The Illustrated Man

Front cover of a first edition of The Illustrated Man.

The Illustrated Man is an anthology of eighteen short stories by the American author Ray Bradbury that was first published in 1951. The stories are: "The Veldt", "Kaleidoscope", "The Other Foot", "The Highway", "The Man", "The Long Rain", "The Rocket Man", "The Fire Balloons", "The Last Night of the World", "The Exiles", "No Particular Night or Morning", "The Fox and the Forest", "The Visitor", "The Concrete Mixer", "Marionettes, Inc.", "The City", "Zero Hour" and "The Rocket". Apart from "The Other Foot", all of the stories had previously been published elsewhere, some of them being revised by Bradbury for inclusion in The Illustrated Man. All of the stories fall within the science fiction genre. Some of them also have elements of fantasy. Some of them fall with the horror genre too, whereas others are considerably lighter in tone. The tone of "The Concrete Mixer" is considerably more comedic than that of the rest of the tales in the anthology. Some of the stories contain elements of social commentary. Religion is a major theme of both "The Man" and "The Fire Balloons".

The otherwise unconnected stories are brought together through a framing device, a fantasy tale featuring the Illustrated Man of the title. The Illustrated Man is a former carnival performer whose body is extensively covered by tattoos. He claims to have received them from a time-traveling witch and says that at night they begin to move and tell sores that foretell the future.

The framing device and three stories from the anthology are adapted in the 1969 American film The Illustrated Man Individual stories included in the book have also been adapted for film, radio, television and other media.

Short stories in the anthology

The following are summaries of the short stories included in the first American edition of The Illustrated Man, published by Doubleday & Company in 1951.

Prologue - The Illustrated Man

It is evening. An unnamed young man, the story's narrator, is preparing to spend the night outside. He is approached by a stranger who says that he is looking for work. He says that he used to work in carnivals but now always gets fired from them after a few days because of his tattoos. The man shows that his body is covered in tattoos, that he prefers to call illustrations. He says that the tattoos were given to him by a time-traveling witch and that they move at night to tell stories that foretell the future. It is getting dark. The narrator sees that the tattoos really are moving. The Illustrated man lies down to sleep. He warns the narrator not to watch his moving tattoos. The narrator ignores him and sees stories of the future.

The Veldt

The futuristic Hadley family live in a fully automated house that caters to their every need. The two children, Peter and Wendy, have a nursery that an produce a computer simulated version of anywhere they an imagine. For some reason, however, they always imagine an African veldt where lions can be seen in the distance eating unidentified animal carcasses. The parents, George and Lydia, become worried for their children's mental health. Their child psychologist friend, David McClean, agrees that the automated house is not good for Peter and Wendy's mental health and does not think it is god for George and Lydia's either. He suggests that they turn off all of the house's automated features. The children hate that idea. They insist on paying one last visit to the veldt before it is gone forever.

George and Lydia go into the nursery to collect their children. Peter and Wendy leave, locking their parents inside.

Later, David McClean finds Peter and Wendy having a picnic on the veldt but sees no sign of their parents. In the distance, lions are feasting on carcasses. The implication is that the computer generated lions genuinely attacked, killed and ate George and Lydia.

Kaleidoscope

A spaceship breaks apart and all the astronauts on board are sent scattering through space. They are able to maintain radio contact with each other for some time before they eventually meet their deaths by colliding with planets and other such objects. One crew member, Hollis, continues to talk in his usual mean manner to the others throughout most of the experience.

Finding himself the last survivor and plummeting towards Earth, Hollis regrets how he has treated others throughout his life. He hopes that he can still have the chance to make up for it by making life better for someone else.

In Illinois, a small boy makes a wish on a shooting star. It is really Hollis' body burning up as it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The Other Foot

The story takes place in the year 1985. Twenty years earlier, all African-Americans left the United States and Earth to begin a new life on the planet Mars. For the first time in twenty years, a rocket is seen heading towards Mars from Earth. the inhabitants of Mars are certain there are white people on board. In retaliation for the mistreatment they faced on Earth, some of the people of Mars decide to set up a system of racial segregation in which the new white arrivals will be treated as second-class citizens.

