Day 186, Quasi-Quarantine: Digesting Ray Bradbury's Timeless "The Illustrated Man"

 

"And so you think maybe that's why we're going out to the stars, eh, Martin? Looking for our lost souls, is that it? Trying to get away from our evil planet to a good one?"

"The Illustrated Man" features the familiar Ray Bradbury themes so many have gravitated (pun intended) to: outer space, insanity, obsession, and escape. Bradbury weaves them all into this short-story collection that serves as an examination of man's interaction with environment and the lengths he will go to to pursue an open-ended fate. 

Among the many highlights, "The Man," "The Long Rain," and "The Rocket Man" were  thought-provoking and intriguing, while "The Fox and the Forest" and "The Marionettes, Inc." were eerie, even if a little easy to see coming. "Zero Hour" was stellar and "The Illustrated Man" ended things on a "Tales of the Crypt"-ish note. 

"In the flashes of powdery illumination they could see armies of raindrops, suspended as in a vast motionless amber, for an instant, hesitating as if shocked by the explosion, fifteen billion droplets, fifteen billion tears, fifteen billion ornaments, jewels standing out against a white velvet viewing board." 

However, it is unquestionably "The Other Foot" that carries the day in this collection. A highly controversial and powerful commentary on race relations (especially for the early 1950s), "The Other Foot" is a compelling look at how a political landscape might translate to another planet. 

"Dad was always listening or singing or watching things on all sides of him, holding onto things as if the world were a centrifuge going so swiftly that he might be flung off away from us at any instant." 

Visually, many of these tales lend themselves to on-screen representation, and indeed, that was the case with a few. While the oft-repeated consideration of the sterility of space may not appeal to everyone, Ray Bradbury is an accomplished and deft writer who is at his best in these short stories.

That's why these tales somehow remain resonant and contemporary -- even nearly 70 years after they were written.

"Perhaps there is a chance for us to escape, to run for centuries into a wild country of years where they will never find and bring us back to burn our books, censor our thoughts, scald our minds with fear, march us, scream at us with radios ..."