Ray Bradbury's remarkable collection of stories - all told on the skin of a man. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection. 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, a knife. Because, as the sun sets, the pictures glow like charcoals, like scattered gems. ...
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Ray Bradbury's remarkable collection of stories - all told on the skin of a man. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection. 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, 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.
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Bradbury's work improves with age, like a good pinot noir. In this age of the ubiquitous tattoo, it's even a more vivid intro.
Musarter
Oct 16, 2009
Classic Sci-Fi
The first thing you should know about this book is that it was written as individual stories, previously printed in magazines, that were later compiled together and stuck between a Prologue and Epilogue. That said, each story is enjoyable and a few are outstanding. Bradbury writes decently enough but his real strength is his imagination. He has a way of making the fantastic seem common which makes the stories human; even stories about martians. He also plays off psychological themes and the human experience well. He invented convincing space travel experiences prior to actual space travel. Many of the stories are worthy of multiple reads.
