ở Trái Đất bên vợ con, người bố chỉ ước ao mau chóng được du hành trên chuyến đi vào vũ trụ tiếp theo. Thế nhưng, khi đã ở ngoài vũ trụ, người bố lại mong mỏi được trở về nhà bên vợ con của mình. Có một sự giằng xé không hề nhẹ trong thâm tâm người bố, và đồng thời, tính chất công việc của ông cũng có sự ảnh hưởng không hề ít tới suy nghĩ, cảm nhận của đứa con, cũng như tâm tính của người vợ. Ở hiện tại, người bố hứa hẹn rằng chuyến đi sắp tới sẽ là chuyến đi cuối cùng của ông, và sẽ không còn tình trạng “thân này ví xẻ làm hai” nữa. Bạn nghĩ rằng câu chuyện sẽ có một kết thúc có hậu, và mọi vấn đề sẽ được giải quyết với chuyến đi cuối cùng này? Nhầm rồi nhé. Hãy đọc đi, và bạn sẽ thấy có một nỗi buồn ám ảnh không nói thành lời ở những câu văn cuối cùng… Đau lòng lắm cơ…

- The Exiles: Truyện ngắn này mình đánh giá là rất thú vị, không phải vì cách kể chuyện hay có gì đó ghê gớm ám ảnh, mà là vì ý tưởng của tác giả. Hãy tưởng tượng ở một tương lai nào đó, y như trong “451 độ F” ấy, khi sách vở, đặc biệt là các cuốn sách kinh dị, khoa học viễn tưởng, ma mị của các tác giả kinh điển hàng đầu thế giới, như Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, H. G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley… bị cấm lưu hành và bị đốt bỏ gần hết, chỉ còn duy nhất 1 bản cho mỗi cuốn tiểu thuyết của họ, và hương hồn của các tác giả nổi tiếng này cũng bị đày ải ra khỏi Trái Đất, phải lên một hành tinh khác trú ngụ (thế nên câu chuyện mới có tên là “The Exiles” – những kẻ bị đi đày). Câu chuyện diễn ra khi một tiểu đội du hành vũ trụ đáp tàu bay lên hành tinh nơi các hương hồn tác gia lớn đó đang ở, và các hương hồn này tìm cách trả thù những tên người Trái Đất đã dám đốt sách của họ.

- The Fox and the Forest: Hãy tưởng tượng vào một thời điểm ở tương lai, khi con người gây ra hàng loạt các cuộc chiến tranh, đặc biệt là chiến tranh với bom nguyên tử, phá hủy dần dần Trái Đất và cả nhân loại, bỗng nhiên có một công ty cho bạn du hành về quá khứ để trốn tránh tình trạng chém giết lẫn nhau của hiện tại, bạn có đi không? Cặp vợ chồng trong câu chuyện này đã quyết định trốn về quá khứ, và là trốn luôn, trốn khỏi nghĩa vụ tham chiến ở hiện tại, để sống cuộc đời yên bình của họ ở Mexico năm 1936. Thế nhưng cuộc hành trình của họ không có mấy phút giây yên bình, vì sự xuất hiện của Người Tìm Kiếm – lực lượng đặc vụ của hiện tại, ngược về quá khứ để lùng bắt những người dám trốn tránh hiện tại đó. Cặp vợ chồng này chính là hai con cáo trong rừng, cho dù lẩn trốn thế nào thì như lời Người Tìm Kiếm đã đe dọa, họ sẽ luôn bị tìm ra. Càng đọc câu chuyện này, bạn sẽ càng cảm thương và ủng hộ cho cặp vợ chồng trốn thoát thành công. Và đã có chi tiết khiến mình những tưởng mọi thứ đã thành công thật. Ơ thế mà đùng một phát, một quả plot twist giáng xuống, thánh thần ơi tui không có ngờ được chuyện này luôn đó nha!!!!

