The Future is Now: Did Ray Bradbury's Sci-Fi Short Stories Predict the Present?

By Sarah Jane Abbott    |   Monday, August 11, 2014 - Off The Shelf It all begins with a chance encounter between an unnamed narrator and an aging carnie whose skin is carefully covered despite the hot weather. They sit companionably under a tree for a while, until finally the stranger uncovers himself: Removing his shirt, he reveals vivid, lifelike tattoos covering his entire body. But they aren’t tattoos, he explains, they are Illustrations, given to him by a mysterious old woman years before. He wears the Illustrations like the black mark of a curse; he cannot keep a job or a home and is never able to stay among people for long.  Pressed by the narrator, the Illustrated man explains that the old crone was a witch and the Illustrations are magic—they come to life at night and play out their small, frightening dramas on the canvas of his skin. Some are violent, some sad, and all surround the one blank place on his back—a place that will slowly resolve itself into a glimpse of the observer’s future if one looks long enough. As the Illustrated man lays back under the stars and tries to relax—he cannot sleep because he “can feel them, the pictures, like ants, crawling on [his] skin”—the narrator watches as the eighteen Illustrations tell their eighteen tales. These tales comprise Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. Bradbury is perhaps one of the most widely recognized and celebrated American science fiction writers of all time. Best known for the classic Fahrenheit 451, he is also the author of hundreds of short stories. His body of work is luminous and transportive throughout, but my favorite short story collection of his is The Illustrated Man. The collection of eighteen stories is an ingenious frame narrative, connected by the tragic and wondrous story of the titular character himself. More