The rocket lands and an elderly white man emerges. He explains that he is one of the few survivors of a devastating war in which much of the Earth was destroyed. All of the American cities and towns that the inhabitants of Mars left behind are gone, along with their horrific reminders of racism, such as trees from which African-American men were hanged.

The people of Mars decide to accept all of the new refugees from Earth, not as second-class citizens but as equals.

The Highway

Hernando is a poor Mexican farmer who lives alongside a busy highway that leads to the United States. Travelers often ask to take his photograph. One day, the highway is unusually quiet. Eventually, a car stops. The anxious young Americans in the car ask for water for their radiator, which Hernando supplies. The travelers explain they are fleeing because the atomic war has started. Hernando does not understand and continues with his work.

The Man

A spaceship from Earth, under the command of Captain Hart, lands on another inhabited planet. Surprisingly, the arrival of the spaceship does not draw the attention of any of the local people. An astronaut named Martin is sent to investigate. He finds out that the local people were not troubled by the arrival of the spaceship because they are no longer troubled by anything. They are all in a state of bliss because the previous day, "the Man" made his long awaited return to their planet. It is clear that "the Man" is identical to Jesus. Captain Hart sees the local people are sincere in their belief. He then believes that another astronaut from Earth tricked the local people into thinking he was "the Man'. When he finds out that was not possible, Captain Hart concludes that "the Man" really has been there. Martin and some other astronauts decide to stay on he planet. Captain Hart leaves in his spaceship to go to other planets in search of "the Man". He is condemned to a future in which he always just misses the departure of "the Man" by an increasingly shorter amount of time. After Captain Hart leaves, Martin and the others are told that "the Man" is still on the planet and they can meet him.

The Long Rain

It rains heavily almost non-stop on the planet Venus. Humans are only able to survive there thanks to buildings known as Sun Domes, heated and illuminated by miniature artificial suns. There are about one hundred and twenty Sun Domes on Venus. The native Venusians destroy them whenever they can.

A man known only as the lieutenant and the three astronauts under his command are stranded on Venus. They head for the nearest Sun Dome. One man is killed by lightning before they reach it. When they arrive at the Sun Dome, they find that Venusians have destroyed it. They begin the long journey to the next one. Two men are driven mad by the relentless rhythm of the rain. One commits suicide. The other is shot by the lieutenant to stop him from slowly drowning by letting his lungs fill with rain.

The lieutenant is the last survivor and is questioning his own sanity. He arrives at the Sun Dome, where he is given new dry clothes and hot chocolate. It is, however, possible that by this point the lieutenant has gone completely insane and the Sun Dome is just a hallucination.

The Rocket Man

The story is narrated by a boy named Doug. His father is an astronaut who is regularly away from home for three months at a time. Doug notices that his mother is often distant towards his father when he is at home and behaves as if he does not exist when he is away. He asks his mother about this. She explains that, because being an astronaut is such a dangerous job, it is only a matter of time before her husband is killed. She therefore decided to think of him as being dead from the time he became an astronaut ten years earlier. She tries to pretend that his visits home are simply memories. She also worries that when her husband really does die, he will do so by colliding with a planet. She will then not be able to look at the night sky for fear of seeing that planet.

Shortly afterwards, Doug's father dies when his rocket crashes into the Sun. Since Doug's mother can no longer stand the sight of the Sun, she and Doug become almost completely nocturnal and only venture out in the daytime if it is especially cloudy.

The Fire Balloons

Some priests are sent to Mars as missionaries. Most of them think that their priority should be ministering to the human settlers. One of them, however, Father Joseph Peregrine, is keen to convert Mars' indigenous intelligent life forms to Christianity. He finds out that beings that resemble balls of light are the main form of intelligent life on Mars. He begins plans to build a church in which Jesus will be represented as a circle, the same as the Martians. The Martians eventually communicate telepathically with Father Peregrine. They tell him that they do not need to be saved and they are already in a state of grace. Having long ago abandoned their bodies and become beings of pure energy, they are incapable of sin.

