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A review by millennial_dandy
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
3.0
3.5
Having completed Ray Bradbury's famous short story collection, 'The Illustrated Man,' I feel like I've learned two very important things about his preoccupations. One, the man clearly loved rockets. Two, He also seemed supremely confident humans would colonize Mars. No, he and Elon Musk aren't secretly the same person (allegedly).
"The Illustrated Man" runs quite the emotional gamut, at times deeply pessimistic and cynical, at others hopeful.
The titular tale, which serves as the framing narrative, is a great concept that, sadly, is more of a gimmick than a fully fleshed-out story in its own right.
What with all the rockets and Martians, there are definitely places where some of the stories bleed together, which is a shame because the reading experience of each individual story is quite good. But because of this, upon reflection, most of the stories I remember well are from the beginning and the end of the collection and the middle is a bit of a blur.
Overall, these are, I feel, the best under the category of each theme:
1. The Veldt -- The collection opens with this unsettling tale of a family eh... ripped apart, shall we say, by technology meant to afford them lives of ease and leisure. There's also a cautionary tale about parents who use TV as a surrogate 'nanny' for their kids in there too.
2. Kaleidoscope -- 'Rocket men' and space travel feature heavily in this collection, and Bradbury swings back and forth between the joy of this possible future and the ennui he seems to think it would bring with it. And what better way to explore that tension than by having a group of astronauts falling through space to their deaths contemplating exactly whether or not it was worth it?
3. The Fire Balloons -- One of a few stories exploring the rather niche intersection between religion and space exploration. Specifically, Bradbury attempts to throw his own answer into the ring as to whether or not the aliens were 'saved' by Jesus back in ye olde day. Incidentally, this was a real concern and hot topic back in 1835 during the 'Great Moon Hoax' (seriously, you should go read about that--really wild stuff was afoot ) Regardless of the faith of a given reader, 'Fire Balloons' is a touching story about how even if one has the best intentions, missionaries are very cringy.
4. The Visitor -- Another story with an ax to grind, 'The Visitor' could be seen as a fair allegory for a wide range of things, though my favorite interpretation is as a critique of tourism and how by over-exploiting picturesque or otherwise popular destinations we destroy them. At its core, though, this is a cautionary tale about greed of any kind and how it is so very often the reason no one can have nice things.
Honorable Mentions: The Long Rain/The City -- Though they don't tie into any broad, overarching themes, I thought these were the best in terms of displaying Bradbury's writing style.
Having completed Ray Bradbury's famous short story collection, 'The Illustrated Man,' I feel like I've learned two very important things about his preoccupations. One, the man clearly loved rockets. Two, He also seemed supremely confident humans would colonize Mars. No, he and Elon Musk aren't secretly the same person (allegedly).
"The Illustrated Man" runs quite the emotional gamut, at times deeply pessimistic and cynical, at others hopeful.
The titular tale, which serves as the framing narrative, is a great concept that, sadly, is more of a gimmick than a fully fleshed-out story in its own right.
What with all the rockets and Martians, there are definitely places where some of the stories bleed together, which is a shame because the reading experience of each individual story is quite good. But because of this, upon reflection, most of the stories I remember well are from the beginning and the end of the collection and the middle is a bit of a blur.
Overall, these are, I feel, the best under the category of each theme:
1. The Veldt -- The collection opens with this unsettling tale of a family eh... ripped apart, shall we say, by technology meant to afford them lives of ease and leisure. There's also a cautionary tale about parents who use TV as a surrogate 'nanny' for their kids in there too.
2. Kaleidoscope -- 'Rocket men' and space travel feature heavily in this collection, and Bradbury swings back and forth between the joy of this possible future and the ennui he seems to think it would bring with it. And what better way to explore that tension than by having a group of astronauts falling through space to their deaths contemplating exactly whether or not it was worth it?
3. The Fire Balloons -- One of a few stories exploring the rather niche intersection between religion and space exploration. Specifically, Bradbury attempts to throw his own answer into the ring as to whether or not the aliens were 'saved' by Jesus back in ye olde day. Incidentally, this was a real concern and hot topic back in 1835 during the 'Great Moon Hoax' (seriously, you should go read about that--really wild stuff was afoot ) Regardless of the faith of a given reader, 'Fire Balloons' is a touching story about how even if one has the best intentions, missionaries are very cringy.
4. The Visitor -- Another story with an ax to grind, 'The Visitor' could be seen as a fair allegory for a wide range of things, though my favorite interpretation is as a critique of tourism and how by over-exploiting picturesque or otherwise popular destinations we destroy them. At its core, though, this is a cautionary tale about greed of any kind and how it is so very often the reason no one can have nice things.
Honorable Mentions: The Long Rain/The City -- Though they don't tie into any broad, overarching themes, I thought these were the best in terms of displaying Bradbury's writing style.
The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors [...] and it never stopped.
The city waited twenty thousand years. The planet moved through space and the flowers of the fields grew up and fell away, and still the city waited; and the rivers of the planet rose and waned and turned to dust. Still the city waited. The winds that had been young and wild grew old and serene, and the clouds of the sky that had been ripped and torn were left alone to drift in idle whiteness. Still the city waited.