a little night music

hello all. it's raining. it appears to be raining over most of the US at some point this weekend, which makes it as good a time as any to post one of my favorite sci fi short stories.

enjoy your read,
Leah



"All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury



No one in the class could remember
a time when there wasn't rain.

“Ready?"
"Ready."
"Now?"
"Soon."
"Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?"
"Look, look; see for yourself!"
The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.
It rained.
It had been raining for seven years; thousand upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.
"It's stopping, it's stopping!"
"Yes, yes!"
Margot stood apart from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn't rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering and old or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.
All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it:
I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.
That was Margot's poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was
falling outside.
"Aw, you didn't write that!" protested one of the boys.
"I did," said Margot. "I did."
"William!" said the teacher.
But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.
"Where's teacher?"
"She'll be back."
"She'd better hurry, we'll miss it!"
They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes.
Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.
"What're you looking at?" said William.
Margot said nothing.
"Speak when you're spoken to." He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself by moved only by him and nothing else.
They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows.
And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was. But Margot remembered.
"It's like a penny," she said once, eyes closed.
"No it's not!" the children cried.
"It's like a fire," she said, "in the stove."
"You're lying, you don't remember!" cried the children.
But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head.
So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away.
There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future.
"Get away!" The boy gave her another push. "What're you waiting for?"
Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes.
"Well, don't wait around here!" cried the boy savagely. "You won't see nothing!"
Her lips moved.
"Nothing!" he cried. "It was all a joke, wasn't it?" He turned to the other children. "Nothing's happening today. Is it?"
They all blinked at him and then, understanding, laughed and shook their heads. "Nothing, nothing!"
"Oh, but," Margot whispered, her eyes helpless. "But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say, they know, the sun. . . ."
"All a joke!" said the boy, and seized her roughly. "Hey, everyone, let's put her in a closet before teacher comes!"
"No," said Margot, falling back.
They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.
"Ready, children?" she glanced at her watch.
"Yes!" said everyone.
"Are we all here?"
"Yes!"
The rain slackened still more.
They crowded to the huge door.
The rain stopped.
It was as if, in the midst of a film, concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a peaceful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting world came in to them.
The sun came out.
It was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling, into the springtime.
"Now don't go too far," called the teacher after them. "You've only two hours, you know. You wouldn't want to get caught out!"
But they were running and turning their faces up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm iron; they were taking off their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms.
"Oh, it's better than the sun lamps, isn't it?"
"Much, much better!"
They stopped running and stood in the great jungle that covered Venus, that grew and never stopped growing, tumultuously, even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of flesh-like weed, wavering, flowering this brief spring. It was the color of rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color of stones and white cheeses and ink, and it was the color of the moon.
The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them, resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each
other, they played hide-and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces, they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion. They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles. They ran for an hour and did not stop running.
And then—
In the midst of their running one of the girls wailed.
Everyone stopped.
The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand.
"Oh, look, look," she said, trembling.
They came slowly to look at her opened palm.
In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single raindrop.
She began to cry, looking at it.
They glanced quietly at the sky.
"Oh. Oh."
A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cool around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away.
A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran. Lightening struck ten miles away, five miles away, a mile, a half mile. The sky darkened into midnight in a flash.
They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever.
"Will it be seven more years?"
"Yes. Seven."
Then one of them gave a little cry.
"Margot!"
"What?"
"She's still in the closet where we locked her."
"Margot."
They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away. They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily. They could not meet each other's glances. Their faces were solemn and pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.
"Margot.
One of the girls said, "Well . . .?"
No one moved.
"Go on," whispered the girl.
They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of the cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in the sound of the storm and thunder, lightening on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked over to the closest door slowly and stood by it.
Behind the closed door was only silence.
They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

(the author)

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matilda is carrie for kids

think about it. Read more...

