Wow, Ray Bradbury likes rockets. Written in 1951, this little book is at the same time dated and true to modern life. Science fiction writers don’t care about rockets any more – they’re certainly not *called* rockets anyway, and we’ve looked beyond the solar system for adventures. Many of the short stories in The Illustrated Man
Despite the incongruous settings, the complete disregard for physics, the stories work. This is because the science-fiction is just a vehicle for something else – the exploration of the human psyche. Unsurprisingly for 50’s sci-fi, the main characters are men. Women are only picked up as background issues – a shrieking wife, a painted temptation, a memory of something you used to be able to get on earth. The men have thoughts, perform actions, snap under the pressure of their situations.
There’s a lot of darkness in these stories, but a lot of surprises too. The characters are always driven by outside forces, unfair circumstances they can’t control, but their reactions push against the grain. Each self-contained tale gives you something to think about.
The setting of these stories brings us back to reality. They’re the dreamlike-theatre covering a tattooed man, premonitions of things happened and things to come. He too is the victim of outside forces and the link between the tales. Why were these things drawn onto his skin – why not others?
My only criticism of this book? Too many rockets 