The Last Night of the World

It is the evening of October 19, 1969. A husband ad wife find out that for some time they have both been having dreams telling them that the world will end that night. They had both already found out that all of their friends had bee having the same dreams. The world will not end because of nuclear war or any other cataclysmic event. It will instead come to a quiet and peaceful end, "like the closing of a book." Although there is nothing in the news about the upcoming end of the world and no signs of panic, the man and the woman are both convinced that the world truly will end that night. They decide to go about their normal evening routine, calmly accepting that there will be no tomorrow.

The Exiles

Front cover of a 2012 edition of The Illustrated Man.

It is the 22nd century. It has been a hundred years since the celebration of Halloween and Christmas became illegal. At the same time, all works of horror and fantasy literature were banned. Those include Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce and the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Algernon Blackwood. Most copies of those books have been burned. Most people in the 22nd century have never heard of such things as ghosts, witches and vampires. Yet those are precisely what the astronauts on a rocket to Mars have been having nightmares about ever since they were selected for the mission. The rocket's captain obtained copies of some of the banned books from a museum to research the situation.

As a result of their works being banned on Earth, the long-dead horror and fantasy authors have returned to life and are living on Mars. The characters they created are there too. Santa Claus, now extremely thin and wearing tattered remnants of his costume, is also there. The authors are kept alive because people sometimes find and read old copies of their books that escaped the flames. They disappear once their works are completely forgotten. The authors have been causing the astronauts to have nightmares in the hope of scaring them away from Mars. Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood and Ambrose Bierce are very worried by the threat that the arrival of men from Earth poses to their continued existence. They go to ask Charles Dickens to help persuade the astronauts to leave. Dickens does not like the other authors. He does not consider himself to have been a fantasy or horror author and insists his books were burned in error. He refuses to help. Poe thinks he could kill the astronauts with a pit and a pendulum and by giving them the Red Death. His works having been completely forgotten, Ambrose Bierce disappears before the astronauts arrive.

By the time the astronauts land on Mars, all the authors and the characters they created have vanished. The captain burns the copies of the banned books he brought with him to symbolize the start of a new scientific age in which there is no room for fantasy.

No Particular Night or Morning

Th story concerns two space tourists named Clemens and Hitchcock. The two men start discussing how traveling in outer space is different from anything they have ever experienced before. It soon becomes clear that Hitchcock does not believe in the existence of anything that he is not currently directly experiencing, unless he can be shown truly compelling proof of its existence. He does not believe that other parts of the spaceship exist because he is not currently in them or that stars exist because they are too far away. Hitchcock becomes increasingly worried by his own philosophy. It causes him to leave the ship and die of exposure in outer space.

The Fox and the Forest

The story opens in a street café in Mexico in 1938. An American couple, William and Susan Travis, are sitting and watching a fiesta. William and Susan Travis are really Roger and Ann Kristen. They are time travelers from the year 2155. They have escaped from a world ravaged by germ warfare, for which they had to build weapons. Time travel vacations have recently become possible in 2155 but are heavily regulated. People who try to escape into the past are hunted down and brought back to their own time by people known as Searchers. Roger and Ann booked a time travel vacation to 1938 New York but then ran away to Mexico with the intention of staying there forever.

Ann notices another man at the café, obviously an American, who has a large amount of alcohol and tobacco on his table, things in which Roger and Ann initially overindulged because they are rare in 2155. Ann thinks he is a Searcher. The man introduces himself to the couple as Simms. He calls them the Kristens, although Roger insists their name is Travis. The Kristens make their excuses and leave. As they go, Simms says, "2155 A.D." Back in their hotel room, Roger and Ann conclude that Simms was testing them because he was not sure they were time travelers. They decide that, because a Searcher would not use a time machine in public, they should always keep to crowded places. Later that night, they get a phone call. The voice on the other end of the line says, "The rabbits may hide in the forest... but the fox will always catch them."

