The Illustrated Man is a 1951 collection of 18 science fiction short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury.

The book was made into the 1969 film, The Illustrated Man, starring Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom.

Some of the stories, including "The Veldt", "The Fox and the Forest" (as "To the Future"), "Marionettes, Inc.", and "Zero Hour" were also dramatized for the 1955–1957 radio series X Minus One.

"The Veldt", "The Concrete Mixer", "The Long Rain", "Zero Hour", and "Marionettes Inc." were adapted for The Ray Bradbury Theater television series.

When the rocket lands, the travelers tell them that the entire Earth has been destroyed by war, including all of the horrific mementos of racism (such as trees used for lynching black people), leaving few survivors.

The travelers make their way across the Venusian landscape to find a "sun dome", a shelter with a large artificial light source.

Doug's mother prepared a Thanksgiving dinner the night before his father's departure, even though she had long ago accepted that he would die in space and had detached herself emotionally.

The slightly eccentric Hitchcock embraces solipsism, and repeatedly insists that nothing in space is real and there is no night or morning.

A couple living in a war-ravaged future society on the brink of collapse uses time travel to escape to 1938 Mexico.

One day, the planet is visited by a young man named Leonard Mark of 18 who has the ability to perform telepathy.

The exiles, including a man named Saul, on the planet are thrilled with his ability and a violent fight breaks out over who will get to spend the most time with their visitor and enjoy the illusionary paradises he can transmit.

The protagonist meets a movie director, and it becomes clear that the people of Earth have planned to exploit the Martians for financial gain.

In the near future, young children are persuaded to help a seemingly imaginary friend named Drill to play a game called Invasion.

When one of the mothers realizes that children far away from her town play the exact same game, and her own daughter says casually that the adults will have to die, she starts to worry.

Fiorello Bodoni, a poor junkyard owner, has saved $3,000 to fulfill his dream to send one member of his family into outer space.

Bodoni instead uses the money to build a replica rocket containing a virtual reality theater that simulates a voyage through space.

The British edition, first published in 1952 by Hart-Davis omits "The Rocket Man", "The Fire Balloons", "The Exiles" and "The Concrete Mixer", and adds "Usher II" from The Martian Chronicles and "The Playground".

In The New York Times in February 1951, Villiers Gerson praised the book for its "three-dimensional people with whom it is easy to sympathize, to hate, and to admire".

However, they found the better stories "provide a feast [from] the finest traditions in imaginative fiction"[5] and, writing for the same magazine in April 1952, named it among 1951's top books.

It was directed by Jack Smight and starred Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom, and others, including Don Dubbins.

The film contains adaptations of "The Veldt", "The Long Rain", and "The Last Night of the World"[7] and expands the prologue and epilogue with intermittent scenes and flashbacks of how the illustrations came to be.

Written by composer Zac Greenberg and librettist Michael Burnham, the opera is adapted from four stories in The Illustrated Man -- "Kaleidoscope," "Zero Hour," "The Highway" and "The Last Night of the World."