The Illustrated Man

So Martian Chronicles was a religious experience for me, and I still consider it the very pinnacle of aesthetic/intellectual speculative delight. I still can't digest just how freakin' amazing it was. What a story! What a mind to create such a story! What a everything! Daamn.

And, indeed, when I read it last year, I remember also being pleasantly surprised, since I had always grouped Bradbury into the Good Ol' Boys' Club of Golden Age-era science fiction. My relationship with this era/club is predictable. Some person or algorithm tells me that I'll simply loooove this book by Arthur C. Clarke/Isaac Asimov/Ray Bradbury/Alfred Bester/etc because it SHAKES THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF YOUR WORLDVIEW, and my reading habits are all about that, ya know. I pick up book. I read book. Worldview foundations are not only unshaken, but very firmly hammered back into place, because the aliens came, and they found 1950s Americana, a setting so white-washed as to feel reeeeeally tedious and stodgy and oppressive to an emancipated lady such as myself. Where would a me fit into this world? Cooking dinner for her Wonder Husband, while fretting or looking on in wonder at his wondrousness? Dude. No thanks.

Usually, finishing such highly-acclaimed, highly-disappointing sci fi provokes in me a femrage rant, so I usually stick to 1970s New Wave stuff and re-read Ursula Le Guin to feel better about the world.

Alas, then. The Illustrated Man is meant to be Bradbury's other other masterpiece, aside Fahrenheit 451 and Martian Chronicles. The title is even pretty cool (illustrated people!), drawing you in. I was pumped, at least. Unfortunately, I found the stories blah, and the writing sooo deeply meshed in a narrow whiteoldman worldview - honestly, I'm tired of saying it. I'm getting tired of MY OWN REVIEWS in this regard. But, there you have it. I just found it uuuuggghhh and meh. Sometimes eye-roll-inducing (esp. with the wife-murder-fantasy story, which, come on, is sooo gratuitous and dodgy as a sub-genre in and of itself). But I was mostly sad, cuz I was all like, “Ray, I know you can do better! You've done so much better in the past!”

Oh well.