Ray Bradbury is a master of short stories, and many of these have either a horror or soft science fiction aspect. The collection is framed by a description of the illustrated man, the tales appearing as moving images on his flesh. My version of this lacked The Fire Balloons and included The Illustrated Man as a final story in the book.

Most of these were published elsewhere, and included here with minor changes to the text. Some were great, some good, and some fair. I particularly enjoyed Zero Hour (obvious though it was) and The Rocket. My least favorite was The Illustrated Man, a poor way to close out this collection.