The Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury)

The Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury
William Morrow
Fiction, Collection/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: A traveler between towns chances upon a stranger covered in odd tattoos that seem almost alive. The Illustrated Man claims that the images were given to him by an old woman from the far future, and that they are more curse than blessing, for all that they fascinate the traveler. Before bedding down for the evening, the Illustrated Man warns his companion against staring too long - particularly at one blank section in his back. Yet the traveler cannot help himself. In those shifting, dancing lines of ink, he sees eighteen tales unfold: tales of the past, the present, and the future, of invaders from Mars and lost spacemen on Venus, of time traveling refugees and a children's game gone terribly wrong, and more... all inevitably leading toward the revelation in that final, forbidden image.

REVIEW: Ray Bradbury remains one of the true grandmaster wordsmiths, not just in science fiction but general storytelling. This classic collection holds up fairly well for the most part, painting vivid pictures in the mind's eye. He even foresaw the dangers of letting technology raise the next generation in "The Veldt", the tale of a family living in a "smart home" with a mechanical intelligence that does everything, even create and think, for the children. Still, several of his stories can't help but show their age in certain ideas of the future, particularly cultural assumptions about women's roles (or lack thereof) and a reliance on Christian imagery (particularly in "The Man", where an ambitious captain and his crew, out to exploit new planets, arrive at one rustic backwater to discover that another offworlder has just been and left after performing a series of miracles for the natives - a man who is never named but is clearly intended to be Jesus). One sad relic of his time was his idea that the book burners and censors would come from the halls of pure science and reason, striving to drive out "obsolete" imagination and superstition (and with it the creativity and wonder that truly makes humanity human); in our time, we can see that it's superstition that's determined to drive out science and reason as well as imagination. Bradbury's tendency toward downer endings, either slow-motion tragedies or dark final twists of fate, can also be a bit much after several such stories in a row. (My late father referred to Bradbury's works as "anti-science fiction" as he saw the genre as being more about the promise of science and the future, not the dark sides and the inevitable endings of great things, which Bradbury so often explored.) As for the Illustrated Man himself, whose stories bookend the collection, he remains an iconic figure in that gray area between sci-fi, magic realism, and horror. The stories are still worth reading, and still have plenty to say.

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