The illustrated man

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The novel The Illustrated Man is a collection of 18 stories by the American writer Ray Bradbury , which are narrative only loosely connected by a not very extensive framework, consisting of a prologue , a few passages and a short epilogue . The volume is considered to be the climax in the author's work and a milestone in science fiction , as it exemplifies the turning away from the technical-scientific-oriented description and the turn to poetic science fiction literature.

The book was published for the first time in 1951 by the New York publishing house Doubleday & Company, Inc. under the original title The Illustrated Man . The German first edition was published by Diogenes Verlag in 1962.

content

During a hike through Wisconsin in early September, the narrator meets the illustrated man on a lonely country road, a tramp on a journey, similar to the Eternal Jew . This man's body is covered over and over with tattoos that an old woman, a sorceress from the future, put on his skin. At night, the body images begin to come to life and tell stories of possible future worlds.

“Every tattoo has a little story. If you watch them, they'll tell you their story in a matter of minutes. In three hours you can see a whole bunch of stories performed on my body, hear voices and think along with thoughts. Everything is there and just waiting for you to watch. ” (Quote from Der Illustrierte Mann , Heyne-Taschenbuch Nr. 3057)

The stories

  • The children's room ( The Veldt ) : In the future there will be fully automatic houses that relieve the residents of all work. In a family with two children, the parents gradually feel superfluous and want to do something themselves again and take a vacation from the comforts. Not so for their children, who have a children's room here that turns telepathic streams of thought into reality. This room is more important to them than their parents, and when they forbid various things the spoiled children would like, hatred develops in them. They create a lifelike African steppe in their room, and when the parents want to go on vacation and start switching off the whole house, the children lure them into the room, where they are eaten by lions.
  • Kaleidoscope ( Kaleidoscope ) : A spaceship is hit by a comet and slashed. The crew, wearing space suits with radio equipment, but not recoil devices, are thrown out and are now drifting away, each in a different direction, into space and toward certain death. Only the radio connection remains as a contact. When they are drifting apart, old rivalries and sensitivities are expressed again despite or because of the fear of death. As long as they can, they talk to each other, remember, show remorse, envy, unspoken truths and feelings and even hurt each other before all voices gradually fall silent. While most of them are drifting out into space, one flies back to earth. When immersed in the atmosphere, it burns up. A child sees this "shooting star", whereupon his mother says: "Make a wish."
  • The other skin ( The Other Foot ) : This story is about the policy of apartheid that still prevailed to Bradbury's time. In it, the blacks flee to Mars with rockets and establish an independent society here, without forgetting how they had been oppressed by the white population. A nuclear war is taking place on earth that few survive. After twenty years, a rocket is heading for Mars. The blacks intend to kill the white spacemen or at least to force them into the same slave services. When the rocket lands, an old white man tells of the war, which brings back good and bad memories in people. He has come to seek help so that the few survivors of the contaminated earth can come to Mars. To show their repentance, they want to serve the blacks. But since nothing exists on earth that was hateful, the blacks accept the whites as equals and offer a new beginning on the same level.
  • The highway ( The Highway ) : Somewhere in Central America lives a poor simple-minded peasant on a country lane. After a sudden silence, an endless line of cars emerges, full of frightened, panicked inmates. A car breaks down near the farmer who is calmly working his barren fields. The inmates ask him for cooling water and, curious, he asks them what caused the line of cars. The inmates, a family, burst into tears and they tell him: "The nuclear war has begun." The farmer sees them driving away and asks himself: "What do you mean by that, the nuclear war has started?"
  • The man ( The Man ) : A group of astronauts landing on an inhabited planet. The crew intend to enter new markets and expect a welcoming committee. However, the residents are indifferent to the fact that a mysterious visitor had arrived before them the day before. A conflict arises: some of the space travelers suspect that a competing group of space travelers had gotten ahead of them here. Others believe that a Savior has visited the planet, especially as they learn of His wisdom and goodness, of healings and miracles. Some spacemen begin to believe in this Savior and stay here. The Commander, however, who is incapable of doing so, wants to follow this man from planet to planet without understanding that he is always where he is believed.
  • The Long Rain ( The Long Rain ) : Bradbury describes Venus as a hot, humid, foggy planet with never-ceasing downpours. After a crash landing, a small group of soldiers set off with their spaceship to a sun dome, a man-made building that offers security and warmth. In the waters live Venus inhabitants who occasionally destroy such domes. On the way, the soldiers go crazy one after the other and seek death. The first building is destroyed and abandoned; only one man reaches a working solar dome.
  • The Spaceman ( The Rocket Man ) : A mother and her 14-year-old son hear the father's spaceship fly over the house; this is usually three months in the solar system. The son wants to become a spaceman himself and keeps traces of dust from distant planets that remained in his father's uniform. On the vacation days on earth, the spaceman likes to dig in the garden and sunbathe. "You miss that", he confesses to his son, "never become a spaceman!" On his next mission, his ship plunges into the sun and his family does not venture into the daylight for a long time in order not to be reminded of the loss.
