The Long Rain
Encyclopedia
"The Long Rain" is a short story
by science fiction
author Ray Bradbury
. This story was originally published in 1950 by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.
An officer and three of his men initially survive a crash-landing on the planet Venus, here rendered as a world of perpetual rain, always at dusk. The men traverse the white and black jungle in search of a "Sun Dome" — a yellow house, warm, dry, round and bright as the sun, maintained by a small floating free globe that serves as an artificial star. The first "Sun Dome" they come across was attacked by the indigenious creatures. Later, one of the men went insane, lying in the rain, causing Simmons, another trooper to kill him. Eventually, Simmons succumbs to the tortuous rain, and takes his own life. Only one of the officers ultimately survives to find sanctuary in one of the Sun Domes, although similarities between the description of this event and those of the other crew member's hallucinations suggest that the story is being deliberately ambiguous as to whether this really occurs.
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
by science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
. This story was originally published in 1950 by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.
Plot summary
The first paragraph reads as follows:
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.
An officer and three of his men initially survive a crash-landing on the planet Venus, here rendered as a world of perpetual rain, always at dusk. The men traverse the white and black jungle in search of a "Sun Dome" — a yellow house, warm, dry, round and bright as the sun, maintained by a small floating free globe that serves as an artificial star. The first "Sun Dome" they come across was attacked by the indigenious creatures. Later, one of the men went insane, lying in the rain, causing Simmons, another trooper to kill him. Eventually, Simmons succumbs to the tortuous rain, and takes his own life. Only one of the officers ultimately survives to find sanctuary in one of the Sun Domes, although similarities between the description of this event and those of the other crew member's hallucinations suggest that the story is being deliberately ambiguous as to whether this really occurs.