Fragments of Colonization in Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain.”

Image from here

We weren’t meant for this; no Earthman was or ever will be able to take it.

                                                                                                                        -p.64

Article may contain spoilers

“The Long Rain,” one of Ray Bradbury’s famed short stories within the collection The Illustrated Man, is first and foremost a science fiction tale. This should be fairly obvious to the reader from the outset; all of the surrounding stories are science fiction, ranging in subject from artificial intelligence, virtual reality, to nuclear apocalypse, also the story is set on Venus (a dead giveaway, some say.) I believe that, intentionally or not, Bradbury has effectively used the short story form to give an allegory for colonization, from the vapid perspective of the colonizer.

            The Illustrated Man was written in 1950 and published in 1951. Although fairly removed from the traditional colonial sphere in America, Bradbury still collected the stories for publishing in the midst of a colonial overhaul; independence movements were springing up across Africa, Asia and the rest of the globe, with India already gaining independence from Britain in 1948, just three years prior to publishing. The twentieth century would continue to see revolutions and recedings as empires in their last formal appearance were beaten back. Although America was and is not usually seen to be an empire in comparison to the former empires of Britain, Germany and other nations, it isn’t impossible that the global backdrop to Bradbury’s working period worked it’s way into his writing thematically.

            The environment of Venus in “The Long Rain” is horrific and treacherous. Bradbury describes it thus:

           

The white, white jungle with the pale cheese- coloured leaves, and the earth carved of wet camembert, and the tree boles like immense toadstools- everything black and white. And how often could you see the soil itself? Wasn’t it mostly a creek, a stream, a puddle, a pool, a lake, a river, and then, at last, the sea?

                                                                                                            -p.55

The image of a jungled and treacherous landscape plagued with dense rains is reminiscient of previously colonized lands such as Bangladesh that have monsoon seasons; many logs from soldiers in 17^th century campaigns in these regions complain of the heat, rain, damp, jungle plants & beasts, and disease, as if  they had invaded a forsaken planet rather than another country. It should be noted that the description of the land as being bodies of water is relevant to the colonial experience, as water has frequently acted as a conduit of empire; the Americas were discovered and claimed during Columbus’ voyage to find a quicker way to India, the Atlantic would eventually be crossed time and again for the trade of sugar, spice, and humans as slaves while rivers would be used as prying paths into continents such as South America and Africa.

            Despite the obvious hostility of the Venusian landscape, humans have built abodes on the planet’s surface, called ‘Sun domes.’

A yellow house, round and bright as the sun. A house fifteen feet high by one hundred feet in diameter, in which was warmth and quiet and hot food and freedom from rain. And in the center of the Sun Dome, of course, was a sun. A small floating free globe of yellow fire, drifting in a space at the top of the bulding where you could look at it from where you sat, smoking or reading a book or drinking your hot chocolate crowned with marshmallow dollops. There it would be, the yellow sun, just the size of the Earth sun, and it was warm and continuous, and the rain world of Venus would be forgotten as long as they stayed in that house and idled their time.

                                                                                                                        -p.55

As part of the process of assimilation, the colonizer will bring in their own systems of governance, commerce, finance, and ultimately culture. Bradbury creates an excellent image of this in the mini-earths, complete with mini-suns, existing in ignorance and defiance of the host planet’s own environment. The story ends with the lieutenant entering a Sun Dome, feeling its warmth, looking at all of the luxuries, and abandoning his wet clothes, and indeed the memories of the events outside the dome.

The Venusians themselves never actively appear in the story; instead, the aftermath of one of their attacks is observed at the anguish of the rocket crash survivors, who hoped to find the shelter of a Sun Dome. Instead, it lies in ruins.

Every once in a while the Venusians come up our of the sea and attack a Sun Dome. They know if they can ruin a Sun Dome they can ruin us.

The Venusians took [the Sun Dome survivors] all down to the sea. I hear they have a delightful way of drowning you. It takes about eight hours to drown the way they work it.

                                                                                                                        -p.59

The reader is given only savagery about the alien inhabitants of Venus; we are not offered a view as to why they attack the Sun Domes and torture humans in such a way, but only that they do. We perceive them through the eyes of the colonizer, appalled by the actions of the host inhabitants who may be actively resiting colonization.

Bradbury’s story retains a focus on the journey of a group through a hostile and maddening imaginary landscape where the rains never stops, the storms are lethal and all colour has been washed away, but still the story carries some signifiers at the relationship between colonizer and colonized subjects and objects that were apparent at the time of writing, and remain important in reading the story today.

Bradbury, Ray. “The Long Rain” in The Illustrated Man. (Bantam: New York, 1967) pp. 53-65

Night Before

)))(((

It is late and the woman and her child pause at the fence to look at the sky. They are far from any roads, houses or cars so there is nothing but the light that emanates from burning stars and the moon in the sky. A wall of cloud rolls in, but soon dissipates, revealing many shooting stars streaking across the big deep blue. ‘shoo’en staa’ the child says. “Yes” the mother says, “shooting stars. Remember to make a wish.”

