How Well Do You Know "The Illustrated Man"? Quiz

Answer: A family lives in a futuristic house with a nursery that serves as a window to the kids' imagination.

George and Lydia Hadley purchased a house with a nursery, which is made up of walls, floors and ceilings that could virtually transform into any scenery that their kids wish it to be. One time, the two of them went inside the nursery and found themselves in a scorching hot African veldt inhabited by lions and vultures. That would be very disturbing since it implied that their kids are thinking more about violence and murder (the lions are feasting on something) than beautiful pastures with an unending supply of chocolates and milk or something like so.

In the end, the couple decided on closing down the house and going on a vacation somewhere. That didn't sit well with the kids, who had come to love the house more than their own parents. The solution? The kids lured their parents into the nursery and showed them how real the veldt could be.

Answer: A rocket explodes and the people in it slowly drift around in space dying a slow but awesome death.

A rocket blew up in space turning the people inside into floating pieces of space junk waiting to crash on a planet or a meteor or something. Hollis, the apparent main character of the story, had various moods throughout this ordeal. At first, he was the calm voice in the sudden storm.

Then, he became panicked and mean. He finally decided to settle things with everyone and die a meaningful death. As he slowly burned up and entered the Earth's atmosphere, a kid down in Illinois saw a shooting star and made a wish.

Answer: The black people

The black people in Mars were giddy when news came that white men will come visit them on Mars. Everybody had forgotten all the lynching, suffering and torture that they had endured during their tenure back there down the Earth. Everybody but Willie Johnson, who remembers everything like it was just yesterday. Poisoning the minds of everyone in the planet, the mob of hoping jubilant expectant crowd turns into an angry welcoming committee. And then... the rocket arrives.

Answer: Atomic war

Hernando was so accustomed to seeing tourists pass by the highway bothering the natives while the tourists take pictures. Hernando had always been fascinated about the highway, until all of a sudden, the tourists stopped coming. Hernando waited and saw a number of cars heading north seemingly in a hurry.

The cars passed by him unnnoticing. On the end of this pack of rushing vehicles was a slower car. The people inside told Hernando that the end of the world had come because the atomic war had begun. Later on, Hernando wondered, "What do they mean 'the world'?"

Answer: A man came before them and brought overwhelming peace and serenity to the city

Captain Hart and his crew landed on a planet at a city and got no welcome at all- as if seeing a rocket land on their planet was an everyday event to the denizens of the city. Hart started to suspect that a rocket from Earth previously landed on the city and took away his fame and glory.

However, Martin, the ship's lieutenant, realized the real reason why their arrival on the city was such a so-so event. Apparently, a man came to the city the day before the rocket did and cured the sick, brought faith to everyone, and eased the city folk's minds. Apparently, the same man who died in the cross on the Earth eons of years ago had visited the city Hart has landed on! Martin believed all of it but Hart was skeptical until he realized that it was true! If you want to know if Hart and Martin ever caught up with the Man, you'll have to borrow the book from a library and read it on your own!

Answer: Venus

"How many million years since the rain stopped raining here on Venus?"

"The Long Rain" was a story of how the rain tortured three space travelers with its endless downpour. The one thing that the men wanted to do was to find one of the newly invented Sun Domes, a house with an artificial sun made to shelter the Earthlings from the insane constant precipitation of the planet. Will they find the Sun Domes in time though?

Here's a hint: When they spotted one, they found out that that particular dome has been brought down by the Venusians to sabotage the Earthlings. Will the rocket men just stop there or will they continue their hunt for another Sun Dome before the rain drives them on the brink of insanity, if they are not yet there already?

Answer: The rocket man died when his ship fell in the sun.

"The Rocket Man" was a sad story of how obsessive space traveling could get. A man went home after a long period of space exploration and realized that once he got home, he'd find himself wishing to be back in space. His wife had seen this and had long considered her husband to be dead (in a way). However, the kid tried his best to keep the dad from going back to space and leaving his family again. The dad tried- but sometimes, you just can't withdraw yourself from an addiction. Before he goes to his last (or so he promised his wife) space trip, he made his son promise that he would not be a rocket man like his father.

In the end, the rocket man died when his ship fell in the sun. His wife didn't take the news well and started to avoid the Sun, not going out at daytime except when the weather was cloudy or stormy or anything but sunny!

Answer: They saved Peregrine from dying when he jumped off the cliff.

New creatures mean new sins, Father Peregrine thought and insisted that the "Martian church" that he will establish on Mars will bend its traditional rules and symbols so it could also fit into the lifestyles of the original Martians thriving on Mars.

The aliens are shimmering blue light of globes reminding Peregrine of fire balloons! Despite the other priests' protest against it, Fr. Peregrine decides on trying to get the aliens to go to church and be cleansed of their sins, realizing that the aliens are not at all bad since they saved him when he purposely jumped off the cliff to prove that point (he was so guiltridden with committing suicide just to prove the point, by the way).

However, the aliens have a surprise of their own that eventually knocks the priests to their feet, Peregrine included.

Answer: Everyone had a dream about it.

This one IS a short story. It's about a couple who knew that it's gonna be the last night of the world and what they do on that one particular night.

Answer: Authors of books introducing ghosts, goblins, witches and mythical creatures

It's a story that gave me the creeps mainly because it reminds me of "Fahrenheit 451."

Anyway, the books are getting extinct and for some miraculous, non-sci-fi-related reason, the spirits of the authors of mythical and fantasy-oriented books survived and lived on the soils of Mars, along with their literary creations.

The men in this story as portrayed as antagonists heading to Mars to {unknowingly, I believe) destroy the almost-extinct breed of imaginative minds. Back on Mars, the authors and their creations try their best to avoid the encounter. However, the inevitable has come. The fiction has to face the reality, and only one will end up victorious.

