The Illustrated Man

I have a complicated past with Ray Bradbury. The first of his works I ever read was in middle school, It was the short story "There Will Come Soft Rain" from The Martian Chronicles I instantly fell in love with this story. After that I did not look much into him again and he sort of fell off the radar for me. But I never forgot that story and haw very tragic it was. I don't know why I never associated that story with "Strange Tales" a TV series I watched religiously in the 90's. Ray Bradbury is even in the intro. So all this rambling basically results in that I had loved his writing for several years but did not realize it.

If anything I think I enjoyed this novel more than The Martian Chronicles. It was the tie-in story of the Illustrated Man that made this seem like a more cohesive story to me. In this series of short stories, I think the most impactful stories were the shortest ones,especially "The Last Night of The World." His writing really shined in this story where the author appears to just snip a random moment in time from the characters lives. This story more than any other evoked the same painfully tragic emotions from me I got from reading "Soft Rain."

"The Rocket Man" took the concept of a man torn by two worlds, his love of his family and the pull of work, and put a sic-fi spin on it. This story held up over the test of time better than many of the others because the idea of being forced to chose between family and career is as true today as it was for Mr. Bradbury in 1951.

Every time I read some of his work I think to myself why don't I read more of his work. Ray Bradbury really is an amazing writer.