<><><> 

I am about to cross the road by Preston circus when I notice, on the other side of the pelican crossing, two men, one with beard one without, otherwise with the same colour and style hair, stood next to each other, definitely not together (one arrived just after the other) but wearing the exact niche outfit of white trousers, blue t-shirt, beige jacket. Matching colours and styles just stood there, waiting to cross the road as if nothing strange were going on. Desperately I look around for someone to share this moment with but the only other person crossing the road is a strange man talking angrily to his dog.

-_-_-_-

They wrap themselves in their beds in the winter, blankets on top, pyjamas underneath, with glasses of water on their bedside tables, and they set their alarms or don’t if they have nothing to wake up for, and they say “g’night” and they turn the light out and they roll over, and pretend to be asleep, eyes closed, still, warm, and they think about sleep and about dreaming and eventually it happens to them.

/\/\/\

He is scruffy, unshaven, but not outrightly ‘punk’ looking. He has worn the same thing for days on end, shabby, rag ended and mush coloured. He is poor, but at the same time has made a conscious shift away from any fashion or trend. He is watching the band, Subhumans, whose anarchist lyrics depressingly tell as much about the current societal situation as when they were written nearly forty years ago. But he is also watching the crowd; the old punks, who wear their outfits almost like a uniform, like they are obliged to don their tartan trousers and leather jacket with a perfectly sprayed band logo on the back, and spike their mohawks or reverse mohawks or dye their hair orange. Punk’s not dead, but the pointless, pub-rocky, day-glo punk of the early seventies means nothing to him. The bands on stage have probably written memoirs and their history has been academically chronicled as part of an era. Eras merge into one, so there is as little point insisting on the present as there is wallowing in the past. There’s a lot to sing about, and a lot of new sounds to make.

.:.:.:.

I get up with her early, and make us coffee. I make our breakfasts and a cheese sandwhich for her lunch. It’s 6:56am when we eat. I sit around browsing the internet while she gets ready in the bathroom. Still dark outside. I have nowhere to be but she needs a ride to work. We head to the car; it’s freezing. Radio on- another crash on the M5, more delays. Commuters grumble without thinking about the true horror of the crash victims beyond their own invconvenience. I drop her off in Bath, and the sun rises over frosty fields as I drive back. I can see my breath in the car. Radio off.

,’,’,’,’,

“A paycheck ago I was a paycheck away from this!” She’s not really drunk, but holding the bottle and just pretending was just as good, kept you babbling, smiling, warm. All the houses on the street are dark, everyone gone to bed. The streetlights are on, asides from the one nearest to her, which is broken. Above her stretches the red brick arch, heavy with ivy and moss. Framed below the arch and above terraced housing stretching into the distance, she sees the moon, and raises her bottle to it. “a paycheck… like a big pizza pie…” She stops her babbling, and lowers the bottle, really looking at the moon, looking into the night sky at the moon. “There you are.”

(((o)))

Isle

        

  "I will leave behind my terraces and my walls... They will be enough. 

              They will be more than enough."   - Cruso in Foe by J.M. Coetzee.

           It’s Narda. It just won’t get better, the cancer has really charred a hole through his jaw. Probably shouldn’t eat his meat. Good job I don’t have to milk him either. Still, I let him continue grazing with the others on the slopes. Can’t see the benefit in killing him. Maybe it’d leave more grass for the others, but not very likely. I feel the rest of his warm, short coat for ticks and lumps before sending him on his way for whoever I grasp out of the herd next. I often find wounds from play and tease among themselves, or from when they’ve gotten too far into the woods, among thorns and denser brush, or maybe something jagged washes ashore. Ten. I always make sure there are just ten of them. I don’t need any others.

            There wasn’t much more when old da was about. Back then counting the goats was his job. He did it with rough hands and force; the goats would bleat and spring away in confusion renewed daily. It was to feel the meat he said. To feel the bones. There were even more goats when mother was there too, and even more back when the old terraces and the old huts were just the huts and the terraces and people skittered and roamed the Isle completing constant tasks in smiling groups. The goats would skip and tumble about the terraces and be found in the huts. They shrunk the woods with their trampling and munching and browsing. It’s grown back now. It’s even spread.

            The goats have complete free roam of the terraces, no longer filled with rich dirt and crops, but grass and stubble. Gale’s pregnant, so soon I’ll choose an old one to bleed out. Still unsure if Narda’s flesh, hide and bones will be consumable or usable. I don’t like putting out the goat’s sparky little lives, as I find myself openly chattering away to them, treating them as my brothers and equals. It’s not often I have to kill one, though. Just to keep the even ten. There’s the fish of the sea and beach, the birds and their eggs which they lay in crevices in the Northern cliff face, and the leaves and roots and berries and mushrooms of the woods. A good crop to top it off, mainly hardy root vegetables and perpetual greens. I collect the rainwater when it comes, and there’s the stream that comes through the woods around the old huts. There’s a well, too, but I don’t always trust it. Too old. Too underused. I’d go down and clear the tunnel, but I don’t like the thought of the dark, small space. That was old da’s job too.

