anthology book - Old story about a man with tattoos that told stories

I'm trying to remember the name of this book that's really a collection of short stories but is told with a narrator character who's telling the stories he sees as they take place on a man covered in tattoos. There's a pretty big number of stories in the book even though it isn't overly long. The stories range from soft to hard sci-fi but more so on the hard side in general. There were many common themes but the main one seemed to be around technology and how it's not always a good thing. Each story corresponds to one section of his body. The tattooed guy was older and think he used to be in the circus. I think it's really old too.

Answer

This sounds like Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man". As described by the Wikipedia entry:

The Illustrated Man is a 1951 collection of eighteen science fiction short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury. A recurring theme throughout the eighteen stories is the conflict of the cold mechanics of technology and the psychology of people. It was nominated for the International Fantasy Award in 1952.1

The unrelated stories are tied together by the frame device of "The Illustrated Man", a vagrant former member of a carnival freak show with an extensively tattooed body whom the unnamed narrator meets. The man's tattoos, allegedly created by a time-traveling woman, are individually animated and each tells a different tale. All but one of the stories had been published previously elsewhere, although Bradbury revised some of the texts for the book's publication.

That description covers not only the frame device, but the fact that the tattooed man was a former carnival member, and the theme of technology being dominant in the stories.

Comments

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