The eighteen short stories in The Illustrated Man are tied together with an overarching narrative, that of the "illustrated man" himself. He is an ex-circus performer who received full-body tattoos from a mysterious old woman, changing his life. These tattoos seem to be living: they tell stories and constantly change, weaving imaginative stories that celebrate and condemn. At the end, the narrator grows frightened of these tattoos, which seem to foretell his own death.
"The Veldt"
One of Bradbury's most famous and terrifying stories, "The Veldt" portrays a family in the future who have installed a virtual reality playroom for the children of the house, the walls of which can portray any environment they might wish. The children, concerningly, always have it turned to a scene of the African veldt, where lions feast on prey. When their parents, advised by a psychologist, decide to turn the room off, the children at first lash out in outrage, then calmly acquiesce. It is implied that they kill their parents after locking them into the nursery before it is turned off.
"Kaleidoscope"
Members of a crew in space speak and ponder the meaning of life as they drift in opposite directions to certain death after a critical malfunction in their ship. The story is told in sparse, dissociative prose, and the main astronaut, Hollis, contemplates his own life, hoping it will have made some kind of difference.
"The Other Foot"
The inhabitants of Mars, all of whom are African-American, receive intelligence that white men will be arriving at their civilization. They embark on a short-lived vendetta campaign in preparation, preparing to treat the white men like they themselves were treated under the Jim Crow laws. When the others, arrive, however, they all find solidarity in shared experience and realize their common humanity, and the signs and separations are quickly torn down.
"The Highway"
A Mexican farmer living by the highway meets people fleeing from what they call the "atom war," crying that it is the end of the world. The farmer goes back to his business once they leave, wondering what they meant by "the world."
"The Man"
A crew exploring space comes across a planet where all the inhabitants are joyful. They discover that this is due to the influence of a single Man who left just before they arrived, whose identity as Jesus is thinly veiled. Martin, the lieutenant, chooses to stay on the planet and embrace this religion, while Captain Hart embarks on a journey to chase this Man down, only to find that he is always one step behind Him.
"The Long Rain"
One of the most adapted works in the collection, "The Long Rain" is a story about hope in a depressing world. It concerns a party of astronauts on Venus, where the "Sun Domes" are the only respite from the perpetual, heavy rain. On their quest to find a Sun Dome, all but one of the astronauts is killed or commits suicide, with only one astronaut surviving to find a functional Sun Dome.
"The Rocket Man"
This story is notable in the collection for being told from a first-person POV, that of the son of a "rocket man," a man who takes a rocket for lucrative interplanetary journeys. This job is a stressful one, and the father is conflicted: he wants to stay with his family, but the job has given him a restlessness and a desire to see the universe. He takes one last mission and is killed when his spaceship falls into the Sun.
"The Fire Balloons"
One of the stories that is sometimes included in both The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles, "The Fire Balloons" concerns priests from Earth who travel to Mars in order to evangelize the native Martians. They discover that these Martians are essentially just giant balloons made of fire without any conscious will to sin.
"The Last Night of the World"
This short story follows a husband and wife as they go about their day as normal despite learning that the world is probably going to end that night. It celebrates the joys of everyday life while implying the powerlessness of humans to change destiny.
"The Exiles"
One of the strangest of Bradbury's stories, "The Exiles" is the tale of horror writers such as Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft whose works have been banned on earth, and who are now living as strangely powerful beings on Mars. When a ship of humans is en route to Mars, these authors exact their revenge, but they are killed when the captain burns the last remaining copies of their books.
"No Particular Night or Morning"
A depressing story about the tragic dangers of solipsism, "No Particular Night or Morning" follows the interactions of two astronauts aboard a lonely spacecraft. One of them, Hitchcock, adopts a solipsistic worldview, believing that his interaction with something is the only time it actually exists, before voluntarily jettisoning himself from the spacecraft and dying in the cold darkness of space.
"The Fox and the Forest"
In order to escape a terrible, almost post-apocalyptic future, a couple uses time travel to escape to Mexico in the 1930s, where they hope to live peacefully and unobserved. However, other time travelers (authorities of some kind) have discovered them and forcibly remove them back to their own time after a struggle.
"The Visitor"
A young man with telepathic abilities lands on Mars, a rusty wasteland for exiles that causes lung diseases and inflicts ceaseless pain on its inhabitants. The exiles on Mars fight over Mark (the young man) since he has the ability to give them the sensation of transporting to another time and place, as well as easing their pain. In the fight, Mark is shot and killed, and the opportunity is lost.
"The Concrete Mixer"
Ettil Vrye, a Martian, is conscripted into the army that will invade Earth. On Earth, however, he comes to believe that the humans are peaceful and good-hearted. Upon further interaction, however, he realizes that the humans are so corrupted that they are going to attempt to exploit the Martians to make more money by selling them fads and other fashionable things. Ettil tries to escape, but the story ends with a car full of teenagers bearing down on him.
"Marionettes, Inc."
A man buys a "marionette" (robotic clone) of himself, but the robot falls in love with his wife and locks the man in the box the robot came in. A frightening story about the dangers of A.I. and the avoidance of responsibility.
"The City"
Another of Bradbury's most terrifying works, "The City" follows a living, thinking city on Mars that lures, traps, and kills human soldiers in horrible ways before turning them into "golden bombs of disease culture" and planning to drop them on Earth as revenge.
A scary story about an alien invasion that occurs after the aliens make contact with human children. Their parents think "zero hour" is just a game, but when it comes around, their children are taken over by aliens, and the invasion of Earth begins.
"The Rocket"
One of the only uplifting stories in this collection, "The Rocket" is the story of a man who saves up money to send one of his family members through space. They can't decide who to send, though, so instead he uses the money to build his own rocket that simulates a ride through space, giving his children the illusion that they've been through space and creating a shared bonding experience for his family.