True Blood Season 3: Team Jacob or Team Spike???

okay first, everyone watch this:

Trailer 2

Now we can talk. Here's my backstory with vampires in pop culture. With the exception of Interview with a Vampire, which I saw when I was a kid like I was supposed to, I've experienced everything backwards. I read all the Twilight books, got completely sucked in and then retroactively became like a born-again sane person, reprogrammed to see the error of my ways. Then I started watching "True Blood." Now I'm catching up on "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer" and "Angel."

I'm not touching the CW's "Vampire Diaries." XOXO, no thanks.

Sidenote: I will still be attending the midnight showings of all Twilight Saga movies. Sorry 'bout it, but I love a damn midnight release. It doesn't matter.

I haven't read any of The Southern Vampire Mysteries/The Sookie Stackhouse Novels or whatever. I plan to. But after watching HBO's latest trailer, I can't help but marvel at how wonderfully/oddly familiar this plot is. No hate, just observations. It's actually helping me deal with the fact that Buffy is over and practically a period piece. (Do you know how many conflicts could have been prevented if the Scoobies had cell phones in the early seasons?) I can move on now.

I'm not going to do crazy things like compare Pam to Drusilla, or Jessica Hamby with Jessica Stanley. But honestly:

Spike and Eric. Do I really need to provide an explanation here? They are the same. Better, blonder, badass-er. Obviously this is what Twilight needs. A blond Anti-Hero. Such a shame.

Though I suppose Sam is a better comparison to Jacob Black as far as what they are and what powers they have, werewolf Alcide is being set up as an actual love interest for Sookie, so we'll go with that. Plus they are both vaguely ethnic. And Alcide has a "pack." However, we'll have to get into the season to make this comparison meatier.

Then there's these guys. Bill, Angel and Edward Cullen. I don't even know where to begin...

They brood. They are filled with self-loathing. They're chivalrous to the point of chauvinism. They like to disappear for unspecified amounts of time. They withhold information. They get really, really attached to the female lead. We're all in love with them and then the next guy shows up and half the fandom switches teams. Granted, Angel is less annoying than Bill and Edward IMO, but everything I don't like about him is something I recognize in the other two.

Thankfully Sookie, Buffy and Bella are very different. Some of them are actual, real life, dynamic characters.

Another Sidenote: Why does so much vampire literature take place in the deep South? Is this similar to how aliens always abduct farmhands?

What have I learned? I'm excited for Season Three. Vampires really like jackets. Nothing is original. I also love the way all of these different franchises pick and choose from the vampire lore salad bar as far as what will be real and what will be myth. Hilarious. I also promise that I'll get to sci-fi eventually with this blog. I've just been on a vampire kick lately. I'm trying to stay true to the zeitgeist ;-)

hang on spider monkey,

Leah

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mash-up literature is out of control; will schuester loves it

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith) has created a monster. I thought it was just as awesome as the next girl willing to indulge in Jane Austen while also harboring a penchant for the supernatural. But this literary trend to take a classic novel and "insert" original passages to change the story around has taken off exponentially. It slapped me in the face the last time I was in a bookstore.

No really. Look at all these existing/upcoming titles:

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, by Jane Austen and Ben Winters
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, by Steve Hockensmith
Android Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy and Ben Winters
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith
Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter, by A.E Moorat
Little Women and Werewolves, by Louisa May Alcott and Porter Grand
Little Vampire Women, by Louisa May Alcott and Lyn Messina
Jane Slayre, by Charlotte Bronte and Sherri Browning Erwin
Mansfield Park and Mummies, by Jane Austen and Vera Nazarian
Emma and the Werewolves, by Jane Austen and Adam Rann

This list goes on. I got bored. Other "ruptured" classics include Alice in Wonderland, Dante's Inferno, Huck Finn, Robin Hood, War of the Worlds and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz!

I didn't make any of these titles up. It was tempting. Look out, public domain. What is this published fanfiction? Is nothing sacred? I hate it and I love it. I think these are very funny books, I love that this type of creativity is being recognized, and I'm glad that people are reading them and potentially revisiting (or discovering) the orginals. But this is just, as I said before, out of control. Of all the trends, right?

don't tell me what I can't write,
Leah and John Locke Read more...