{"id":1738,"date":"2026-01-03T21:47:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/the-illustrated-man-bradbury-ray\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T21:47:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:47:40","slug":"the-illustrated-man-bradbury-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/the-illustrated-man-bradbury-ray\/","title":{"rendered":"The Illustrated Man – Bradbury, Ray"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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Prologue: The Illustrated Man<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

IT was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man. Walking along an asphalt road, I was or the final leg of a two weeks\u2019 walking tour of Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon I stopped, ate some pork, beans, and a doughnut, and was preparing to stretch out and read when the Illustrated Man walked over the hill and stood for a moment against the sky.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know he was Illustrated then. I only knew that he was tall, once well muscled, but now, for some reason, going to fat. I recall that his arms were long, and the hands thick, but that his face was like a child\u2019s, set upon a massive body.<\/p>\n

He seemed only to sense my presence, for he didn\u2019t look directly at me when he spoke his first words:<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know where I can find a job?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m afraid not,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t had a job that\u2019s lasted in forty years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Though it was a hot late afternoon, he wore his wool shirt buttoned tight about his neck. His sleeves were rolled and buttoned down over his thick wrists. Perspiration was streaming from his face, yet he made no move to open his shirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d he said at last, \u201cthis is as good a place as any to spend the night. Do you mind company?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have some extra food you\u2019d be welcome to,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

He sat down heavily, grunting. \u201cYou\u2019ll be sorry you asked me to stay,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone always is. That\u2019s why I\u2019m walking. Here it is, early September, the cream of the Labor Day carnival season. I should be making money hand over fist at any small town side show celebration, but here I am with no prospects.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took off an immense shoe and peered at it closely. \u201cI usually keep a job about ten days. Then something happens and they fire me. By now every carnival in America won\u2019t touch me with a ten-foot pole.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat seems to be the trouble?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

For answer, he unbuttoned his tight collar, slowly. With his eyes shut, he put a slow hand to the task of unbuttoning his shirt all the way down. He slipped his fingers in to feel his chest. \u201cFunny,\u201d he said, eyes still shut. \u201cYou can\u2019t feel them but they\u2019re there. I always hope that someday I\u2019ll look and they’ll be gone. I walk in the sun for hours on the hottest days, baking, and hope that my sweat\u2019ll wash them off, the sun\u2019ll cook them off, but at sundown they\u2019re still there.\u201d He turned his head slightly toward me and exposed his chest. \u201cAre they still there now?\u201d<\/p>\n

After a long while I exhaled. \u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cThey\u2019re still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Illustrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother reason I keep my collar buttoned up,\u201d he said, opening his eyes, \u201cis the children. They follow me along country roads. Everyone wants to see the pictures, and yet nobody wants to see them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took his shirt off and wadded it in his hands. He was covered with Illustrations from the blue tattooed ring about his neck to his belt line.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt keeps right on going,\u201d he said, guessing my thought. \u201cAll of me is Illustrated. Look.\u201d He opened his hand. On his palm was a rose, freshly cut, with drops of crystal water among the soft pink petals. I put my hand out to touch it, but it was only an Illustration.<\/p>\n

As for the rest of him, I cannot say how I sat and stared, for he was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. When his flesh twitched, the tiny mouths flickered, the tiny green-and-gold eyes winked, the tiny pink hands gestured. There were yellow meadows and blue rivers and mountains and stars and suns and planets spread in a Milky Way across his chest. The people themselves were in twenty or more odd groups upon his arms, shoulders, back, sides, and wrists, as well as on the flat of his stomach. You found them in forests of hair, lurking among a constellation of freckles, or peering from armpit caverns, diamond eyes aglitter. Each seemed intent upon his own activity; each was a separate gallery portrait.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, they\u2019re beautiful!\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

How can I explain about his Illustrations? If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed, with all his sulphurous color, elongation, and anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man\u2019s body for his art. The colors burned in three dimensions. They were windows looking in upon fiery reality. Here, gathered on one wall, were all the finest scenes in the universe; the man was a walking treasure gallery. This wasn\u2019t the work of a cheap carnival tattoo man with three colors and whisky on his breath. This was the accomplishment of a living genius, vibrant, clear, and beautiful.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yes,\u201d said the Illustrated Man. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of my Illustrations that I\u2019d like to burn them off. I\u2019ve tried sandpaper, acid, a knife . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

The sun was setting. The moon was already up in the East.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor, you see,\u201d said the Illustrated Man, \u201cthese Illustrations predict the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all right in sunlight\u201d he went on. \u201cI could keep a carnival day job. But at night\u2014the pictures move. The pictures change.\u201d<\/p>\n

