Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Living in a Bradbury short.

The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and molted the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped.
Have you read the short story "The Long Rain" by Ray Bradbury, in The Illustrated Man? It's the one where the crew of Space Patrol guys or whatever crash land on Venus where it rains. And rains. And rains. And people go buggy and kill themselves by running off into the jungle and staring up into the rain until they drown because they can't get out of the rain that never ends. Ever. It just keeps raining. Constantly. Like here in Indy. Constantly.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh yeah, the rain.

It's raining. Again.

28 comments:

Blast Hardcheese said...

Sounds like you need a Sun Room, stat!

(God, I am such a nerd)

Carteach said...

And Rosehome cottage becomes sanctuary, filled to the brim with interesting things with which to pass the time.

Keep a weather eye on the basement though...

Caleb said...

I have grown weary of waking up at 0345 hearing thunder crashing and wondering if the trees are going to invade my roof.

Anonymous said...

Thank goodness you have no jungles nearby!
You should probably avoid white river too just to be safe...
McVee

Anonymous said...

Drought. Flood. Life.

AT

courtesy: cryptiquotedotcom

LeeAnn said...

Speaking of similar, there was the Bradbury story "All Summer In A Day", on a planet where it rains constantly 24/7 except ONE hour ONE day every seven years. A group of bratty children, all aged 6, lock a fellow student in a closet and forget her for that hour. I read it when I was 8 or 9 and cried like a baby. Rain terrified me for at least a year afterward.
Ray made some spooky sad thoughts.

Tam said...

LeeAnn,

I had forgotten just how dark a lot of his stuff was...

Midwest Chick said...

Tam,
Like what the guy with the Illustrated Man sees at the end of the book in the blank spot on IM's body that shows the future??

Joanna said...

LeeAnn -- it wasn't just that they locked her in the closet, it was that she was from Earth and had seen the sun, and all the other kids made fun of her and locked her in the closet because of it.

The story forms an eerie parallel to the anecdote in "Things Fall Apart" where the African villagers encounter a Frenchman on a bicycle, and since they can't understand his speech or conveyance, they kill him. Brrr.

Tam said...

The darkest one to me was "The Veldt"; that one can still give me the willies even now.

staghounds said...

Seriously, knock off the spoilers!

Frank W. James said...

Back to the Rain! Got 2" at one farm last night and 1.6" here. Hammer and banging all night long. Getting so a guy can't even get a good night's rest anymore.

Now, everyone around here is waiting for the big drainage ditch (for the 3 county area) to go out of its banks. That'll be the icing on the cake...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Midwest Chick said...

Bradbury does have a gift for setting a very creepy scene.

I was at the bookstore not that long ago and heard some kids talking about this great 'new' author they found: Bradbury. I knew I was old then.

Bram said...

The one where the men kill all their kids because of their apocalyptic dreams - then the apocalypse doesn't happen? I remember reading that story and not feeling right for the rest of the day.

Anonymous said...

The Illustrated Man is one of the creepiest, best, and most memorable books I've ever read. I've got my first kid on the way, and I'm building a library for him/her. This is another book on the list.

Joel said...

Tam -

You seem to have somehow acquired our share of the Monsoon. Perhaps the package was mislabeled. We'd appreciate if you could box it back up and send it to us.

I read all the standard Bradbury when I was a kid, and always found him kinda creepy. A couple of shorts from Martian Chronicles could send me whimpering back to Heinlein or Asimov.

Unknown said...

What is it with the frickin' rain these days? Shooty time is no fun when it won't stop raining.

I want to leave Virginia so bad because of all the rain here; I'm looking into where I would want to go. Looks like Indiana is out of the question.

New Mexico, perhaps?

Bubblehead Les. said...

Send your rain to Cleveland! Its like they erected a force field around N.E. Ohio. Sigh. REALLY getting tired of dragging the hose out to water the garden every day. P.S. Sorry about your trees. Went through it last year. But here's some more bad news. Those f#%&&%$& silver maples make it damn near impossible to grow any thing where the stumps used to be EXCEPT for new baby silver maples and weeds. Hope your yard comes out better that mine did.

Gewehr98 said...

My two dogs have learned to automatically head for the basement when the tornado sirens blow. I discovered this last night, quite by accident as the sirens did their thing, again...

Joanna said...

Howzabout the story with the automatic house running through its paces, only the family is outlined in ash on the side that faces the bombed-out city. (I know the title, and I just can't place it. Funnily enough, I think it's something about rain.) Or "The Blue Bottle", that holds what the drinker wants most ... Brrr.

Ruzhyo said...

@Joanna -

The automated house story is called
"There Will Come Soft Rains."

J. Sullivan said...

My first taste of "All in a Summer Day" came when I was 6 years old and it was made into a short movie that was shown on HBO, back when HBO was cool and they showed short films between some of the movies (like the short where the film unravels from a projector and comes to life and devours the projectionist like a blob- That one F'ed me up pretty good being 6 and all).

"All In a Summer Day" made me cry back then. In seventh grade, I read the story and was like, "Wait a second, I know this!" Still very sad.

DJ said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sTPnj9lrGI

WV (I swear): suffor

Windy Wilson said...

All Summer in a Day reminds me of Asimov's Nightfall, which as I recall was a little less personal in its telling.
Most of Heinlein's stories are boy's own adventures compared to Bradbury. Wasn't he the author of the one about the astronauts drifting back to earth after getting ejected from a wrecked space ship?
It was, IIRC, in R is for Rocket.
No wonder I stuck with Lucky Starr until I discovered the Heinlein Juveniles. . .

Anonymous said...

Jim Sullivan, I remember those shorts too. All In A Summer's Day depressed the heck out of me too.

Chris

Crotalus said...

When summer rolls in here at the People's Demokratik Republik of Kollyvornia, we all forget what rain is. I have to go storm chasing in the desert to see lightning and hear thunder.

Tam said...

Windy Wilson,

"Most of Heinlein's stories are boy's own adventures compared to Bradbury."

I think, statistically speaking, that most of Heinlein's stories actually are boy's own adventures. ;)

Anonymous said...

I myself am fond of Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains", but that's an entirely different can of worms altogether. ;)