- The Visitor: Trong tương lai, một nhóm người Trái Đất bị bệnh rỉ máu (blood rust), phải bị cách ly bằng cách lên Sao Hỏa sống. Cuộc sống của họ rất cô đơn, kiểu ai cũng bị bệnh và suốt ngày nằm dài, ho liên tục, không được quay về Trái Đất, và vì thế, họ cũng không được tiếp xúc với các kiến thức của nhân loại, và cũng không có nguồn tri thức để có thể trò chuyện, thảo luận với nhau. Một ngày kia, có một người cũng bị bệnh và được đưa đến Sao Hỏa, đặc biệt là người này có khả năng truyền ý nghĩ, hình ảnh và hiểu biết của mình ra ngoài thực tế, kiểu phục dựng một công trình, địa điểm, học thuyết thành hình ảnh 3D ngay ngoài đời thực, dĩ nhiên là trong thời gian ngắn thôi, cho mọi người cùng thưởng thức. Giữa tình cảnh cô đơn và thiếu nguồn tri thức như thế, thì sự xuất hiện của người mới đến này quả là một món quà vô giá, mà ai trên Sao Hỏa cũng muốn giành giật để được sở hữu. Câu chuyện này khám phá cái phần ích kỷ muốn giữ những thứ quý giá làm của riêng của con người – cái bản chất đã khiến cho con người gây ra không biết bao nhiêu cuộc chiến và hàng tỷ tỷ thứ đau khổ khác.

- Marionettes, Inc.: Hãy tưởng tưởng một công ty trao cho bạn cơ hội sở hữu một bản sao con người bạn, một robot phỏng sinh giống y chang bạn, mà lại còn có suy nghĩ, cảm xúc, bạn sẽ nhận lấy cơ hội này, hay sẽ thấy sợ hãi và từ chối? Người đàn ông trong câu chuyện này đã nhận lấy cơ hội để dùng bản sao của mình như một vật thế thân, để ở nhà cho cô vợ mà vốn dĩ ông chưa bao giờ thực sự yêu, trong khi ông dự tính lên đường đi du lịch, thoát khỏi một cuộc hôn nhân không hạnh phúc trong một khoảng thời gian. Người bạn của ông này thì vợ lại đeo dính mình như sam, và ông cũng muốn có một con robot phỏng sinh thế thân mình để được tự do làm điều mình muốn mà không có bà vợ đèo đẽo theo sau. Khi đụng đến bản sao, đến song trùng, đến robot phỏng sinh y chang một con người thực thụ, thì chả có gì tốt đẹp có thể đến từ ý tưởng này cả :D (nhớ tập phim “Be Right Back”, “Black Mirror” season 2, episode 1 hông này? ^^). Và cái kết đắng là điều tất yếu dành cho 2 người đàn ông, mà đắng như thế nào thì đến mình cũng không ngờ được luôn nha. Plot twists alert! (2 quả plot twists lận đó, mỗi ông 1 quả :D).

- The Rocket: Đây, giống như câu chuyện “The Rocker Man”, lại là một bức tranh phản chiếu tình cảm con người nhiều hơn là phản ánh mặt trái của một xã hội tương lai, khi du hành vũ trụ và công nghệ phát triển vượt bậc. Trong câu chuyện này, mỗi con người đều có thể du hành vũ trụ, nếu họ tích cóp đủ một số tiền cỡ 5000 đô. Gia đình của nhân vật chính thuộc dạng nghèo, người chồng là thợ hàn, chuyên làm việc với các mô hình kim loại, và tích cóp mãi mà chỉ mới đủ tiền mua 1 vé du hành vũ trụ, trong khi gia đình có tới 5 người (bố, mẹ và 3 đứa con). Câu chuyện diễn tiến từ chỗ các thành viên trong gia đình nhường nhau cơ hội quý giá đó, đồng nghĩa với với việc sẽ chỉ có 1 thành viên được đi, 4 thành viên còn lại phải ở nhà, chỉ biết đến vũ trụ thông qua lời kể của thành viên kia; cho tới lúc người chồng dùng số tiền đáng lẽ chỉ có thể mua được 1 tấm vé du hành để mua lại mô hình tên lửa, rồi dùng khả năng làm việc với máy móc, hàn xì của mình để mang lại một trải nghiệm du hành vũ trụ cho cả 3 đứa con của mình, thông qua hình ảnh 3D phục dựng cảnh ngoài không gian. Tiền chỉ là công cụ để sống vui, sống tốt thôi các bạn ạ, rõ ràng ở trong câu chuyện này, tiền không phải là tất cả. Có bao nhiêu tiền không thành vấn đề, quan trọng là bạn biết cách sử dụng số tiền mình có được như thế nào để mang lại niềm vui nhiều nhất cho mình và những người xung quanh. Thay vì dồn hết số tiền để duy nhất 1 đứa con có thể du hành vũ trụ, người chồng đã dùng nó để mua lại cả một trải nghiệm ngoài không gian y như thật cho cả 3 đứa con của mình. Nghèo thì du hành theo kiểu nghèo, mà quan trọng là các con của ông ấy đã có một tuần “du hành” đáng nhớ ngay trong chính khoảng sân sau của nhà mình.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a dark and stormy night. Enters a mysterious character that seems escaped from a different novel (Something Wicked This Way Comes) . His body is completely covered in animated tattoos, images that he claims show events yet to pass. If you look carefully, you might even get a glimpse of your own future.
The role of this opening sequence of the collection serves as a foreword from the author explaining why these previously published stories were included here and not others: they are a map of our humanity, a DNA sequencing of our emotional landscape, a study of the intimate, deeply personal impact of the future on our lives. Bradbury is focused on the individual, on what goes on inside the head of his characters, on motivations and aspirations and phobias. Science is incidental to the plot, it's there as part of the environment, and the questions of why or how it works are less important that the ones about how it affects the psychology of the individuals caught in its grip.

