The Illustrated Man

There's another Ray Bradbury story.

I think they made a movie out of it, too, called The Illustrated Man, where the tattoos kind of do that in the storyline, too.

It's more of a plot device for that particular novel.

What did y'all think of the carousel that goes backwards and that, like, reverses? I guess reverses, not time, but, like, your age.

So it's not going to be easy as we listen to Kaleidoscope from Suspense.

Kaleidoscope, the Ray Bradbury short story from his 1949 collection, The Illustrated Man.

This is at suspense from July 12th, 1955.

But as you know, with our final episode, we don't go off and listen in our own ways, means, and times.

remarkable, painful story.

So I won't set it up any more than that.

This is from the famous, groundbreaking science fiction collection, The Illustrated Man, by American author Ray Bradbury, originally published in October of 1949, here on Suspense, just six years later.

We will, of course, afterward talk deeply about it.

Dimension X is presented, transcribed each week by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction.

Today, Dimension X has presented The Veldt, written for radio by Ernest Canoy from Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man.

Included in the cast were Lesley Woods and Bill Quinn as the parents, Joan Lazor and David Anderson as the children.

Your host was Norman Rose.

Oh.

One of the attractions on the pay bill thing, the flyer, was the illustrated man, and that's who this person is.

The illustrated man.

He introduces himself as Mr.

Dark, and this is his partner, Cougar.

Um, I, I, I definitely feel like a connection to that author, I think, after reading that story.

Yeah.

There's another book called The Illustrated Man.

Wait, like The Martian Chronicles?

Exactly, and The Illustrated Man and Dark Chronicles.

He dealt in futures.

He dealt in space, the ethereal, the imaginative.

Yeah, according to Bradbury's biographer, uh, Sam Weller, Bradbury arrives carrying copies of his own books.

Just a stack of his own books.

Yeah, The Martian Chronicles, Dark Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and he slides his life's work- Across the table to Houston

And then he drops a line that is just-- Honestly, it's completely staggering to me.

Classic.

The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and, well, perhaps most importantly for this specific discussion, Fahrenheit 451.

Fahrenheit 451.

I mean, even if you haven't picked up a copy since your sophomore year of high school, just saying the title evokes this heavy, oppressive atmosphere.

But I didn't, because I- when I looked back up at Dax, the ink on his arms shifted, as if under his skin it was alive.

And this is where I would just like to shout out my favorite author of all time, Ray Bradbury, and his 1951 novel, The Illustrated Man, by far one of the best sci-fi, like, short story collections that I have ever come across in my entire life.

I read it in 2023, and that's what got me back into reading.

Um, phenomenal book about a guy whose body is fully tattooed, and the tattoos move and tell stories, and it, like, follows each one of his tattoos and, like, he tells the story of that tattoo or, like, it plays out the scene or tells the scene that his body is doing.

Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man.

Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth, and Dan Simmons' Hyperion.

That is an incredibly heavy, dense stack of essential reading.

... sparse in my writing, and I, I attribute that strangely to Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite authors ever.

The Illustrated Man taught me economy.

But I think maybe it's about in those sparing words, choosing just the right ones, you know? Economy means you're not purple, as they say, or flowery.

You, you might be sparse, but the words are so loaded that they-

I loved this, and it wasn't one of his books.

It was Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, but it was Jack's copy that had been a gift from Joy.

And there were so many other...

I mean, it was incredible.