The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (EPUB)

Description

A classic collection of stories – all told on the skin of a man – from the author of Fahrenheit 451.If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed, with his sulphurous colour and exquisite human anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man’s body for his art…Yet the Illustrated Man has tried to burn the illustrations off. He’s tried sandpaper, acid, and a knife. Because, as the sun sets, the pictures glow like charcoals, like scattered gems. They quiver and come to life. Tiny pink hands gesture, tiny mouths flicker as the figures enact their stories – voices rise, small and muted, predicting the future.Here are sixteen tales: sixteen illustrations… the seventeenth is your own future told on the skin of the Illustrated Man.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐It had me absorbed the whole time read it in two days. Absolutely loved it.

⭐This book arrived in perfect condition. It’s a hardcover and the jacket was perfectly intact thanks to the diligent packaging. The cover art is gorgeous and I was so happy that it arrived within a couple days of ordering it. Would use this seller again!

⭐The book arrived quickly and was in very good condition. I would recommend this seller

⭐this book is great, one of my favorites I have read in forever. Great short stories. and the quality of the book is nice.

⭐I’ve always loved the way Bradbury wrote, poetic and meaningful. The stories in this book were ahead of their time in some ways, timeless in others. An exceptional book

⭐Thoughtful, dark, and sometimes gruesome, yet compelling as Bradbury illustrates our harshest thoughts and deepest fears. Not for the timid.

⭐A sad, decorated wandering man stumbles into the life of another drifter.The tattooed wandering man is a terrifying canvas of brillant skin art and darkened dreams. A hated circus performer “condemmed to be free” as a morbid living gallery- each tatoo moves and glows animately; this anthology treats us to the best of the pulp Bradbury of the fifties. As Rod Serling told us in his TWILIGHT ZONE introduction we are transported from the depth of our fears to the heights of our imagination. Rocketing from the past to the future to the subconscious we are invited to a world where…A holographic Africa is so consuming that it…well… consumes.Time travellers from the totalitarian future must travel to 1938 for vacation only to find that they can never escape the future.An explosion rocks a spaceship… disgorging astronauts- making its crew satellites left to face their personal angst and collective end.An artifical sun provides respite from the grey rain world of Venus, but only if the spacewreck survivors are willing to pay a price finding it.A used rocket never travels to space but reveals the heart of a poor kind father,not the solar system,to his long suffering wife.A man heals and performs miracles in world after world, yet can only be met through faith not a rocket trip.A playground becomes a portal to the hell of childhood.A couple go to sleep on the last night of the world and forget to set the alarm clock.A man’s robot duplicate has ideas of his own on where to vacation next.Poe gets revenge against future thought police from a die hard fan who manages to make others die.Long oppressed blacks find out that their former oppressors have nothing left to oppress.A psycho find respite in the void of space…and meaning as well in a sci-fi replay of Sartre.A city lives beyong the lives of its former inhabitants to exact revenge.A highway in Mexico becomes a river of life at the death of the civilization to its north.Are childhood imaginary friends always imagined? The earth finds a new nemesis in a suburban front yard.This book is a rocket simmering in the red martian sun. A rocket that darts wildly between the height of man’s imagination and the depths of his fears as we were warned by Rod Serling in his TWILIGHT ZONE monologue. A rocket which darts with zen efficiency between the inner life of the soul and the outer space of the future.In the end the tattoo canvas moves…

⭐The book arrived on time with no issues. However, it did have a dent on it which is upsetting, especially being a new book. I would recommend thinking about this before buying.

⭐The Illustrated Man is a science fiction classic from Ray Bradbury, a favourite of the Golden Age side of the literature. Mr Bradbury highlights the tension and paranoia of the Cold War in most of the short stories of this collection. It begins and ends with the prologue and epilogue as framing devices: the unnamed narrator meets the titular character, a sideshow freak, under a starry night outside of town. The Illustrated Man then proceeds to demonstrate his power the narrator, his ability to have the tattoos covering his body come to life and tell their own stories. These are stories of first contact, estranged family men, time travellers, alien invasions, and even virtual reality (this collection was published in the 50s).The stories are a mixed bag. Some are interesting, such as ‘The Veldt’ (two kids become obsessed with a VR room) and some are touching, such as ‘Rocket Man’ (a man becomes out or touch with his family because of his job, which involves space travel for months). And then there are some weak ones. ‘The Playground’, about a man who wants to protect his son from a playground that turns kids into violent monsters, was not really fitting with the other stories.There is a dated aspect to these stories. In the quasi-horror story ‘The Long Rain’, the planet Venus is depicted as being constantly rainy, indicating that it saw potential for colonisation. And we know by now that it’s not true.Other things that haven’t aged well include the general ‘gee-whiz’ attitude and vocabulary of some of the characters. Not forgetting to mention the sexist attitude of some of the male characters, an annoying writing trait from that time period. Nonetheless, for something published in the 50s, The Illustrated Man is a groundbrraking book that proved that Ray Bradbury could easily rival Asimov or Clarke in the psychological arena of the sci-fi literature. Every sci-fi and fantasy fan must have it in their library.

⭐I originally came across this book when I had to read some of the short stories in it for school years ago I liked it then and have always wanted to go back and finish the other stories but never had the chance until recently. Each of the sixteen short stories are brought together by the preface that sets each story as a scene depicted on the body of the Illustrated Man as witnessed by a traveller he meets on the way. Each tale is usually quite dark with lots of death, betrayal and warnings about censorship and tyranny. Written in the fifties the book does give a good outlook on what people of those times thought the future would hold and it is quite fun to see what has happened and what hasn’t. The tales are very well written and although they are quite short they are always good and interesting.

⭐These stories were captivating. It was so easy to forget that it wasn’t a modern book, it really felt like it could have been written far more recently. Some really interesting moral and philosophical issues central to each story and I really enjoyed reading them. Such a unique concept, very well executed.

⭐An interesting read, and you can see themes in the stories drawn from other works, such as Fahrenheit 451, etc.While the “illustrated man” concept gave a slight framework to the stories, they were really quite independent stories of anything from 5-45 minutes reading (my pace, quite steady). In general, the stories themselves were dystopian and tended to rather black endings.The stories read easily and I enjoyed them all, but they were showing their age slightly; interesting for all that and I’m sure quite innovative when first written.Generally recommended, but I will not rush to buy other similar works.

⭐Each story was different in tone and theme, yes a little dated in tech etc but this is a book written many years before the first man in the moon!!! Brilliantly written, my first and not my last Ray Bradbury book

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