Rating: 
Summary: Poignant Tales of Yesterday?s Future
Review: This group of highly imaginative tales, written in 1948-51, do nothing if not illustrate that 1) it's extremely difficult to predict the future and 2) no matter how much we struggle against it, we probably are doomed to reflect our own times and cultural environment. Over half a century after Ray Bradbury wrote these entertaining stories, we have a lot of answers to questions about the (then) future thanks to hindsight. Bradbury's characters still smoke like chimneys, they still use clunky mid-20th century machines for the most part---lugging electrical equipment and card tables across the light years in their bronze spaceships. There's only the vaguest hint of a computer ("The City") and then of the giant, controlling variety. Above all, there is no vision of the infinitely varied America of today---the space explorers in these stories are nearly all white Anglosaxons who speak and behave as white people did in the early 1950s. The cultural oppositions and arguments in the stories are those of mid-century America. While it is true that Bradbury writes of human nature it is also true that the nature he describes is as we saw it half a century ago. However, Bradbury covers a wide range of topics: child psychology; machine vs. man; imagination and emotion vs. cold science; religion; time travel, and race relations. Some of the stories are unbelievably poignant. In fact, I would say that poignancy---the ability to bring out that quality without being sappy or twee---is Bradbury's strongest suit. If you don't like science fiction, this book probably isn't for you, but it certainly has made its mark on American culture, with 47 printings through 1990. One story, "The Exiles", probably laid the basis for his later "Fahrenheit 451". Bradbury wrote many stories which featured the "wrap-around-comfort, totally mechanized houses" that appear in several works in this volume. How many Hollywood movies of the last 15 years owe a debt to "The Fox and the Forest", a story of people escaping through time from a bad future to a quieter or more prosperous present ? THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is a minor American classic in a perennially shortchanged genre, science fiction. The dated technology and cultural styles may seem primitive today, but even they add a dimension of telling us about the times in which they were written as well as about the future as they saw it then.
Rating: 
Summary: If you don't like Science Fiction......
Review: read this and change your mind. The narrator met a man covered in tattos, tattos that moved to tell stories, eighteen of which are told in this volume. The stories, many of which have been published separately, are:
THE VELDT - overindulgence is bad for both parents and children
KALEIDOSCOPE - doomed astronauts floating in space
THE OTHER FOOT - reverse discrimination with a vengence
THE HIGHWAY - sometimes life passes you by and sometimes it doesn't
THE MAN - is it the journey or the destination that matters?
THE LONG RAIN - sometimes madness is the answer
THE ROCKET MAN - career vs. family
THE FIRE BALLOONS - is religion the answer or the question?
THE LAST NIGHT OF THE WORLD - the end with a whimper not a bang
THE EXILES - do people live for art or does art live for people?
NO PARTICULAR NIGHT OR MORNING - again the answer could be madness
THE FOX AND THE FOREST - you can run but you cannot hide
THE VISITOR - sometimes you don't know what you've got 'til its gone
THE CONCRETE MIXER - Mars invades
MARIONETTES, INC. - machines can be asked to do too much
THE CITY - revenge can be served very cold
ZERO HOUR - parents need to parent
THE ROCKET - Desire, envy and the triumph of the human spirit Although these tales are hauntingly disturbing and many contain rather gruesome images Bradbury writes with a gentleness that takes material that could be shocking in another writer's hand and instead makes it poignant. He allows the more subtle message of the stories to come through by taking the edge off the sensationalism. It is particularly interesting to read these stories and rember (or discover) what life was like in the fifties and then reflect (investigate) what changes took place in the subsequent fifty year. For those who have read this and didn't like it try it again in a few years.
Rating:
Summary: Bradbury is a master storyteller
Review: These are stories that go beyond "science fiction." The technology aspects are part of the canvas, but these stories are powerful because Bradbury paints with emotion and metaphor. He builds more empathy with characters in a few short words than other authors do in an entire novel, and his descriptions return us to a time when we were young, and simple objects filled us with awe and wonder. There is something here for everyone. Read them for yourself. Read them for your children. This short book is a celebration of the art of storytelling.
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