The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

(New York: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1952), 198

The Illustrated Man lay motionless. I had seen what there was to see. The stories were told; they were over and done.

The Veldt

A family is spoiled by their house that does everything for them, including a virtual room in which the children imagine the lions eating their parents.

  • "But I thought that's why we bought this house, so we wouldn't have to do anything?" "That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt?" (13)
  • "Perhaps they needed a little vacation from the fantasy which was growing a bit too real for ten-year-old children." (15)
  • "We've given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our reward—secrecy, disobedience? (18)"
  • "Children prefer Santas. You've let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children's affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there's hatred here. You can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you'll have to change your life. Like too many others, you've built it around creature comforts." (22)
  • "We've been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!" (24)

Kaleidoscope

A meteor hits a spacecraft sending the occupants spiraling through space to their inevitable death. We hear their conversations as they talk to each other on the radio.

  • "How can you do good all alone? You can't." (39)

The Other Foot

Black people were segregated on Mars, and White people come seeking help after Earth is destroyed by war.

  • "The time for being fools is over. We got to be something else except fools." (56)

The Highway

A rural family in Mexico helps refugees from 'the world' after nuclear war.

  • "What do you mean, 'the world'?" (61)

The Man

A space exploration crew lands and is told about Jesus, who just left. One of the officers sees the joy and chooses to stay and rejoice in him.

  • "Can't I [stay here]? Tray and stop me. This is what I came looking for. I didn't know it, but this is it." (69)

The Long Rain

A crew on Venus goes crazy searching for a shelter from the ceaseless rain.

The Rocket Man

The wife and son of a rocket pilot struggle with his frequent absence and questionable return. He finally promises to return after one last voyage, but perishes.

  • "We rushed off to town in a helicopter and took Dad through a thousand exhibits, to keep his face and head down with us and not looking anywhere else." (101)
  • "Don't ever be a Rocket Man. Because when you're out there you want to be here, and when you're here you want to be out there. Don't start that. Don't let it get hold of you." (106)

The Fire Balloons

Episcopal priests attempt to evangelize the Fire Balloons on Mars.

  • "Should we go at all? Shouldn't we solve our own sins on Earth. Aren't we running from our lives here?" (112)
  • "On Mars sin might appear as virtue. We must guard against virtuous acts there that, later, might be found to be sins!...You must admit the possibility of unrecognizable sin." (113)
  • "Add an arm or leg or person, or take away each, and you add or subtract possible evil." (114)
  • "We need a quick, flexible man—one whose mind can dodge. Anyone a little too dogmatic might break in two. I feel you'll be resilient. Father, the job is yours." (115)
  • "Father Peregrine, won't you ever be serious? Not until the good Lord is. Oh, don't look so terribly shocked, please. The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else he is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn't it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn't that true? And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humor." (118-119)
  • "Was he really thinking of God's Church, or was he quenching the thirst of a spongelike curiosity?" (124)
  • Fire Balloons: "We are the Old Ones. Once we were men. We have put away the ins of the body and live in God's grace." (132-133)

The Last Night of the World

A couple knows the world is ending and goes about their evening as usual in resignation.

  • "We haven't been too bad, have we? No, nor enormously good. I suppose that's the trouble—we haven't been very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was busy being lots of quite awful things." (138)

The Exiles

Authors survive in memory only by their works, and when the works are gone so are they.

  • "In the year 2020 they outlawed our books" (151)
  • "Death! Real death for all of us. We exist only through Earth's sufferance. If a final edict tonight destroyed our last few works we'd be like lights put out." (153)
  • "God rest him. Nothing of him left now. For what are we but books, and when those are gone, nothing's to be seen." (154)

No Particular Night or Morning

Skepticism and solipsism.

  • "I don't believe in anything that doesn't exist and act in my presence...I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there's not way to do that." (163-165)

The Fox and the Forest

A couple escapes to the past to avoid the war, but they are brought back because they are needed for the war effort.

  • "I'll come back with you if my wife stays here alive, safe, away from that war." (185)

The Visitor

Exiles on Mars fight over and kill a mysterious visitor who can give them sensations of being back on Earth.

  • "Once I had the strength to be an intellectual. Now, it is a job to think." (193)

The Concrete Mixer

Mars invades Earth to find a peaceful but decadent civilization.

  • "There are blond robots with pink rubber bodies, real, but somehow unreal, alive but somehow automatic in all responses, living in caves all of their lives. Their derrièrs are incredible in girth. Their eyes are fixed and motionless from an endless time of starting at picture screens. The only muscles they have occur in their jaws from their ceaseless chewing of gum. And it is not only these, my dear Tylla, but the entire civilization into which we have been dropped like a shovelful of seeds into a large concrete mixer. Nothing of us will survive. We will be killed not by the gun but by the glad-hand. We will be destroyed not by the rocket but by the automobile..." (225)
  • "I foresee our army mashed, diseased, trapped in cinemas by witches and gum...drowning us in a tide of banal sentimentality." (226)
  • "War is a bad thing, but peace can be a living horror." (233)

Marionettes, Inc.

Marionette spouse replacements, only to be tricked

The City

An extinct civilization left its city alive to exact revenge upon humanity.

  • "One from a distant galaxy called Ennt, and the inhabitants of that craft were tested, weighted, found wanting, and let free, unscathed, from the city." (252, cf. Dn-05)
  • "Slowly, pleasurably, the city enjoyed the luxury of dying." (253)

Zero Hour

Aliens use children to aid their invasion.

"Mom?"
"Yes?"
"What's lodge-ick?"
"Logic? Why, dear, logic is knowing what things are true and not true." (260)

The Rocket

A poor father saves for one member of the family to ride on a rocket, but they can't agree who will go. So he builds a VR rocket and takes the whole family on a "trip".

  • "It's the rich who have dreams and rockets!" (268)
  • "Don't set that goal, I warn you. Let them be content with being poor." (268)

Topic: Short Stories, Science Fiction

Source

Created: 2024-06-10-Mon
Updated: 2024-08-16-Fri