Answer: Space

I never completely understood this story. Someone could come and enlighten me.

However, for me, it's about how space travel has corroded the mental state of one man until he ends up killing himself in the most apt way possible.

Answer: A couple hides in the past to escape taking a role in the present world's war and infamy.

Time in Travel, Inc. introduces a brand new vacation trip, not just to some island in some Pacific archipelago but to the past! Yes sirree, you pick the time, the place and everything else will be okay.

Roger and Ann Kristen saw the time traveling vacation as an opportunity to escape from the terrors of the atomic war that is going on at the present time. Therefore, they booked tickets to travel back to 1938 to New York City, running away to Mexico three days after. Unfortunately for them, Roger is vital for a certain bomb metal and Ann works for the disease culture unit creating weapons of mass destruction. The future would not give up without a fight- or a chase.

Answer: He has the power to create a virtual vivid world based on someone's memories.

In this story, it is not the black race or the priests or the dead authors that were thriving on Mars but it was the sick people dying of an incurable disease that could contaminate the Earth. Life in Mars is tragic for these people as they lie there in their own corners dying a lonely depressing cold death.

Then, one day, Leonard Mark came. Saul Williams saw him first and upon finding out Leonard's amazing power, Saul decided to keep Leonard all to himself. The other sick inhabitants of Mars found Leonard though and everybody's greed to own the telepathic gift sent to them by fate probably cost everyone's potential happiness on the isolated planet of Mars.

Answer: He gets run over by a car driven by rowdy teens.

Ettil is a Martian who reads Earthbound books fascinated by the books' protagonists saving the day chasing away Martian attacks. It is no surprise that he does not want to join the group of Martians that wanted to attack the Earth and invade it. However, when he arrives on Earth, he is not attacked by men with guns, tanks, cannons and bombs. He is attacked by a crowd who want to get drunk all night, girls who want to try a Martian all night, and a movie maker who wants to make heaps of money by producing a Martian movie. It's chaos!

Ettil decides that he couldn't take it anymore and heads to a rocket so he could go back home but he ends up getting run over by a car driven by rowdy teenagers. The last words in this short story are "concrete mixer."

Answer: Go to Rio and have Braling's wife all to himself

This story has the same concept with almost all of the "clone" stories you can find out there- with the clone wanting to take over your life and live peacefully not as a clone anymore but as you.

Anyway, Braling purchases a marionette because he feels like his wife doesn't love him and he just wants to go away from her once in a while. He tells Smith, his friend, about this amazing invention and urged him to buy one as well since Smith's wife has been choking him too much with too much attention.

Things turned out for the two friends. Braling- the REAL Braling- ended up inside the Marionette Braling's box down at the basement while Smith realized that his own wife purchased a Marionette herself, and he had no idea how long he had been sleeping, eating, laughing or even arguing with a marionette.

Answer: Dropping bombs of disease culture to Earth

This is a really cool city, you guys and gals!

It has windows for eyes, the streets for a tongue, something acts as the nose and the underground sewer system is probably its laboratory. Anyway, it scans all space travelers who are fooled with its abandoned facade and once they are sure that the travelers are from Earth, the city takes over the travelers' bodies (not like the ones where the "Real You" is still living, NO! that "you" is dead) and hops into that rocket and drops disease bombs into Earth, because that is how the Earthlings wiped out the creatures that once thrived in "The City."

Once its task had been completed, the city happily died.

Answer: Invasion

Have you ever wondered what are those silly kids playing by the sidewalk one hot afternoon?
Well, you better start being wary. Mary Morris and her husband are about to get the shock of the lives when they realize that their own kid helped aliens to invade planet Earth. How? Well, nobody pays attention to kids anyway. Not even if they played an ominous little game called "Invasion."

Answer: An underprivileged man sends his kids to space.

This is a beautiful ending to a collection of stories. It's very touching and sentimental- my favorite story all because it was so different from all the rest of the stories (if you read the first story, then the last story, you'll see the stark difference).

Anyway, in "The Rocket," a poor man ends up using most of his money to purchase a cheap rocket, one that can't even fly to space. The man and his entire family has always dreamt about going to space one day but all of them know that the futuristic world has nothing for them poor slobs. Fiorello Bodoni, the poor man, is going to prove them wrong. Against his wife's wishes, he manages to send his kids to space with a two-thousand-dollar rocket and with him as the pilot! He also managed to land them back in their poor home down there at the Earth!

Answer: He would be strangled by the Illustrated Man.

Okay, the deal with the Illustrated Man was.. at night, the tattoos engraved in his body are moving telling individual stories (all of them recapped here). They are supposed to tell tales of the future, since it was imprinted by a witch from the future. Anyone who stays by the Illustrated Man long enough is going to have a special spot in an empty area by his back. On there, the tattoos would show what will happen to that someone who stays by the Illustrated Man's side. This is why the Illustrated Man could not hold onto a job.

In the end of the stories, the man who made the Illustrated Man rest by his place sees that he will get strangled by the Illustrated Man himself. Scared to his wits, the guy quickly runs away before the sun rises fully!

Answer: Baked in a microwave oven

George and Lydia Hadley are implied to have been devoured by lions in "The Veldt". In "The Long Rain," Simmons killed Pickard with a single gunshot when Pickard started to lose his mind because of the rain and it was assumed that Simmons plugged himself too. Additionally, the visitor in "The Visitor" was shot by a gun as well. In "The Man," Captain Hart believed that the "man" is a ploy other captains of other Earth ships are playing on him. However, all that was crushed when the other ships landed on the city destroyed by a cosmic storm.

Thank you for taking the quiz! Hope you had fun and enjoy Bradbury's masterpieces! I seriously suggest "October Country." It's filled with vague endings and things like such.

HAVE A NICE DAY!