According to Bradbury (quoted in Sam Weller's The Bradbury Chronicles), it was editor Walter Bradbury (no relation) who asked, "We've disguised The Martian Chronicles as a novel, do you think we can somehow do the same thing with The Illustrated Man?" It's received wisdom in publishing that short story collections don't sell as well as novels, so it's understandable that Doubleday would favour any attempt to make a collection look like a novel. As with Bradbury's second book The Martian Chronicles, the stories are linked together to create an impression of being more than "just" a collection of stories, although the linking is much sparser here: an introduction and an epilogue to frame the stories, and the occasional reminder of the link between a couple of the stories. It collected twenty stories, most of which had previously been published in various magazines between 19. The Illustrated Man was Ray Bradbury's third book, a collection of mostly science-fictional tales. In these posts, I cover each of Ray Bradbury's books, say something about the contents, then pick the best stories and adaptations. This is the third in a new series of posts, my Lockdown Choices, where I seek to entertain you while in coronavirus-isolation, and remind you of Bradbury's great works in this, his centenary year.
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