The Illustrated Man

First published in 1951, The Illustrated Man is a collection of 18 short stories of speculative fiction by one of the preeminent American writers of the 20th and 21st centuries: Ray Bradbury. It includes some of his most famous short stories, including “The Veldt” and “Marionettes, Inc.” While the volume received mixed reviews on release, it was nominated for the International Fantasy Award in 1952 and is now widely considered to be a highlight of Bradbury’s career. Several of the stories have been adapted for film, radio, and television over the years, some by Bradbury himself. This guide refers to the Harper Collins e-book edition.

The collection is named after one of its characters, the Illustrated Man, a carnival worker whose supernatural tattoos represent each of the 18 stories. This acts as a framing device for the work. The Prologue, Epilogue, and one other story, “The Rocket Man,” are written in first-person voice, but the rest are written in third person. All the stories are told in the past tense. Bradbury tends to focalize his stories through the perspective of a single character, though the reliability of his narrators shifts from chapter to chapter.