I’ve read to encounter a Bradbury piece that didn’t give me food for though, and The Illustrated Man is no exception. A collection of short stories framed by a mysteriously-tattooed stranger showing off his array of colorful and ever-changing ‘illustrations’, this seems an early example of Cold War literature that has a lot of psychologically interesting stories.

The Illustrated Man took me entirely by surprise because of how deeply the Cold War permeates it: it’s the earliest example of Cold War literature I can find, in fact. Keep in mind, this was published in 1951: the Soviets have only had a bomb since ’47, and they’re three years away from having the fusion bomb. The rocket and space race haven’t started yet, and the Berlin standoff that led to the Berlin Wall is a decade away. And yet fear of a nuclear war and the destruction of society permeates this book, from “The Last Night of the World” in which a married couple realizing the world will end within the day try to figure out how they’ll spend it, to “The Highway”, where refugees from destroyed civilization pass by some rural Mexican farmers who have no idea what state the world is in now.

Indeed, the general mood is technological gloom. The book opens with a piece called “The Veldt”, which is incredibly prescient: it features a family living in what we might call a smart house, with every function of the home (from tying shoelaces to cooking food) is automated. While the house is a novelty to the parents, who only recently decided to give it a shot, their kids are completely dependent on it, and wholly absorbed by its entertainment options — to dark effect. I imagine any parent who has had their child turned into a stranger by whatever digital worlds they were falling into would find this one all-too real. In another story, a man buys a synthetic clone of himself so he can escape his wife’s constant demands for attention for a weekend, but things do not go….as planned.

The collection is more varied than this, of course: “The Exiles” features a theme somewhat similar to Fahrenheit 485, in that we visit a planet where the spirits of banned-book authors linger and lament how the modern world is driving out all imagination, sterilizing itself with cold reason, and “The Concrete Mixer” is outright amusing in its depiction of Martian invaders who find themselves welcomed to Earth — only to realize the Earthmen have plans for them. It’s a fun send-off of consumerism and materialism.

All told, this was a fascinating little collection of stories, full of psychological drama and surprising in how much of the period it’s commenting on. I greatly appreciate Bradbury’s early fears of how technology was deforming humanity — though the most salient example of that would be the woman in Fahrenheit 485 who has stopped living completely, content to sit in a room surrounded by screens and lose herself in far winds and whispers and soap opera cries.

Achievement Unlocked! Science Fiction Book Bingo — “Old Timer”, a book published before 1974

Highlights:

“Oh, I hate you!”
“Insults won’t get you anywhere.”
“I wish you were dead!”
“We were, for a long while. Now we’re going to really start living. Instead of being handled and massaged, we’re going to live.”

“We’re all fools,” said Clemens, “all the time. It’s just we’re a different kind each day. We think, I’m not a fool today. I’ve learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we’re not perfect and live accordingly.”