Friday 8 December 2017

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury


“Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children’s minds and created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun—sun. Giraffes—giraffes. Death and death.”

This collection of short stories is Twilight-Zone (or Black Mirror) style excellence and the stuff of nightmares. From leaving your children in a very dicey new nursery that could have dire consequences, to turning racial wrongs on their heads in Mars, to the end of the world, to voodoo dolls; here we have a veritable treasure trove of vignettes to whet your appetite. Even a drunken Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce and Charles Dickens make an appearance. Could an exact duplicate marionette be the answer to a successful marriage – or the start of a whole new raft of issues? All these marvels and more await the reader here.

All comes to an end with a delightfully wicked epilogue that might be guessed by the introduction.

“And at last a face formed itself there, a face that gazed out at me from the colored flesh, a face with a familiar nose and mouth, familiar eyes.”


5 out of 5 tattooed into my brain

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