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The Illustrated Man, The October Country & Other Stories
In one authoritative volume, here are two landmark story collections by one of America’s most beloved authors, plus 27 stellar, speculative, and strange tales from other collections, including 7 restored to print
The author of over 400 short stories, Ray Bradbury was a master not only in the science fiction genre, for which he is best known, but also in speculative, horror, and dark fantasy. Here are two of Bradbury’s most beloved collections, along with twenty-seven other stories, that together represent the best of Bradbury’s stories of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
The Illustrated Man—the more Earthbound science fiction companion to Bradbury’s classic collection The Martian Chronicles—contains eighteen short stories bound together by the unifying metaphor of a strangely tattooed outcast. The stories explore both the dehumanizing possibilities of space-age technology—in “The Veldt” and “The Rocket Man”--and the pessimistic, dark side of humanity, as in “The Visitor.”
The October Country collects nineteen short stories: macabre carnival tales, speculative horror, and strange fantasy. “Uncle Einar” and “Homecoming” concern the monstrous and immortal Elliott family. In “The Next in Line,” a woman becomes convinced that she’ll never leave the small, Mexican town she’s traveled to on vacation. And in “Touched with Fire,” two old men have learned to predict future murders. This edition restores the original artwork by Joe Mugnaini.
Rounding out the volume are twenty-seven other short stories from the first half of Bradbury’s career selected by Bradbury scholar Joanthan R, Eller, including “Frost and Fire,” in which humans on another planet live only eight days; “The Pedestrian,” about the only man in the world who does not watch television, and “I Sing the Body Electric!,” in which a family purchases a robotic grandmother. Also includes such hard to find stories as “R is for Rocket,” “Asleep in Armageddon,” and “The Lost City of Mars.
The author of over 400 short stories, Ray Bradbury was a master not only in the science fiction genre, for which he is best known, but also in speculative, horror, and dark fantasy. Here are two of Bradbury’s most beloved collections, along with twenty-seven other stories, that together represent the best of Bradbury’s stories of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
The Illustrated Man—the more Earthbound science fiction companion to Bradbury’s classic collection The Martian Chronicles—contains eighteen short stories bound together by the unifying metaphor of a strangely tattooed outcast. The stories explore both the dehumanizing possibilities of space-age technology—in “The Veldt” and “The Rocket Man”--and the pessimistic, dark side of humanity, as in “The Visitor.”
The October Country collects nineteen short stories: macabre carnival tales, speculative horror, and strange fantasy. “Uncle Einar” and “Homecoming” concern the monstrous and immortal Elliott family. In “The Next in Line,” a woman becomes convinced that she’ll never leave the small, Mexican town she’s traveled to on vacation. And in “Touched with Fire,” two old men have learned to predict future murders. This edition restores the original artwork by Joe Mugnaini.
Rounding out the volume are twenty-seven other short stories from the first half of Bradbury’s career selected by Bradbury scholar Joanthan R, Eller, including “Frost and Fire,” in which humans on another planet live only eight days; “The Pedestrian,” about the only man in the world who does not watch television, and “I Sing the Body Electric!,” in which a family purchases a robotic grandmother. Also includes such hard to find stories as “R is for Rocket,” “Asleep in Armageddon,” and “The Lost City of Mars.
992 pages, Hardcover
Published October 4, 2022
21 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Ray Bradbury
2,561 books25.2k followersRay Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.
Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).
The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".
Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).
The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 31, 2022
Ahhh!
For the last couple of months I have each evening dipped into one or more of Bradbury's wonderful short stories collected here in this lovely volume by the Library of America! How the man's language and visions could soar!
Some of these involve time-travel, many others traveling to "the stars" in his ever-present "silver rockets," and others bordered on the Twilight Zone type of tales that take the simple for-granted things of life and turn them a tad on their end, but almost every one of them (I confess, there were around a half-dozen with which I was less than taken) I found worth the time to travel to truly "another place."
The man had a thing with Mars! In his writings, what we now know is a desolate, thin-wind-swept planet devoid of an atmosphere that could sustain Earth life, Mars is a world where the "Martians" have evolved and no longer live in their ancient cities, but where the remains of those cities -- and the many now-dried up canals that used to connect them -- still exist to tantalize the Earth colonists who arrive in...of course, wondrous silver rockets!
How sad that it is unlikely that we will ever seek his like again! I still am mesmerized by his novel "Dandelion Wine" which I re-read every few years to recapture the spirt of child-like wonder, awe, and excitement that children -- all too briefly -- can experience when young.
A volume to treasure and linger over!
