A review by ryanberger
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

challenging hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 
Bradbury's command of science fiction has always been fueled by magic and poetry instead of a superior understanding of technology and how it works. There's room and necessity for both, but I find myself enjoying Bradbury's worlds of oblong brass rockets to the warp drives and space operas of his contemporaries.

A true original and a master storyteller. Though a product of the pulpy sci-fi paperback generations-- his short story prowess is up there with any. You can peel back the layers endlessly on most of these stories and you yet sum up their messages often in single, concise, and *profound* sentences. These are science fiction stories about faith, greed, apathy, conservation, and stubbornness-- just to name a few.

An achievement in Sci-Fi and the literary world.

Loses a bit of a star because sometimes the cheesiness (which I mostly love) gets to be a little awkward, and the front half is overwhelmingly stronger than the back end of stories. In a jumbled order that's hardly a problem. There are all kinds of theories about how to structure a short story collection (Your best story second, your weakest story in the exact middle, your strangest story first etc etc) but it did feel a little strange to begin with moonshot after moonshot and then the entire back half are just pretty good.