  • The fire balloons ( The Fire Balloons ) : An Order of itinerant preachers want the Martians, intelligent fire balls of pure energy proselytize. When they arrived on Mars, they found that the Martians were without original sin . They save people from danger, have no property, have no desires, do not hate, do not wage war, do not work and are simply happy.
  • The last night of the world ( The Last Night of the World ) : The last night of the world is upon us, a family prepares for the inevitable end of the world. Everyone dreamed of it. The last few hours are, however, with everyday chores, e.g. B. washing dishes, listening to the radio and reading, as nobody panics because of the inevitability. The mother even gets up one more night because she forgot to turn off the tap. Before going to bed they wish "good night" as usual.
  • The exiles ( The Exiles ) : A spaceship traveling from Earth to Mars, complaining as several members of the crew of horrible dreams and some even die for no apparent reason. Since the 21st century, Mars has become a refuge for poets of horror and horror and supporters of the supernatural and their books, which have been banned on science-based earth, and the characters appearing in them. So live here u. a. Poe , Bierce and Carroll , who, together with witches who magically killed the spacemen, want to prevent the earth dwellers from landing. Only the exiled Dickens feels wrongly put in the group of followers of the supernatural and does not cooperate to prevent the landing. In the end, the spacemen reach their destination and burn the last books there are - and thus, figuratively, the authors and their characters too, which is why a spaceman thinks he hears screams and the fantasy city of Oz collapses.
  • No evening, no morning ... ( No Particular Night and Morning ) : A spaceship flies to Aldebaran II. One of the crew members took part because he liked the idea of ​​finding emptiness everywhere and yourself in the middle. On the flight, his disbelief in everything he cannot see or touch directly deepens; he even denies the existence of the earth or the stars. Finally, he leaves the ship alone in a spacesuit and drifts into space.
  • The fox and the hare ( The Fox and the Forest ) : On Earth 2155 there is a prolonged nuclear war. A physicist helping to develop a new bomb and his wife flee to Mexico through a time travel company in 1938, but a secret police of the future tracks them down. He could send them back as long as they are alone, so they hide in groups of people. Finally the man drives the policeman to death, and the couple looks for security with a film company, which, however, also represents a group of sniffer dogs and catapults them all back using a time machine hidden in a camera.
  • The visitor ( The Visitor ) : People who are suffering from a highly infectious and incurable disease are isolated on Mars to slowly die. However, they long for the earth, the lost paradise. One day a visitor arrives who is able to create the illusion of life on earth in people's minds. Since everyone claims the visitor for himself, a conflict arises in the course of which the telepath is killed.
  • Cement Mixer ( The Concrete Mixer ) : The Martians are preparing to invade Earth, but they are greeted with great enthusiasm. There is a society of consumption, pleasure and business here. A movie boss woos one of the Martians and presents him with business ideas. Disgusted by the degeneracy of the " American way of life ", he tries to escape to Mars. "We will be destroyed by their kindness," he realizes. Finally, he is run over by a horde of noisy youngsters in a road cruiser.
  • Marionetten, eV ( Marionettes, Inc. ) : A company offers individually designed, artificial people who are based on their real role models, except for a quiet "tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick" in the chest, indistinguishable. A man who has grown tired of his marriage over the years buys a replica of himself, which is to take over his role for the wife from now on, and tells a friend about the manufacturer. This friend now wants to enjoy his own freedom and deceive his wife, but she came up with the same idea, had already replaced herself with a puppet and probably ran off with someone else. The husband with the doppelganger is finally killed by the latter because the replicant has fallen in love with his wife.
  • The City ( The City ) : A distant civilization in space was once eradicated by bacteria, which were brought in from space-faring people. Realizing this, the doomed residents converted a city on their planet into a trap in order to automatically capture people who would end up in it in the future and to equip their bodies with artificial devices. After thousands of years this case occurs and manipulated in this way, the reprogrammed space travelers take the flight home to earth in order to contaminate it with bacteria.
  • Zero Hour ( Zero Hour ) : The Earth of the future is perfectly protected from alien invaders, humanity has reached a high technical standard. The Martians find the crucial gap: the enthusiasm of human children. Seven year old Mink and other children all over the world play "Invasion" and collect all kinds of things into machines that give Martians access to Earth. Mink's parents hide in the attic, but the aliens invade and kill them.
  • The spaceship ( The Rocket ) : A father uses his last money to fulfill his children's dearest wish, a space flight with a rocket. Using a lifelike model of an aluminum space rocket, he uses films to simulate a space flight without the rocket rising from the ground. The children are overjoyed.

filming

Jack Smight filmed the book by Bradbury in 1963 and brought the film into American cinemas in the summer of 1969 under its original title The Illustrated Man , with Rod Steiger in one of the leading roles among others . In Germany the film became known under the name The Tattooed One. Bradbury was not happy with the film, however.

“I hated the 'Illustrated Man'; a terrible movie. "

- Ray Bradbury, quoted in : Alpers / Fuchs / Hahn: Lexikon des Science-Fiction-Films, Heyne non-fiction book No. 93

Mention in other media

In episode 20 of the 5th season "... A Thousand Words" of the American television series Criminal Minds , reference is made to both the book and the film The Illustrated Man . The faces and names of the victims are tattooed on the body of the murderer.

literature