While the quality of the stories is a uneven, and some of them feel dated , the ones that are good are really exceptional in their beautiful, evocative language and powerful emotional impact. I find it difficult to pick a favorite, but I think I will go with:

The Rocket Man - the story of the family man who loves deeply his wife and kid, but can't resist the call of the star spangled skies at night.

Coming close behind:
Kaleidoscope - a group of astronauts are ejected into space when their ship is damaged and talk to each other over radio.

The Exiles - echoing some themes from Fahrenheit 451, gothic and fantastic literature is banned on Earth, the books burned and the stories almost forgotten.

No Particular Night or Morning - about the emptiness of space and the claustrophobic pressure of living for months inside a cramped rocket.

The Fox and the Forest - a couple travels back in time in order to escape from a future militarized gulag.

Zero Hour - a children's game about an alien invasion may turned out to be true after all. Made me think of Hitchcock.

The Rocket - space travel is expensive and a man saves money for decades, hoping one day he or one member of his family may buy a ticket to see the planets and the stars from up close.

If I continue, I will eventually list all the stories. Of particular interest are several that explore the role of religion in the future. Bardbury doesn't hold the view that science excludes the need for spiritual epiphany, and I must say I kind of agree with him. It's important at least for the questions to be asked and to search for the answers: The Man , The Fire Balloons and tangentially The Visitor and The Other Foot are the stories dealing with spirituality and morality.

I said some of the stories feel dated. I wasn't referring to the language or the themes, but rather to the way space and the planets are presented. Mars and Venus are in fact mirror images of Earth, ignoring the differences in gravity, air pressure, toxic elements or radiation. Mars is a dry desert and on Venus it rains all the time, and that's about it. Space travel is also more of a concept than a credible rendition. Not even the weightlessness is mentioned. The time to travel to Mercury or Pluto is less that three months, aliens have no problem breathing our air or conversing with Earthlings. And so on ...

For all these minor complaints, I would still put The Illustrated Man on my top ten short story collection listopia.

[Bernhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed with all his sulphurous color, elongation, and anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man's body for his art. The colors burned in three dimensions. They were windows looking in upon fiery reality. Here, gathered on one wall, were all the finest scenes in the universe, the man was a walking treasure gallery. This wasn't the work of a cheap carnival tattoo man with three colors and whiskey on his breath. This was the accomplishment of a living genius, vibrant, clear, and beautiful.”

Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man is a collection of short stories which in general seem to be dealing with the same kind of emotions, while not really being related to one another in terms of narrative. These stories transmit a kind of nostalgic sadness associated with them, a feeling I had already felt when I read Bradbury’s short story There Will Come Soft Rains.

While The Illustrated Man remains a collection of science fiction stories, its main theme isn’t science at all, but its human characters. Bradbury explores a wide range of themes which end up giving a sort of hidden narrative to most of these stories. As usual, his writing is excellent and a pleasure to read, which is something you would come to expect from him.

In the end, this is a great collection of short stories from one of the genre’s most well regarded writers. Bradbury’s writing, his creativity and the various themes involved throughout the collection all combine and end up making The Illustrated Man a very good and well worth reading experience.