The Age of Miracles Has Not Passed

Title: The Illustrated Man
Author: Ray Bradbury
Published: 1951
Pages: 186

Reading Time: Fall 2010.

Plot Teaser:
At the furthest limits of the imagination, in worlds upon worlds of time and space, and on the green hills of future earth, these are tales to set you shivering, gasping, gaping with terror and with wonder. Nineteen incomparable stories that blend weird fantasy and chilling truth in the magic manner of a master.

How I Got It:
This was a cheap purchase from the basement of The Westdale Bookworm in Hamilton, ON. Having loved Bradbury's short stories when I was introduced to R is for Rocket by a friend in my MA year at York University, I just wanted to read more of this grand master's work.

The Review:
When it comes to short stories, few are better than the works of Ray Bradbury. In one of his most famous collections, The Illustrated Man shows a writer at the height of his prowess, penning fantastic tales that span outer and inner space. Book-ended by a story of a tattooed man whose body art comes to life to tell tales of grandeur, this collection includes magic, space travel, and the optimism of post-war America. It is loaded with nostalgic images of rocket men, happy children, and the idea that anything is possible. In short, it is written for anyone who has ever had a dream, or thought that miracles still do happen in modern day.

What is most typical of Bradbury's style is his love of the American countryside, romanticized suburban life, and the push and pull between conservative and liberal values. His wordplay often borders on the poetic, and generally falls into the category of nostalgic and idealized prose. For instance:

"The cooling afternoon rain had come over the valley, touching the corn in the tilled mountain fields, tapping on the dry grass roof of the hut. In the rainy darkness the woman ground corn between cakes of lava rock, working steadily. In the wet lightlessness, somewhere, a baby cried." ("The Highway," p.39)

The wonder of his words is his ability to paint his stories with these beautiful images, but still keep them grounded in something people can relate to. And if you find yourself not being able to relate to one story, you can always admire the skill with which Bradbury splatters his canvasses. There is also the fact that these are short stories, so that if you do not like one, you may perhaps like the one after it. Thankfully, most of the tales in here are of good quality, and provide some quality entertainment. Though they may not feel modern, simply based on the year Bradbury wrote these stories in, they do transport you back to a time when things felt hopeful and beautiful, or shoot you into space and fill your mind with possibility.

Having been written 18 years before the first manned moon landing, Bradbury was free to let his mind wander with the possibilities of space. While he may have been way off with his assessment of the outer planets and their atmospheres, it is the human element that gives the stories their strength. A man named Saul Williams may never wake up from his tent on Mars, his lungs filled with "blood rust," but we can still feel his pain at the loss of New York and the crippling of his mind. There is also fun to be found in Bradbury's space stories in particular, for the fact that we can look back on them and smile at the innocence and purity of thought that Bradbury had about the future. He never claimed to be a hard sci-fi writer, and that is completely forgiven here because he brings such fantastic imagination to his little tales of wonder.

With so much unreality in these stories, one would think they would not resonate with the reader. On the contrary, they are all the more effective due to their exaggerated depictions of human foibles and virtues. As adduced, Bradbury has a handle on humanity, its habits, and its potential. These stories are not solely meant to entertain, though they do accomplish that just fine, but to inspire and ignite one's imagination to consider greater possibilities and incredible futures. In that regard, The Illustrated Man is a time capsule of one man's vision of his present, and his ferocious passion towards what he saw as feasible and achievable. Like the man at the start of the story, we are left with vibrant shapes and colours at the end.

"I had seen what there was to see. The stories were told; they were over and done. There remained only that empty space upon the Illustrated Man's back, that area of jumbled colours and shapes." (p.186)

What we see in these stories is ourselves.

The Verdict:
More than just a charming collection of short stories, Ray Bradbury's creativity inspires us to dream about the possible. While the science of its sci-fi stories may be completely inaccurate in most cases, it is the human element and the call to simply imagine what we can achieve that make this collection a winner.

4/5

Up Next:
Fantasy by Poul Anderson.