For the last couple of months I have each evening dipped into one or more of Bradbury's wonderful short stories collected here in this lovely volume by the Library of America! How the man's language and visions could soar!
Some of these involve time-travel, many others traveling to "the stars" in his ever-present "silver rockets," and others bordered on the Twilight Zone type of tales that take the simple for-granted things of life and turn them a tad on their end, but almost every one of them (I confess, there were around a half-dozen with which I was less than taken) I found worth the time to travel to truly "another place."
The man had a thing with Mars! In his writings, what we now know is a desolate, thin-wind-swept planet devoid of an atmosphere that could sustain Earth life, Mars is a world where the "Martians" have evolved and no longer live in their ancient cities, but where the remains of those cities -- and the many now-dried up canals that used to connect them -- still exist to tantalize the Earth colonists who arrive in...of course, wondrous silver rockets!
How sad that it is unlikely that we will ever seek his like again! I still am mesmerized by his novel "Dandelion Wine" which I re-read every few years to recapture the spirt of child-like wonder, awe, and excitement that children -- all too briefly -- can experience when young.
A volume to treasure and linger over!
Want to read
October 21, 2023Contains the stories:
The Illustrated Man
Prologue: The Illustrated Man - 3/5 - framing story that starts off the collection
The Veldt - 5/5 - you can take the kids out of the veldt, but you can't take the veldt out of the kids
Kaleidoscope - 3/5 - dying astronauts' final thoughts and wishes
The Other Foot - 5/5 - a rocket brings a Caucasian to an African-American settlement on Mars
The Highway - 3/5 - a contrast in perspectives regarding Armageddon
The Man - 3/5 - praise Jebus
The Long Rain - 3/5 - "We've been through every kind of rain there is." (Forrest Gump)
The Rocket Man - 3/5 - Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Rocket Men
The Last Night of the World - 2/5 - Think about it. What if it's the last day on Earth for you? For someone you love? What if that's true?
The Exiles - 4/5 - Will the real Martians please stand up?
No Particular Night or Morning - 1/5 - 12 pages of ranting about object permanence.
The Fox and the Forest - 4/5 - time travel AWOL
The Visitor - 4/5 - And I thought it was bad when I had to fight my daughter for the remote
The Concrete Mixer - 2/5 - interesting idea but too long and overbearingly critical
Marionettes, Inc. - 4/5 - lighthearted story about spousal robot replacements
The City - 4/5 - When the lights go down in the city
Zero Hour - 5/5 - Nice twist on an alien invasion story with laugh-out-loud dark humor
The Rocket - 3/5 - outer space family vacation
The Illustrated Man - 3/5 - fat, tattooed and angry is no way to go through life, son
Epilogue - 3/5 - finale of the framing story
The October Country
The Dwarf
The Next in Line
The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse
Skeleton
The Jar
The Lake
The Emissary
Touched With Fire
The Small Assassin
The Crowd
Jack-in-the-Box
The Scythe
Uncle Einar
The Wind
The Man Upstairs
There Was an Old Woman
The Cistern
Homecoming
The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone
Other Stories:
R Is for Rocket
Chrysalis
Frost and Fire
Powerhouse
Pillar of Fire
Asleep in Armageddon
Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed
A Touch of Petulance
The Screaming Woman
The Fog Horn
The Pedestrian
The Playground -
A Sound of Thunder - 4/5 -
The Great Wide World Over There
The Golden Apples of the Sun
And the Rock Cried Out
All Summer in a Day - 4/5 - schoolchildren on Venus who only get to see the sun once every seven years
Interval in Sunlight
At Midnight, in the Month of June
The Strawberry Window
Icarus Montgolfier Wright
The End of the Beginning
The Day It Rained Forever
A Miracle of Rare Device
The Kilimanjaro Device
The Lost City of Mars
I Sing the Body Electric!
The Illustrated Man
Prologue: The Illustrated Man - 3/5 - framing story that starts off the collection
The Veldt - 5/5 - you can take the kids out of the veldt, but you can't take the veldt out of the kids
Kaleidoscope - 3/5 - dying astronauts' final thoughts and wishes
The Other Foot - 5/5 - a rocket brings a Caucasian to an African-American settlement on Mars
The Highway - 3/5 - a contrast in perspectives regarding Armageddon
The Man - 3/5 - praise Jebus
The Long Rain - 3/5 - "We've been through every kind of rain there is." (Forrest Gump)
The Rocket Man - 3/5 - Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Rocket Men
The Last Night of the World - 2/5 - Think about it. What if it's the last day on Earth for you? For someone you love? What if that's true?
