The Illustrated Man is a
1951The year 1951 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*E. E. Cummings and Rachel Carson are awarded Guggenheim Fellowships.*Flannery O'Connor is diagnosed with lupus....
book of eighteen
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
short storiesA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
by
Ray BradburyRay Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
that explores the nature of mankind. While none of the stories has a plot or character connection with the next, a recurring theme is the conflict of the cold mechanics of
technologyTechnology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
and the
psychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
of people.
The unrelated stories are tied together by the
frame deviceA frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
of "the Illustrated Man", a
vagrantA vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...
with a
tattooA tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
ed body whom the unnamed narrator meets. The man's tattoos, allegedly created by a woman from the future, are animated and each tell a different tale. All but one of the stories had been previously published elsewhere, although Bradbury revised some of the texts for the book's publication.
The concept of the Illustrated Man would later be reused by Bradbury as an
antagonistAn antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
ic character in
Something Wicked This Way ComesSomething Wicked This Way Comes is a 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury. It is about two 13-year-old boys, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, who have a harrowing experience with a nightmarish traveling carnival that comes to their Midwestern town one October. The carnival's leader is the mysterious "Mr...
, the tattoos coming to represent the souls of sinful victims of a mysterious carnival.
The book was made into a 1969 film starring
Rod SteigerRodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
and
Claire BloomClaire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...
. It was adapted by Howard B. Kreitsek from the stories "
The Veldt"The Veldt" is a short story written by Ray Bradbury that was published originally as "The World the Children Made" in the September 23, 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, later republished in the anthology The Illustrated Man in 1951...
", "
The Long Rain"The Long Rain" is a short story by science fiction author Ray Bradbury. This story was originally published in 1950 by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.-Plot summary:The first paragraph reads as follows:The rain continued...
", and "The Last Night of the World", and directed by
Jack SmightJack Smight was an American theatre and film director.Smight was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and went to school with future actor Peter Graves...
.
A number of the stories, including "The Veldt", "The Fox and the Forest" (as "To the Future"), "Marionettes Inc.", and "Zero Hour" were dramatized for the 1955-57 radio series
X minus 1X Minus One was a half-hour science fiction radio drama series broadcast from April 24, 1955 to January 9, 1958 in various timeslots on NBC.-Overview:...
. "The Veldt," "The Concrete Mixer," "The Long Rain," "Zero Hour," and "Marionettes Inc." were adapted for the TV series
The Ray Bradbury TheaterThe Ray Bradbury Theater is an anthology series that ran for two seasons on HBO, three episodes per season from 1985 to 1986, and four additional seasons on USA Network from 1988 to 1992. It was later shown in reruns on the Sci Fi Channel...
.
Plot summary
- "The Veldt
"The Veldt" is a short story written by Ray Bradbury that was published originally as "The World the Children Made" in the September 23, 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, later republished in the anthology The Illustrated Man in 1951...
" — Far into the future, two parents use a high tech nurseryA nursery is usually, in American connotations, a bedroom within a house or other dwelling set aside for an infant or toddler. A typical nursery would contain a crib , a table or platform for the purpose of changing diapers , as well as various items required for the care of the child...
to keep their children happy. The children use the nursery's simulation equipment to recreate the predatorial environment of the African veldt. When the parents threaten to take the nursery away, the children lock their parents inside where it is implied that the parents are mauled and killed by the "harmless" machine-generated lionThe lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
s of the nursery.
- "Kaleidoscope" — A bitter astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
feels he has accomplished nothing worthwhile in his life as he and the rest of his crew fall irrevocably to their demise in outer space because of a malfunction in their ship. The story illustrates the collapse of the sanity and logic of the crew members as they face their death. Ultimately, the lamenting narrator is incinerated in the atmosphere of the Earth and appears as a shooting starMETEOR is a metric for the evaluation of machine translation output. The metric is based on the harmonic mean of unigram precision and recall, with recall weighted higher than precision...
to a child after wishing that his life would at least be worth something for someone else.
- "The Other Foot" — Mars has been colonized solely by black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
. When they learn that a rocket is coming from Earth with white travelers, they institute a Jim CrowThe Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
system of racial segregationRacial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
in which white people are to be considered second-class citizens, in retaliation for the history of wrongs perpetrated on their race by white people. When the rocket lands, the traveler tells them that most of the Earth has been destroyed in a nuclear war, and asks for their help. The people realize that discrimination is harmful in all its forms, and reverse their planned segregation.
- "The Highway" — A husband and wife living by a highway in rural Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
go on living their normal, idyllic lives as the highway fills with people fleeing a nuclear war. The story ends with some young travelers they help telling them about the nuclear war, and how the world is ending. After the travelers leave, the residents briefly wonder what "the world" is, and then continue on with their lives.
- "The Man" — A group of space explorers land on a planet to find the population living in a healthy state of bliss. Upon investigation, they discover that an enigmatic visitor came to them. Further description leads the two spacemen to believe that this man is Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
(though he is never named, leaving room for other religious personas). One decides to spend the rest of his days on the rejoicing in the wake of the man's glory. The other continues in his spaceship, "chasing 'him' always a step behind, never fast enough to catch up to him, constantly trying to achieve the unachievable." Other members of the crew decide to stay on the planet to learn from the contented citizens, and are rewarded by the discovery that "he" is still on the planet.
