From the Bookshelf of Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy…

The Illustrated Man

Ray Bradbury

Start date: May 11, 2018

Finish date: May 29, 2018

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Why we're reading this: Group short story discussion May 2018
#91 on NPR's Top 100 SF/F novels of all time (2011 poll) http://www.…more
[close] Group short story discussion May 2018
#91 on NPR's Top 100 SF/F novels of all time (2011 poll) http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/1390858...

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Jan 28, 2013 Phillip Welshans rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Illustrated Man is a collection of short stories that have no direct relation to one another, yet are linked almost imperceptibly. On the surface, no characters are related or know one another or appear in more than one story. Even though several stories are set on Mars and Earth, the reader is given no indication that the locales on each planet are close to one another. And indeed Bradbury never hints in the prologue or epilogue that these stories are connected by anything more than their d The Illustrated Man is a collection of short stories that have no direct relation to one another, yet are linked almost imperceptibly. On the surface, no characters are related or know one another or appear in more than one story. Even though several stories are set on Mars and Earth, the reader is given no indication that the locales on each planet are close to one another. And indeed Bradbury never hints in the prologue or epilogue that these stories are connected by anything more than their depiction, via futuristic tattoos on the eponymous character’s body.

However, it is actually in their overarching frameworks where these stories intersect in wonderful ways. The Illustrated Man is concerned with the tension within humans between the emotional and the mechanical. That may sound cliché, but Bradbury explores this tension is often compelling ways throughout the anthology.

One of the most famous stories from this collection, “The Veldt”, looks at how technology can replace, but never truly replicate nurturing human parents. It was one of the first Bradbury short stories I read as a child and the final grisly scene has stuck with me for all that time.

Some stories like “The Other Foot”, “The Highway”, “The Visitor” and others are almost devoid of technology or your typical trappings of science fiction. Some of these stories are set on Mars, or during an atomic war, but those are merely reference points for the meat of the stories, which focuses on how humans treat one another in new, uncertain times, and how some old prejudices or shortcomings might recede while others persist to the characters’ detriment.

I very much liked the stories examining faith and belief in a future increasingly built around empiricism and the hunt for proof. Stories like “The Fire Balloons”, “The Man”, and “The Rocket” were wonderful. “The Exiles” also fits into this category, in my opinion, as the reader is taken into a Martian world inhabited by famous authors and fictional characters like Poe and Dickens and Santa Claus, whose existence is dependent on the continued consumption of their stories and myths on Earth. When nobody reads their work or believes in them any longer, they disappear.

And then you have a selection of darker tales like “The City”, “The Long Rain”, “Marionettes, Inc”, and “The Fox and the Forest”.

There were some stories I liked more than others, of course. Some of the stories I was lukewarm on would be “The Rocket Man”, “The Highway”, “The Last Night of the World”, and “The Rocket”, although none of them were bad.

But Bradbury’s writing is great. With short stories, it is often tough to develop characters before you run out of runway, so to speak. But in many stories, you get to know the character through dialog, so you’re learning about them as the story progresses. In others, the characters are not so much fleshed out people as instruments for Bradbury’s storytelling. In the longer stories, such as “The Fire Balloons”, you end up knowing a great deal about the main characters. While in other shorter stories, like “The Highway”, the writing is a mosaic and you have to make a composite of the characters.

If you are a fan of humanistic sci-fi, this will be a treat for you. By humanistic, I mean sci-fi that doesn’t rely on technology or futurism, but rather places it in the background and instead focuses on the humans in the story. Plus, the stories are fast reads, making this easily digestible for readers of many different ages.
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Jun 21, 2012 Joel Reeves rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"The Veldt" remains one of my favorite short stories by Ray Bradbury. Most interesting to me as a writer is the way in which the author used the Illustrated Man himself -- that is, the moving pictures on his body, to link all of the stories together. ...more

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