The Exiles - 4/5 - Will the real Martians please stand up?
No Particular Night or Morning - 1/5 - 12 pages of ranting about object permanence.
The Fox and the Forest - 4/5 - time travel AWOL
The Visitor - 4/5 - And I thought it was bad when I had to fight my daughter for the remote
The Concrete Mixer - 2/5 - interesting idea but too long and overbearingly critical
Marionettes, Inc. - 4/5 - lighthearted story about spousal robot replacements
The City - 4/5 - When the lights go down in the city
Zero Hour - 5/5 - Nice twist on an alien invasion story with laugh-out-loud dark humor
The Rocket - 3/5 - outer space family vacation
The Illustrated Man - 3/5 - fat, tattooed and angry is no way to go through life, son
Epilogue - 3/5 - finale of the framing story
The October Country
The Dwarf
The Next in Line
The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse
Skeleton
The Jar
The Lake
The Emissary
Touched With Fire
The Small Assassin
The Crowd
Jack-in-the-Box
The Scythe
Uncle Einar
The Wind
The Man Upstairs
There Was an Old Woman
The Cistern
Homecoming
The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone
Other Stories:
R Is for Rocket
Chrysalis
Frost and Fire
Powerhouse
Pillar of Fire
Asleep in Armageddon
Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed
A Touch of Petulance
The Screaming Woman
The Fog Horn
The Pedestrian
The Playground -
A Sound of Thunder - 4/5 -
The Great Wide World Over There
The Golden Apples of the Sun
And the Rock Cried Out
All Summer in a Day - 4/5 - schoolchildren on Venus who only get to see the sun once every seven years
Interval in Sunlight
At Midnight, in the Month of June
The Strawberry Window
Icarus Montgolfier Wright
The End of the Beginning
The Day It Rained Forever
A Miracle of Rare Device
The Kilimanjaro Device
The Lost City of Mars
I Sing the Body Electric!
January 16, 2025
3.5
Having already read The Illustrated Man, this review covers The October Country and the additional short stories that I hadn’t previously read in other collections.
I give The October Country four stars. A fun collection of stories that, as Bradbury states in the introduction, are set in “that country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist.” I enjoyed most stories and found a few to be meh, but overall I was just amazed by some of the premises he was able to come up with (looking at you The Small Assassin and Skeleton).
As for the extra short stories, I felt a lot of them just weren’t that good and/or didn’t really fit in with the two collections that came before. Both The Illustrated Man and The October Country were filled with that classic, eerie Bradbury dark fantasy, so choosing to add stories that didn’t match that tone just didn’t feel right. Having read the most popular of the extra short stories and therefore not including them in this review, I’d give the remaining extra stories 3 stars
Having already read The Illustrated Man, this review covers The October Country and the additional short stories that I hadn’t previously read in other collections.
I give The October Country four stars. A fun collection of stories that, as Bradbury states in the introduction, are set in “that country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist.” I enjoyed most stories and found a few to be meh, but overall I was just amazed by some of the premises he was able to come up with (looking at you The Small Assassin and Skeleton).
As for the extra short stories, I felt a lot of them just weren’t that good and/or didn’t really fit in with the two collections that came before. Both The Illustrated Man and The October Country were filled with that classic, eerie Bradbury dark fantasy, so choosing to add stories that didn’t match that tone just didn’t feel right. Having read the most popular of the extra short stories and therefore not including them in this review, I’d give the remaining extra stories 3 stars
March 27, 2024
While the title books in this anthology The Illustrated Man and The October Country) are deserving of their own outright reviews, this collection was made complete by the addition of 27 other stories from throughout Bradbury’s career. This curation stays true to Bradbury’s most common threads of exploration, the limits of human character and behavior, and weird and fantastical futurism.
Above all, what I appreciated the most about this collection were the inclusion of Chronology of Bradbury’s life and works, Note on the Texts, and the Notes on the Joseph Mugnaini Illustrations in the appendix. These were a beautiful bookend to the celebrated works of Ray Bradbury in this collection, and will be the reason this volume will remain in my personal library for future reference and research about the author.
Above all, what I appreciated the most about this collection were the inclusion of Chronology of Bradbury’s life and works, Note on the Texts, and the Notes on the Joseph Mugnaini Illustrations in the appendix. These were a beautiful bookend to the celebrated works of Ray Bradbury in this collection, and will be the reason this volume will remain in my personal library for future reference and research about the author.
December 9, 2023
Love the thought experiments these stories gave me. Is there sin on mars? What if Jesus traveled the universe to visit different planets? Should I be worried about my daughter starting an alien invasion?
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews