‘The Illustrated Man’ – Ray Bradbury (Harper Voyager)
Page Count: 294 Pages Now here’s a book that I haven’t read since I had to study it for GCSE English (which is so long ago now, I’m really trying not to think about it). Well, I say study… I think we looked at one story (‘The Veld’) and then we had to try and write a story in the style of Ray Bradbury. Seriously :o) Lets just say I was better at writing about ‘TheVeld’ and leave it at that. ‘The Illustrated Man’ had been on my mind just recently so when I saw a copy on the shelf, in Waterstones, it didn’t take too much for me to buy it and take it home for a read. It’s been a long time since I read a short story collection from cover to cover but that’s just what I did here and that should tell you something about this collection. I’m not a big reader of science-fiction but I ended up very glad that I made an exception to that rule here… If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed, with his sulphurous colour and exquisite human anatomy...