Dark, a bit sad and with a lot of people dying alone in space. You just got to love Bradbury. That being said, “The illustrated man” it’s a 5 stars book, a collection of only 8 short stories in the Romanian edition out of 18 the original version has.

The stories, all written before 1952, are all individuals. They don’t run together to make one final story or anything but each of them draws you in easily and some leave you thinking: wow.

The illustrated man is a man covered in tattoos that a witch gave him long time ago. The tattoos come to life at night and a traveler is witnessing their movements and the stories they tell, mostly about the future.

Ray Bradbury’s recurrent themes with space, astronauts, Mars, people relying on computers / technology, greed and loneliness, the search for a better place / world and life overall, everything is so well written in this little pocket book.