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Ray Bradbury

The Illustrated Man Mass Market Paperback – Illustrated, April 17, 2012

by Ray Bradbury (Author)

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The Illustrated Man, a seminal work in Ray Bradbury’s career, whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage, is available from Simon & Schuster for the first time.

Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. For this peerless American storyteller, the most bewitching force in the universe is human nature. In these eighteen startling tales unfolding across a canvas of tattooed skin, living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Provocative and powerful, The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth—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.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Simon & Schuster
Publication date

April 17, 2012
Dimensions

4.13 x 0.8 x 6.75 inches
ISBN-10

9781451678185
ISBN-13

978-1451678185
Lexile measure

680L
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Bradbury is an authentic original.” —Time

“Ray Bradbury has accomplished what very few artists do. With his visions of possible futures and edgy presents . . . he has changed us.” —TheBoston Globe

“His stories and novels are part of the American language.” —The Washington Post

“Deftly plotted, beautifully written, characterized by protagonists who are intensely real . . . there is no writer quite like Ray Bradbury.” —The New York Times

“A master... Bradbury has a style all his own, much imitated but never matched.” —Portland Oregonian

About the Author

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1451678185
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Illustrated edition (April 17, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781451678185
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1451678185
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 680L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.13 x 0.8 x 6.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #22,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in Science Fiction Short Stories
- #188 in Classic American Literature
- #486 in Short Stories (Books)

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2,489 ratings

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Ray Bradbury

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In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91, inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, "Live forever!" Bradbury later said, "I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."

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Joseph Sciuto

BRILLIANT

Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2019

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Ray Bradbury's, "The Illustrated Man" might be called science fiction, but to me it was more like non-fiction. It might take place in the future, on Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and on earth, but in reality every story is in, some way or another, a commentary and analysis of the human condition and the cruelty that humans can bequeath upon each other, and on the beautiful planet we live on. In a sense, it is Greta Thunberg's speech on climate change and the destruction of our planet.

The novel, is eighteen different stories, unfolding on the tattooed body of a man, The Illustrated Man, who was cursed by a witch. The stories build upon each other, with different characters and story plots, culminating in a final story simply about a dream and one man's imagination and love for his family and wife.

Mr. Bradbury is a treasure, and "The Illustrated Man," is another piece in the treasure chest he left behind for all of us to read and marvel at for as long as our planet survives.

41 people found this helpful

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Eric Hall

A Lost Sense of Wonder

Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2019

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You can’t go wrong with pre-1970 Ray Bradbury, and this collection of stories is a great start to his short fiction. In contrast to many who say Bradbury’s vision of the future is from a bygone, romantic era, I see it as a taste of pleasures and struggles to come, if humanity can ever grow enough to begin real space exploration, and regain its sense of wonder and awe. I also find it inconceivable that the author of Fahrenheit 451 and the short story The Murderer (available in The Golden Apples of the Sun) could ever be considered naive. We live in sadly ideological times.

Bradbury is the author closest to my heart. The world as he paints it is a theophany, achingly beautiful, even when it isn’t friendly. I actually find myself to be rather cynical about many things, but not when I am reading this book. My only disclaimer would be the much repeated warning that Bradbury is not an author of hard science fiction, his genre is fantasy or perhaps magic realism. These stories are about the emotion, not the science, whatever the setting may be.

25 people found this helpful

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Marissa

Intriguing compilation

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2015

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This book was an easy read that left me contemplating at the end of each story. This is compilation of short stories involving the future and all tied together by being written in moving picture form across the flesh of the Illustrated Man. Each story is unique and teaches a lesson about the human spirit - some of these lessons are a brutal reflection of the negative and other stories show that hope can prevail. There were very few happy endings in the stories, but the sad stories still had a great lesson to teach about what lies inside a person. It really was quite intriguing.
These stories were written in the late 1940s and early 1950s and it's very interesting that the majority of the stories about the future involved rockets, space travel, and life on other planets. It's funny how the future back then all focused on the discovery of what is out there in space, yet current books about the future more involve the collapse of current social systems and reconstruction of society. Maybe I don't read very much Sci-Fi, but it seems to me that the outlook of the future has changed since the 1950s. I really found this book intriguing. Each and every story left me thinking about something. It was very thought provoking.

59 people found this helpful

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Slader Matthew

A Collection of the Most Thought Out Stories Ever Written

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2018

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I have yet to read a book that has so many different social commentaries packed into such a small space. I originally read this when I was in the seventh grade, and it's crazy because every time I've read it since then (4 times) you find something different that you didn't see before.

Also, Ray Bradbury is definitely a time traveler from the future - you'll know what I mean when you buy this book.

That being said, if you can't buy into stories about the future, and time travel, or the fact that the entire book is based off some guys moving tattoos, then you don't have the intellect to be able to read this book.

If you want to explore themes that tackle tough issues, like spoiling children, race, religion, and many many more, then.... WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??? BUY IT ALREADY!!!

20 people found this helpful

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Magdalena Doss

A way to look inside our souls and hearts.

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2020

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The Illustrated Man is a collection of sci fi stories written in times when Martians were still thought to possibly become our friends or foes, coming to visit or invade us. However, Mars could as well be Venus or some Planet X because in these stories Ray Bradbury focuses entirely on humanity and its good and bad traits - where ever a human puts our foot down, we bring our ignorance and arrogance with us. Considering when these stories were written, it is entirely understandable why author’s vision for the future of humanity and its explorations of the universe looked bleak. His first story was written shortly after atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and world was coming to terms with all the horrors of WWII.
The collection of stories shows that although our scientific progress is happening fast, evolution of our human is following behind at extremely sluggish speed. A way to look inside our souls.

4 people found this helpful

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Oleander Whisper

Cosmic Predictions, Predilections, and Expirations

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2020

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What an odd compilation of futuristic, dystopian tales. My favorite sections and stories included the Prologue, “The Veldt,” “Marionettes, Inc.,” “The City,” and the Epilogue. While the multitude of glowing rockets, cosmic quests, witches, Martian visitors, and Venusian sands were undoubtedly captivating, almost all of the stories involved someone dying. (In a short book containing many short stories, that easily put the death toll firmly off the charts).

This classic did give me perspective on what futuristic predictions looked like so many many decades ago. While we haven’t seen books permanently outlawed or Santa Claus drowned in a vat of Lysol, we have certainly encountered our fair share of diseases, mercy killings, and a respectable amount of space travel. The descriptive writing quality was truly engaging, and I can see how such a collection of stories might trigger copious amounts of literary discussion!

2 people found this helpful

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Mohammed Jamma

Essential Sci-Fi Literature.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2019

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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.

7 people found this helpful

Sinead

Unique

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2020

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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.

One person found this helpful

T. Alexander

Sixteen dark tales

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2006

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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.

7 people found this helpful

Dreamer

Brilliant stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2022

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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

K. Royle

Good but dated

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2011

Verified Purchase

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.

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