I must have smiled. \u201cHow long have you been Illustrated?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1900, when I was twenty years old and working a carnival, I broke my leg. It laid me up; I had to do something to keep my hand in, so I decided to get tattooed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut who tattooed you? What happened to the artist?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe went back to the future,\u201d he said. “I mean it. She was an old woman in a little house in the middle of Wisconsin here somewhere not far from this place. A little old witch who looked a thousand years old one moment and twenty years old the next, but she said she could travel in time. I laughed. Now, I know better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did you happen to meet her?\u201d<\/p>\n

He told me. He had seen her painted sign by the road: SKIN ILLUSTRATION! Illustration instead of tattoo! Artistic! So he had sat all night while her magic needles stung him wasp stings and delicate bee stings. By morning he looked like a man who had fallen into a twenty-color print press and been squeezed out, all bright and picturesque.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve hunted every summer for fifty years,\u201d he said, putting his hands out on the air. “When I find that witch I\u2019m going to kill her.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sun was gone. Now the first stars were shining and the moon had brightened the fields of grass and wheat. Still the Illustrated Man\u2019s pictures glowed like charcoals in the half light, like scattered rubies and emeralds, with Rouault colors and Picasso colors and the long, pressed-out El Greco bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo people fire me when my pictures move. They don\u2019t like it when violent things happen in my Illustrations. Each Illustration is a little story. If you watch them, in a few minutes they tell you a tale. In three hours of looking you could see eighteen or twenty stories acted right on my body, you could hear voices and think thoughts. It\u2019s all here, just waiting for you to look. But most of all, there\u2019s a special spot on my body.\u201d He bared his back. \u201cSee? There\u2019s no special design on my right shoulder blade, just a jumble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019ve been around a person long enough, that spot clouds over and fills in. If I\u2019m with a woman, her picture comes there on my back, in an hour, and shows her whole life\u2014how she\u2019ll live, how she\u2019ll die, what she\u2019ll look like when she\u2019s sixty. And if it\u2019s a man, an hour later his picture\u2019s here on my back. It shows him falling off a cliff, or dying under a train. So I\u2019m fired again.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the time he had been talking his hands had wandered over the Illustrations, as if to adjust their frames, to brush away dust\u2014the motions of a connoisseur, an art patron. Now he lay back, long and full in the moonlight. It was a warm night. There was no breeze and the air was stifling. We both had our shirts off.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you\u2019ve never found the old woman?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you think she came from the future?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow else could she know these stories she painted on me?\u201d He shut his eyes tiredly. His voice grew fainter. \u201cSometimes at night I can feel them, the pictures, like ants, crawling on my skin. Then I know they\u2019re doing what they have to do. I never look at them any more. I just try to rest. I don\u2019t sleep much. Don\u2019t you look at them either, I warn you. Turn the other way when you sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

I lay back a few feet from him. He didn\u2019t seem violent and the pictures were beautiful. Otherwise I might have been tempted to get out and away from such babbling. But the Illustrations . . . I let my eyes fill up on them. Any person would go a little mad with such things upon his body.<\/p>\n

The night was serene. I could hear the Illustrated Man\u2019s breathing in the moonlight. Crickets were stirring gently in the distant ravines. I lay with my body sidewise so I could watch the Illustrations. Perhaps half an hour passed. Whether the Illustrated Man slept I could not tell, but suddenly I heard him whisper, \u201cThey\u2019re moving, aren\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n

I waited a minute.<\/p>\n

Then I said, \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pictures were moving, each in its turn, each for a brief minute or two. There in the moonlight, with the tiny tinkling thoughts and the distant sea voices, it seemed, each little drama was enacted. Whether it took an hour or three hours for the dramas to finish, it would be hard to say. I only know that I lay fascinated and did not move while the stars wheeled in the sky.<\/p>\n

Eighteen Illustrations, eighteen tales.\u00a0 I counted them one by one.<\/p>\n

Primarily my eyes focused upon a scene, a large house with two people in it.\u00a0 I saw a flight of vultures on a blazing flesh sky, I saw yellow lions, and I heard voices.<\/p>\n

The first Illustration quivered and came to life. . . .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Book Preview Prologue: The Illustrated Man IT was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man. Walking along an asphalt road, I was or the final leg of a two weeks\u2019 walking tour of Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon I stopped, ate some pork, beans, and a doughnut, and was … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[87],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ray-bradbury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}