The following morning, an American film crew headed by director Joe Melton are having breakfast in the hotel dining room. Melton dislikes Mexico and is glad of the company of other Americans. He invites Roger and Ann to join them. Simms arrives and is invited to join them also. To the apparent incomprehension of Melton, Simms tries to persuade the Kristens to go back with him. Roger eventually agrees to go back if Ann is allowed to stay. Simms accepts the offer. They agree to meet in the plaza in ten minutes. Roger hits the waiting Simms with his car. He is easily able to persuade the local police that the death was accidental.

To make up for their traumatic experience, Melton invites the Kristens to watch the shooting of his film. He invites them and the crew back to his hotel room for a party afterwards. Melton tells the Kristens they should accompany him back to Hollywood. He says that Ann is attractive enough to be a movie star. He begins to pitch an idea for a film starring her. It is about a couple from 2155 who try to escape back in time to 1938 but are found and brought home. Melton and his crew are all really Searchers and the film camera in the room is really a time machine. Roger shoots and wounds one of the Searchers but he and Ann are taken back to 2155 anyway.

The hotel manager hears the gun shot and goes to investigate. By the time he gets to the room, all its occupants have vanished. A cleaning woman does, however, later find a closet is full of alcohol and tobacco.

The Visitor

Saul is a man from New York City. He is one of several sufferers of a new infectious disease who have been sent to stay in isolation on Mars. Saul dislikes life on the planet intensely and is very homesick.

One day, Saul encounters a newcomer, a young man named Leonard who has extraordinary telepathic abilities. He is able to give Saul a realistic hallucination of standing on a street in New York. Saul wishes to keep Leonard and his ability to himself. When other men find out what Leonard can do, a violent fight breaks out over who gets to spend the most time with him. During the fight, Leonard is accidentally killed and the comfort he can offer is gone forever.

The Concrete Mixer

Ettil Vrye is an extremely unwilling soldier in the Martian army sent to invade Earth. He has a large collection of science fiction magazines from Earth in which there are many stories about Martian invasions, all of which end with the Martians being defeated. The Martians in those stories are often single-handedly defeated by a young man whose name ends in "-ick", such as Rick.

Earth has renounced war. Rather than try to fight back against the Martians, Earth's people welcome them as conquerors. The rocket carrying Ettil Vrye lands in Green Town, California, where the Martians are greeted by local officials and former beauty queens. Many young women in Green Town are interested in dating the newly arrived young Martian men. They are taken to see movies and race in cars against local teenagers. Ettil fears that Earth culture is a corrupting influence on the young Martians, an influence he fears they will bring back to Mars.

A film producer named R.R. Van Plank approaches Ettil and asks if he would like to be the consultant on a film about the Martian invasion. R.R. Van Plank describes his vision of the movie to Ettil. Ettil protests that the Mars which R.R. imagines is nothing like the reality. R.R says that his version will be more popular and therefore make more money. When Ettil finds out that the first R in R.R. Van Plank's name stands for Rick, he laughingly concludes that he has met the true defeater of the Martians. Ettil allows himself to be culturally defeated by the Earth man by accepting the job as consultant.

Ettil does not live to start that job. He is killed when he is hit by a car, which he thinks sounds like a concrete mixer.

Marionettes, Inc.

The story takes place in the year 1990. A man named Brailing tells his friend Smith that he is taking a vacation to Rio de Janeiro without the knowledge of his wife, whom he does not like. He is able to do that because he has purchased a robot duplicate of himself, known as Brailing Two, from the company Marionettes, Inc. that often stands in for him and will stand in for him while he is away. Smith decides that he would like to take a vacation from his wife Nettie, who has been overly affectionate recently. Brailing gives him the contact details for Marionettes, Inc.

Smith checks his bankbook to see if he can make a payment to Marionettes, Inc. He finds that Nettie recently withdrew $10,000. He realizes that Nettie has replaced herself with a robot duplicate from Marionettes, Inc.

When Brailing returns from his vacation, Brailing Two refuses to go back into his box. He says that he can do a better job of looking after Mrs. Brailing than Brailing can and should therefore replace him permanently.