- "The Long Rain
"The Long Rain" is a short story by science fiction author Ray Bradbury. This story was originally published in 1950 by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.-Plot summary:The first paragraph reads as follows:The rain continued...
" — A group of astronauts are stranded on VenusVenus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
, where it rains continually and heavily. The travelers make their way across the Venusian landscape to find a "sun dome", a shelter with a large artificial light source. However, the first sun dome they find has been destroyed by the native Venusians. Searching for another sun dome, the characters, one by one, are driven to madness and suicideSuicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by the unrelenting rhythm of the rain. At the end of the story, only one sane astronaut remains and manages to find a functional sun dome.
- "The Rocket Man" — Astronauts of this story are few in number, so work as they desire for high pay. One such astronaut goes off into space for three months at a time, only returning to earth for three consecutive days to spend time with his wife and son. The story is told from the perspective of the son, who holds an interest in one day also becoming an astronaut. Talking with his father, the son learns of the constant battle he faces with yearning for the stars at home while yearning for home while in space. Despite this he has several times attempted to quit, staying at home with his family as he realizes his constant absence has nearly destroyed his wife. At the end of the story the father takes off into space one last time, only to meet his end by the sun, and thus causing his wife and son to live their lives at night to avoid that reminder.
- "The Fire Balloons" — A group of priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
s travel to MarsMars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
to act as a missionaryA missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
to Martians. Once there, they discover that the natives are actually entities of pure energy. Since they lack corporeal form, they are unable to commit sin, and thus do not need redemption.
- "The Last Night of the World" — In this story, a married couple awakens to the knowledge that the world is going to end that very evening. Nonetheless, they go through their normal routines of going to work, eating, brushing their teeth, and falling asleep, knowing and accepting the fact that they will not wake up.
- "The Exiles
"The Exiles" is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury. It was originally published as "The Mad Wizards of Mars" in Maclean's on 15 September 1949 and was reprinted the following year by Fantasy Fiction, Inc...
" — Numerous works of literature are banned and burned on Earth. The fictional characters of these books are portrayed as real-life entities who live in a refuge on Mars. However, they are vulnerable, as when all the books on a character are destroyed, the character itself vanishes permanently. When the group of characters learn that some people are coming for them, they stage a counterattack, but are foiled by the astronauts who burn the last remaining books from Earth, unknowingly annihilating the entire colony.
- "The Fox and the Forest" — A couple from the future tires of the war in their modern lives, so they go on a vacation to the more serene past in an attempt to escape with the help of a company called "Travel in Time, Inc." They go to Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
in 1938, but are pursued by a government agent who forces them to come back to 2155.
- "The Visitor" — This story takes place on Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
, which is used as a quarantineQuarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian quarantena, meaning forty-day period....
for people with deadly illnesses. One day, the planet is visited by a young man of eighteen who has the ability to perform thought transference and telepathyTelepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
. The exiles on the planet are thrilled with his ability and a violent fight breaks out over who will get to spend the most time with their visitor and enjoy the illusionary paradises he can transmit. In the struggle, the young man is killed and the escape he provided is lost forever.
- "The Concrete Mixer" - A reluctant Martian soldier is forced to join the army as they prepare to invade Earth. However, when they arrive, they are welcomed by a world at peace, full of people who are curious rather than aggressive. The protagonist meets a movie director, and it becomes clear that the people of Earth have planned to exploit the Martians for financial gain. He tries to escape back to Mars, but is run over by a car and killed.
- "Marionettes, Inc.
"Marionettes, Inc.", is a short story by Ray Bradbury from his collection of short stories, The Illustrated Man. In it, Bradbury conjures a conflict between man and machine and depicts the human dependence on technology, a common theme for Bradbury's stories.- Plot summary:Smith and Braling, both...
" - A man attempts to escape his marriage by replacing himself with a robot to fool his wife into thinking he hasn't left and tells a friend about it. The man comes back and tells the robot to go back into the box, and the robot disobeys him saying he has fallen in love with the wife. The robot then proceeds to put the man in the box and goes to visit the wife.
- "The City" — A rocket expedition from Earth lands on an uncharted planet to be greeted by a seemingly empty city. As the humans begin to explore, they realize that the city is not as empty as it seems. The city was waiting for the arrival of humans; the contingency plan of a long dead civilization, put in place to take revenge upon humanity after their culture was wiped out with biological weapons by humans long before recorded history. Once the city captures and kills the human astronauts, the humans' corpses are used as automations to finalize the city's creators' revenge; a biological attack on the Earth.
- "Zero Hour" — Children across the country are deeply involved in an exciting game they call 'Invasion'. Their parents think it is cute until it turns out that the invasion is real and aliens are using the children to help them get control of Earth.
