May 3, 2008

Book 18: The Illustrated Man

The Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury

This is the second of Bradbury's novel-esque short story collections (similar to The Martian Chronicles, one of the best books I've read and certainly some top-notch science fiction). While The Illustrated Man is nowhere as coherent or, ultimately, as fulfilling as its counterpart, its stories universally showcase Bradbury's talent and vision as he successfully probes several of the darker aspects of human nature. This book is, as previously mentioned, primarily a short story collection, but it begins with a framing narrative that is in and of itself rather interesting and which would benefit from some extrapolation and development. The story of the tattooed wanderer, whose Illustrations are the stories represented in the book, is fascinating and original, and it's too bad that this worthwhile frame is dropped entirely after the second story, reappearing only in the sparse afterthought of an epilogue. The epilogue itself is also incredibly intriguing and allows for several possibilities that explain the Illustrated Man's story in full, but Bradbury leaves too many holes and his stories ultimately seem like a short story collection rather than a sort of thematic journey into the human psyche.

This lack of cohesion, however, does not detract from the stories themselves nor some of the themes they regularly explore. Almost all of them are set in similar automated futures with recurring technological elements (Bradbury's fondness for rockets is inescapable; they appear in nearly every story) and most deal with the degeneration of the human spirit. A couple of the stories are uplifting (such as "The Other Foot", which admirably takes on contemporary issues of racism, the triumphant finale "The Rocket" and, arguably, the wonderfully ambiguous "The Highway"), but most end in despair or with well-placed ellipses. The effect of these sadder stories is not one of hopelessness but simply truth: Bradbury lays the human condition in front of his readers and spares no sentiment. What you see is what you get and these stories present a realistic view of the human condition and less-than-optimistic reactions to it. "The Rocket Man", for example, is beautifully elegiac though it reduced me to tears and "Kaleidoscope" provides what I would assume to be a fairly accurate (if not a rather bold attempt at) representation of what men's thoughts might be facing imminent death after fading communication. The story is a meditation on lonliness and human relations though it is far from heavy-handed.

It is this mode in which Bradbury operates. On the surface, his science fiction is mostly mainstream rockets and Mars fare many assume is typical to the genre. Lurking below the surface, however, are valuable insights that can be easily teased out of the general fabric of the story. It is refreshing to read science fiction that meditates so thoughtfully on the present and meditative fiction that does not aspire to the fully realistic. Bradbury's observations are welcome and even more poignant because of their fantastic settings and technologies, and if he does overuse rockets a bit he at least differentiates the stories and settings in which they appear. The Illustrated Man is an excellent collection of stories that, while it doesn't represent a full picture of humanity and abandons its promising prologue, still provides insight and probes the human mind in ways that completely realistic fiction cannot. Bradbury is fantastic without being unrealistic and always retains fully recognizable humanity in his short fiction; each story is a fully developed world unto itself and though some seem to lay the groundwork for excellent longer projects (I would love to see more of "The Long Rain" and especially "The Fox in the Forest"), every tattoo of the Illustrated Man is an interesting and worthwhile tale.

Grade: A

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