The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury [HARDCOVER RE-ISSUE] 2001 • BOMC

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

HARDCOVER RE-ISSUE [2001] BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB

Rare book club exclusive hardcover re-issue featuring the original jacket art of the scarce first edition. 

Hardcover with dust jacket in excellent condition.  Dust jacket is in beautiful shape; trace shelf wear and a small nick to corner.   Housed in a new archival quality jacket protector.

Book itself looks and reads like new. 

That The Illustrated Man has remained in print since being published in 1951 is fair testimony to the universal appeal of Ray Bradbury's work. Only his second collection (the first was Dark Carnival, later reworked into The October Country), it is a marvelous, if mostly dark, quilt of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

In an ingenious framework to open and close the book, Bradbury presents himself as a nameless narrator who meets the Illustrated Man--a wanderer whose entire body is a living canvas of exotic tattoos. What's even more remarkable, and increasingly disturbing, is that the illustrations are themselves magically alive, and each proceeds to unfold its own story, such as "The Veldt," wherein rowdy children take a game of virtual reality way over the edge. Or "Kaleidoscope," a heartbreaking portrait of stranded astronauts about to reenter our atmosphere--without the benefit of a spaceship. Or "Zero Hour," in which invading aliens have discovered a most logical ally--our own children. Even though most were written in the 1940s and 1950s, these 18 classic stories will be just as chillingly effective 50 years from now.