            I can still talk mother’s language. On stormy nights when the wind and rain roar at the hut an I can hear the sea blast the shore, I whisper some of the things she might say to me, out in the air as it goes from humid to a crisp coolness in the eye of the storm. After storms, the beach is filled with some small an large treasures, and a decent stock of driftwood. I hear my mother’s language in the lapping of the waves of the post-storm morning, a calm swash forever up the bay.

            Old da tried to beat the language out of us. Re and throbbing, he’d scream that on the Isle we talk the same tongue, we have to be part of the same group, we must all be the same. The others would go silent and sad. I remember their voices warbling old un-understandable songs out in the fishing boats coming back in to the bay. Mother would sing her own tongue’s songs when working the terraces, and everyone admired them. Slowly, after old da’s first explosion, the Isle became emptier and emptier, until we had to slaughter more than half the goats and burn their corpses before they rotted. The woods swallowed the huts, once populous, and the terraces got riddle with weeds. Soon, the well started to become untrustworthy. It was just old da, mother, me and the goats. The goats knew nothing. Gleefully, they explored the territories opened up to them. I’ve seen the stories and histories painted on the walls of the old huts. Their colours and patterns once soothed me but now they make me sad, as they are written in some other language that some of the other Islanders brought with them. Somehow I felt their language and writing was much more ancient than I’ll ever truly grasp.

            The goats congregate around old da’s grave, as it makes a sudden and unnatural change in the otherwise naturally sloping topography. When he died, with just me and him on the Isle, he smiled, weak and feverish, rook my hands, and whispered “It’s all yours. I leave it all for you, my lad. The Isle is your inheritance.”

I do not count the seasons as I should. I understand the changes that happen over a year, but no longer have anyone to share the significance of time with. I wait for them. Mother told me about them, the groups, and their many names; “coast guard,” “army,” “police,” “government.” Strange, nonsensical names. They will come, and they will be people, as I am people, and we will finally share the Isle, just like before. Just as it should be.

The Birth

I wrote this piece last year for a 'micro-short' story competition, with a word limit of 300 words (I think.) For whatever reason they never got back to me, perhaps an email mess-up on my part. 

edit: more recently, this story was printed in the "Bangin' Lemz" zine, along the theme of 'the birth,' along with a poem entitled 'Foetal. Infantile.' 

The Birth

Crawling from planet to planet, so huge that its great haunches kick these spheres out of their gravitational prisons, hurtling them through space until caught by a greater star, throwing the planet around itself infinitesimally; barely noticed by the hulking creature. Sometimes there is the bubbling of evolution in the placid lakes, sometimes the cusp of a civilisation. All discarded by the immortal beast. He had visited these planets once before, barely a fledgling. They presented no promise, not to the in-built preconceptions reeling in the daemon’s many brains.

            The pulsing mass of sensors on the creatures head rotates, receiving and computing radiations and vibrations, chemicals caught on solar winds. It smelt, tasted, heard and saw everything. It witnessed suns crack open and die, unloading hearts in a tragic finale spanning thousands of years. It saw planets grapple into formation, asteroids closing together, some just making it, others gaining too much weight, or not enough. The qualifications are random, undetermined.

            One of the beast’s many sets of wings would propel it, its great arms outstretched for clumps of rock and dust. Its muscles were humongous, its organs monstrous, pumping dark fluids through continent-wide veins, its brains pulsing with instinctual thoughts.

            In one hand it clutches a small moon, with a species nigh on the brink of developing light-sensing cells in their amoebic bodies, so close to breakthrough. The mighty beast decides that this small moon is not worth it; it has failed. It crushes the rock, dust and particles spiralling out carelessly into the orbit of a nearby planet. The beast continues on its journey.

            Its goal comes into view; the green and blue planet. It seemed most promising in those fertile years hence. The beast stills for a moment, its outlandish organs throbbing and pumping in the deeps of space.

            It caresses the planet; observes the crags and falls of its geography, tastes its mineral rich waters. Eventually satisfied, the beast rises, stirred by internal twinges and workings; with twitching limbs it ensnares the planet, and something hatches from its chest, bursting; a strange blue fluid flowing outward, almost a gas; it fills the sky, entrenches the sea and litters the dirt. Soon it has seeped through, dissolved into the very core of the globe.

            The beast seeps off into the dark of space, observing the planet for a time before turning to a planet on the outer cusp of the universe that it had fertilised aeons past.

It will return when its children have grown.