Rating: Summary: Brilliant Review: I'd read the book first in Russian translation and then in original edition. I found it Bradbury's best short story collection and I remember not very many books worth reading half a century after their firs publication.
Rating: Summary: Once you start reading this book, you won't put it down Review: This book was great. I liked it because it was so detailed. The book is so detailed that it makes it feel like you are in the place that is being described. This book combines horror, suspense, and comedy into one book. You have to read it, to believe it.
Rating: Summary: One of the best science fiction books, bar none Review: Brilliant! Bradbury writes stories which live in my imagination for months afterwards, and this is no exception. I particularly like the story with the astronauts drifting out in space....
Rating: Summary: A collection of pointed storys. Review: I have found over the years that Bradbury is a better novel writer than a short story writer. He seems to need several hundred pages to really work out a story, rather than a few dozen.
If you have exhausted your list of all the Bradbury novels, then it is time to start reading his short story collections such as this one.
Rating: Summary: The Illustrated Man Review: This book is another stunning masterpiece from one of America's
greatest living writers. Even the background story of The Illustrated
Man is spellbinding. The stories herein contained are some of
the best works of this. The masterful writing contained within
the stories - The Veldt, The Exiles, Marionettes, Inc. are only
a few of the wonderful works... Bradbury weaves a tapestry
of wonder and fantasy, delving deep into the inner minds of people. Some of the stories are warnings, some foreshadowings...
This is a wondeful book.
Also, I would like to make a revision to my previous review
of "The Martian Chronicles"-the rating should be 10 rather
than 9.
Rating: Summary: An amazing collection of stories that is a timeless classic. Review: Ray Bradbury vividly describes worlds where the inhabitants try to live and explain their own lives. He graphically portrays the nature of humans in their environment, and examines the future of the world
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: The Illustated Man Review: I would NOT at all reccomend this book. Its very hard to follow-for people of all ages!! The main point is-DONT BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!! ITS A WASTE OF YOUR MONEY AND TIME!!!!
Rating: Summary: Beautiful collection of Sci Fi short stories. Review: Perfect to read right before sleep. Or at an Airport, waiting for your flight. I picked up this edition up at my schools store. It was two weeks later that I finally had the opportunity to read into the prologue. I didn't have much time, but found the reading easy, and loveable. I quickly devored the first short story. That of a holodeck dream room, which aloof children close themselves away in secret from their parents. I must tell you of my day afterwards. I was in class, during an important lecture. I must confess that the story played around in my mind, the descriptions had brought on images;clear and meaningful. After finishing my laborous day, I quickly fell into the pocket sized book, found my dog-eared page and read another short story. And another. Every story left me fascinated, In fact, I finished the book before the night. I remember looking online for all of Ray Bradbury's works. I had fallen in deep interests with the man. He had, in a short interval of roughly twenty pages apeice, puzzled together a fabulous, demensional exhistance of fiction that I had enjoyed, and would continue to enjoy. I've read this book over and over again. I've read it in semenar, I've recommended it to everyone I know. I hope you find this book.-jeff
Rating: Summary: For Armchair Explorers Review: Bradbury reigns as the quintessential craftsman of sci fi literature in the 50's. This anthology represents stories which were published in several periodicals, mostly set in the distant future. The locale ranges from Earth to Mars and Venus, or just anywhere out in space. We witness Invasions from both points of view: Earth being invaded and Earth men as the invaders. He presents different ways Earth men use the planets, as well as the concept of Christianity in alien worlds. Some tales deal with time travel and a few would make wonderful "Twilight Zone" episodes.
The introductory tale, which provides the name for the anthology as a whole, is grimly completed in a brief Epilogue. A traveler in what might be a Depression era encounters a strange man along the dusty road and offers to share his supper with him. He winds up spending the night in the open with this weirdly decorated man, who admits that he is shunned even by carnivals-where freaks are usually welcomed. His entire body is covered with colorful and bizarre tattoos--which he has spent a lifetime trying to remove. What is the curse of these odd illustrations, which cause normal men to send him away or rush off screaming in horror?
This is Vintage Bradbury, who inspired a generation of sci fi writers. His fantastic imagination and knowledge of human behavior combine to produce entertaining trips to realms of fantasy and science fiction. After the odd sightings and rumors regarding Roswell in the late 1940's, America was poised on the frontier of space exploration. Thus Bradbury's anthology and an armchair provided readers with their own rocket ship to the skies. Although these tales precede the term "Astronaut," this author will effortlessly launch you into astral realms of fancy and the inner sanctum of the human soul. Fortunately the innate qualities that make us Human are still present even in the 22nd century.
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