The story ends with someone lovingly kissing Mrs. Brailing.

The City

Astronauts from Earth arrive on an unexplored planet. They enter a deserted city. The arrival of the humans awakens the city's artificial intelligence. The city was designed specifically to kill humans by a long dead civilization that was wiped out by a biological weapons from Earth. After the astronauts are killed, their corpses are reanimated so that they can return to Earth and launch a biological attack on it.

Zero Hour

The main characters in the story are a girl named Mink and her mother. Mink and all the other neighborhood children younger than ten-years-old are all engaged in a mass game called Invasion. Mink tells her mother that the game was organized by a boy named Drill who is from another planet. Drill told Mink that children will be used as a fifth column in an alien invasion of Earth. Through a phone call from a friend, Mink's mother finds out that children in another part of the country are playing the exact same game and also talking about Drill. As evening comes, Mink's mother realizes that the game is real and that the lives of adults are in danger.

The Rocket

The story concerns a poor junkyard owner named Fiorello Bodoni who longs to travel into space. He has saved enough money for one ticket to Mars. Unfortunately, he has a very large family. He, his wife and his many children do not want to make the journey alone and deny the others the opportunity of going into space.

One of Bodoni's customers sells him a mock rocket that used to be used to train astronauts. After working on the rocket for many days, Bodoni tells his children he is taking them to Mars. The children love the journey. In reality, they never leave the junkyard. The images of space they see are just a film. Bodoni's wife greatly appreciates the gift he has given his family.

Epilogue

The narrator sees a new tattoo appear on the Illustrated Man. It shows the Illustrated Man strangling the narrator. The narrator gets up and starts walking towards the nearest town, confident that he can safely reach it before morning.

Adaptations

Poster for the 1969 American film The Illustrated Man.

The 1969 American film The Illustrated Man, directed by Jack Smight and starring Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom, adapts the framing device of the anthology The Illustrated Man and the stories "The Veldt", "The Long Rain" and "The Last Night of the World". The film was not well received by critics on its release and did not perform well at the box office.

The British radio play The Illustrated Man was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2014. It stars Iain Glen as the Illustrated Man and Jamie Parker as the unnamed young man who meets him. It adapts the framing device and the stories "Marionettes, Inc.", "Zero Hour" and "Kaleidoscope".

"The Veldt", "Marionettes, Inc." and other short stories by Rad Bradbury are adapted in the 1987 Soviet science fiction horror film The Veldt (Russian: Вельд, Veld), written and directed by Nasim Tulyakhodzhayev.

"Marionettes, Inc.", "The Long Rain" and "The Veldt" were adapted as episodes of the Canadian TV series The Ray Bradbury Theater that first aired on the premium cable channel First Choice Superchannel between May 21, 1985 and October 30, 1992.

Under the title "Design for Loving", "Marionettes, Inc." was adapted as an episode of the American TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The episode, starring Norman Lloyd, Marian Seldes, Elliott Reid and Barbara Baxley, first aired on CBS on November 9, 1958. Under the title "El doble" ("The Double"), the story was also adapted as an episode of the Spanish horror anthology TV series Historias para no dormir ("Stories to Keep You Awake"). The episode first aired on the channel Primera Cadena in Spain on March 18, 1966.

"Zero Hour" was loosely adapted as the American TV series The Whisperers that aired on ABC for one season between June 1 and August 31, 2015.

"The Rocket" was adapted as a 1952 episode of the American radio series NBC Presents: Short Story and an episode of the American TV series CBS Television Workshop that first aired on March 16, 1952. An adaptation of the story is also included in the November/December 1953 issue of the American comic book Weird Science.

An adaptation of "The Exiles" appears in issue 10 of the American comic book Alien Encounters from December 1986.

"The Veldt" was adapted as a song of the same name by the Canadian electronic music producer Deadmau5, with vocals by Chris James, that was released in March 2012.

See also

• Fahrenheit 451
• The Halloween Tree

External links

• The Illustrated Man on GoodReads.