The Illustrated Man (1951)

The Illustrated Man (1951)

Author: Ray Bradbury  |  Page Count: 294

'...[P]erhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, in a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.'

Perhaps because of the 1969 filmed version of the same name — or perhaps in spite of it, if like me you don't consider it to be a very good adaptation — the book is one of Ray Bradbury's more well-known anthologies.

The sixteen stories that are included weren't written specifically for the collection, but were gathered together with a newly penned bridge narrative that explains how each individual tale is represented as an inking on the human canvas that is the illustrated man.*

While they take place across many different times and locales, thematically most of them have a connecting cynical edge, something that the master fantasist is more proficient at than people often give him credit for. It's a theme that complements the temperament of the titular man, a drifter who feels that the pictures on his skin have a weight that burdens his soul.

The first standalone story is The Veldt (previously published as The World the Children Made), which takes place in a futuristic time period wherein machines do most of the work that men and women used to do. Two children spend an inordinate amount of time in their high tech nursery, a magical place that can create virtual realities, not unlike what Star Trek's holodecks would later do. I don't feel it's a particularly exciting tale, but it's been adapted for the screen more than once, including for The Ray Bradbury Theater (S4, Ep11), so some folks must like it.

Thereafter things gradually get better, continuing to explore poetically what are typically dark topics, such as feelings of helplessness, anger, and even happiness at another's misfortune. One in particular goes very dark, detailing deaths in a still elegant but thoroughly gruesome way.

A number of the stories take place on Mars, a place that the author had a great love for, and at least one references an era and/or a society that's not far removed from that of his masterpiece, Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Usually, to reach distant planets we need rockets - I wasn't counting, but at a guess I'd say almost half of the stories have some kind of rocket, either as a simple means of space-travel or as representative of something more metaphorical or dreamlike.

There are some classics included, and some that are more forgettable, with endings that feel either abrupt or undeserving, but each one has passages that are wondrous in design, with beautifully realised allusions or comparisons, the like of which only Bradbury could dream up.

*The original US edition has eighteen, whereas the UK edition has sixteen. But not all of the included stories are the same: the UK edition omits The Rocket Man, The Fire Balloons, The Exiles, and The Concrete Mixer, but adds Usher II and The Playground. I don't know why.