"All Summer In a Day," by Ray Bradbury

[mabfan]

The current deluge of rain we're receiving in the Boston area reminds me of a classic Ray Bradbury story, "All Summer In a Day." The story is set on an earlier version of the planet Venus, one whose intense cloud cover implied to astronomers that Venus was a water-soaked world, with constant, unrelenting rain. In Bradbury's story, he posits that once every seven years, however, the clouds part, and people can enjoy about an hour of blissful sunshine. The story focuses on a grade school class that is anticipating the arrival of this hour in the middle of the day, when they will be given their recess.

I don't want to say much more than that. If you've read the story, you know what happens, and if you haven't, you probably want to track it down without having the plot spoiled for you.

Of course, today we know that the Venusian clouds have nothing to do with water and everything to do with the Greenhouse Effect. And given the accelerated rate of global warming on Earth, I sometimes wonder if the extreme weather patterns we've been experiencing are a prelude to something worse.

Comments

[norda.livejournal.com]

I read that story every year to the fourth graders at my local elementary school on Community Reading Day.

I'm fearful of what these current weather patterns may bring.

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

OMG! That story! There was a short movie version of it on HBO way back in the 80's and my friend and I watched it, (it was so sad) and then we got rain for something like a solid two weeks and she and I went around holding out our hands and saying 'The sun! The sun!'

Well...it was funny then. But anyway, I think of that story every time we get lots of rain.

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

Bradbury's Venus, which he uses in serveral stories as a landscape for depression and madness, is the image I usually use to describe Israeli winters with their interminable monsoons.

[batyatoon]

I love that story. And that other story of his set on the same Venus, which I can't remember whether it's called "The Sun Dome" or "The Long Rain." I think that was the one that first brought home to me how much you can do by taking a familiar feeling, one everybody's had (in this case, the feeling of having been out in a cold rain for a long time and coming indoors to warmth and food and quiet), and ramping up the intensity beyond anything anyone's ever experienced.

*happysigh* I do love Ray Bradbury.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

It's "The Long Rain." There's a description of the story among the others in The Illustrated Man at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illustrated_Man

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

That's the story!

I mentioned this to someone just the other day: this is the first SF short story I remember reading (in 2nd grade), and I vaguely remembered that it was by Ray Bradbury, but couldn't remember the title. Woot!

[bluepapercup]

God, we read that in sixth grade and it just...broke me. Both of Bradbury's Venus stories that I've read are just so damn depressing, but so masterful, as well.

[dkuznick.livejournal.com]

Heh, I just mentioned this to my wife this morning. Not such a huge coincidence, but still..

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

That's one of those stories that stay with you, they're so powerful. I often think of it when we've had days on end of rain, like now.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Wow. Lots of strong-memory responses here. Me too: I remember seeing a movie version (perhaps the HBO one) in 5th grade, and thinking it was the saddest thing I'd ever seen.

A lot of Bradbury's stories give this poignant sadness that makes you want so badly to reach into the story and turn things around. "Picasso Summer" comes to mind. And Dandelion Wine has a bit of it too, but instead of being for the characters in the story, it's for our own 12-year-old selves. (That's something I didn't get when Dad read it to us as a bedtime story, but I did when I reread it ten years later.)

[justcomeinalone.livejournal.com]

The way the weather's been so schizophrenic for the past few months in NYC, I'm half expecting to look up soon and see that the skies are red and there's a strange man with purple hair weeping in the corner as he tries to tell me about how he's been cursed and everything's gonna die.

But then again, I'm paranoid like that. :-P

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, when they destroyed Earth-Prime I kept looking behind my shoulder, always wondering... :-)

[justcomeinalone.livejournal.com]

You know I sometimes wonder ... that election in 2000 ... the whole Florida thing ... You don't think ... The election couldn't have been ... retconned???

;-)

If I see anyone walking around who looks like Ultraa or any teen wearing a superman costume whose name is actually Clark Kent and knows a chick named Laurie, I'm beating them with a cricket bat. For the good of the multiverse.