Customer Reviews
"Skin illustrations, the sign of an artist" - By: B. Chandler, 27 Oct 2007 
"Eighteen illustrations, eighteen tales." "The illustrations came to life..."
A man is encountered who has skin Illustrations alll over his body. Each illustration represents a tale from the future. The illustrations come to life & tell a tale of doom or impending doom. In this way ray Bradbury can tell related but different tales in this book. Its Bradbury's writing style & dialogue that holds you as much as the storyline.
At first they are intriguing & fresh. Later they don't as much repeat but are similar in form & function.
One of the best "The Veldt" is first. Of course everyone will have a different favorite.
I suggest that you make your cats leave the room if you read out loud.
Sci-Fi Fantasy - The Illustrated Man - By: S. Emery, 23 Jul 2007 
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A Collection of weird & wonderful Tales... Tales that were tattooed on to the body of a man by a witch. At night the tales moved, glowed & became vibrant with stars, suns & planets, each one telling another fragment of the future.
But there was one place where the story was not clear... where the colours & patterns blurred & moved in no particular pattern. And that story was the most terrifying of alll...
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Sixteen dark tales - By: T. R. Alexander, 06 Nov 2006 I originallly came across this book when I had to read some of the short stories in it for school years ago I liked it then & have always wanted to go back & finish the other stories but never had the chance until recently. Each of the sixteen short stories are brought together by the preface that sets each story as a scene depicted on the body of the Illustrated Man as witnessed by a traveller he meets on the way. Each tale is usuallly quite dark with lots of death, betrayal & warnings about censorship & tyranny. Written in the fifties the book does give a good outlook on what people of those times thought the future would hold & it is quite fun to see what has happened & what hasn't. The tales are very well written & although they are quite short they are always good & interesting.
A book to hand down through the family - amazing! - By: Alan Burridge, 10 Jun 2006 Ray Bradbury was an amazing & futuristic writer, & he used the 'illustrated man' concept as an ingenious way of linking 18 short stories. A man is on a walking holiday in Wisconsin, it's a hot day & he meets a guy who has his clothing buttoned up tight as if it is winter, & he is sweating, of course. They camp down for the night, & the guy takes off his thick shirt. His body is covered in illustrations, (not tattoos), & they are beautiful, they move, & have tiny voices. He tells how he met an old witch who looked a thousand years old one minute, & twenty one the next, & after she illustrated his entire body with her magic needles, she disappeared. Believing her to be a time-traveller, the man has spent his life trying to hunt her down. The series of short stories are linked by the other man seeing the actions take place within the illustrations. A brilliant concept, amazing stories considering when they were written, & I book I have treasured for many years.
Ray Bradbury's timeless classic - By: dragondrums, 11 Apr 2005 This is one of the best collections of Ray Bradbury short stories to be found. The Illustrated Man of the title is a fairground worker who is covered in tattoos, or 'illustrations'. While he sleeps the illustrations move & each one tells a different story to anyone who may see them. Although the descriptions of rockets & technology may seem a little dated now, these are still excellent stories for any true fan of sci-fi. Particularly good are 'The Veldt' a story of two children & their virtual reality nursery & 'The Long Rain', a tale of astronauts who crash land on Venus. This is certainly a Classic of modern literature & I would highly recommend it for any bookshelf.