- "The Rocket" — Fiorello Bodoni, a poor junkyard owner, has managed to save $3,000 to fulfill his lifelong dream of sending one member of his family on a trip to outer space. The family, however, finds it impossible to choose who will go because those left behind will inevitably envy the chosen one for the rest of their lives. Bodoni instead uses the money to build a replica rocket from an old mock-up, and sets up a 3D theater inside the cabin and convinces the children they are actually going through space.
The British edition, first published in 1952 by
Hart-DavisSir Rupert Charles Hart-Davis was an English publisher, editor and man of letters. He founded the publishing company Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd...
omits "The Rocket Man", "The Fire Balloons", "The Exiles" and "The Concrete Mixer", and adds "Usher II" from
The Martian ChroniclesThe Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction short story collection by Ray Bradbury that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists...
and "The Playground" from
The Stories of Ray BradburyThe Stories of Ray Bradbury is, as the title suggests, an anthology containing 100 short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury and was first published by Knopf in 1980. The hundred stories, written from 1943 to 1980, were selected by the author himself...
.
An edition published in 2001 by
William MorrowWilliam Morrow and Company is an American publishing company founded by William Morrow in 1926. The company was acquired by Scott Foresman in 1967, and sold to Hearst Corporation in 1981. It was sold along to the News Corporation in 1999...
omits "The Fire Balloons" and adds "The Illustrated Man" to the end of the book.
- "Usher II" — Literary expert William Stendahl has retreated to Mars to escape the book-burning dictates of the Moral Climate Monitors. On Mars he has built his image of the perfect haunted mansion, replicating the building from Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque...
", complete with mechanical creatures, creepy soundtracks and the extermination of all life in the surrounding area. When the Moral Climate Monitors come to visit, each of them is killed in a manner reminiscent of a different Poe story, culminating in the immurementImmurement is a form of execution where a person is walled up within a building and left to die from starvation or dehydration. This is distinct from being buried alive, in which the victim typically dies of asphyxiation.-In legend and folklore:...
of the lead inspector. When all of Stendahl's persecutors are dead, the house sinks into the lake.
- "The Playground" — When Charles Underhill was a boy, he was tormented by neighborhood bullies. When his son begins playing in a local playground, he becomes deeply disturbed when he sees a bully from his youth.
- "The Illustrated Man" — An overweight carnival worker is given a second chance as a Tattooed Man, and visits a strange woman who applies skin illustrations over his entire body. She covers two special areas, claiming they will show the future. When the first is revealed, it's an illustration of the man strangling his wife. Shortly after this comes to pass, the carnival workers run the man down, beat him, and look at the second area, which shows an illustration of the same beating they are doing.
Reception
BoucherAnthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
and
McComasJesse Francis McComas was an American science fiction editor. McComas wrote several stories on his own in the 1950s using both his own name and the pseudonym Webb Marlowe....
gave
The Illustrated Man a mixed review, faulting the framing story as "markedly ineffective" and the story selection for seeming "less than wisely chosen." However, they found the better stories "provide a feast [from] the finest traditions in imaginative fiction" and later named it among the year's top books.. Villiers Gerson, reviewing the volume for
Astounding Science Fiction, praised it as "a book which demonstrates that its author is one of the most literate and spellbinding writers in science fiction today." In
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Gerson also praised the book for its "three-dimensional people with whom it is easy to sympathize, to hate, and to admire."
1969 film
A film adaptation of
The Illustrated Man was released in 1969. It was directed by
Jack SmightJack Smight was an American theatre and film director.Smight was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and went to school with future actor Peter Graves...
and starred
Rod SteigerRodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
,
Claire BloomClaire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...
, and others, including
Don DubbinsDon Dubbins , originally Donald Dubbins, was an American actor of film and television who in his early career usually played younger military roles, particularly in such classic pictures as From Here to Eternity and The Caine Mutiny...
. The film contains adaptations of "The Veldt", "The Long Rain", "The Last Night of the World" and expands the prologue and epilogue with intermittent scenes and flashbacks of how the illustrations came to be. A short documentary,
The Making of The Illustrated Man, details the process the filmmakers used to cover Steiger's body in mock tattoos and shows actors and filmmakers preparing for the movie.
2008 album
A musical adaptation by Samuel Otten was released as a musical expression of the stories to go along with the reading.
Influence on Dark Star, 1974
Bradbury's "Kaleidoscope" inspired the 1974 science fiction movie
Dark StarDark Star is a 1974 American comedic science fiction motion picture directed by John Carpenter and co-written with Dan O'Bannon.-Backstory and plot:...
, which ends in a similar final scene.
Future film
Director
Zack SnyderZachary Edward "Zack" Snyder is an American actor, film director, screenwriter, and producer. After making his feature film debut with the 2004 remake Dawn of the Dead, he gained wide recognition with the 2007 box office hit 300, adapted from writer-artist Frank Miller's Dark Horse Comics...
is attached to direct, at least in part, a film adaptation of three stories from
The Illustrated Man: "The Illustrated Man", "Veldt", and "Concrete Mixer". Screenwriter
Alex TseAlex R. Tse is an American screenwriter who grew up in San Francisco and attended Emerson College in Boston. His first script to be produced was Sucker Free City, a Showtime television movie directed by Spike Lee and released in 2004...
is writing the screenplay.
External links