Ray Bradbury Short Stories: The Veldt, All Summer in a Day, and There Will Come Soft Rains

Vocabulary terms, key concepts, characters, and settings from Ray Bradbury's classic science fiction stories: 'The Veldt', 'All Summer in a Day', and 'There Will Come Soft Rains'.

HappyLife Home

The fully automated residence costing thirty thousand dollars that clothed, fed, rocked to sleep, played, sang, and tended to every physical need of the Hadley family.

The Nursery (The Veldt)

A soundproof room measuring forty feet across by forty feet long and thirty feet high that cost half again as much as the house and could read the minds of children to project hyper-realistic, three-dimensional sensory environments.

George Hadley

The father in 'The Veldt' who becomes disturbed by the children's obsession with death and lions, finds his chewed, bloody wallet in the nursery, and ultimately decides to shut down the house.

Lydia Hadley

The mother in 'The Veldt' who feels useless and displaced because the automated house acts as wife, mother, and nurse, and whose bloodied scarf is discovered on the veldt floor.

Wendy and Peter Hadley

The ten-year-old siblings who become deeply reliant on the nursery's telepathic simulations and conspire to lock their parents inside the African veldt with the lions.

African Veldt

The hyper-realistic nursery simulation created by Wendy and Peter featuring a blazing yellow sun, vultures, a water hole, and lions devouring bloody carcasses.

David McClean

A psychologist and friend of the Hadleys who examines the nursery, diagnoses extreme parental replacement and neurosis, and recommends tearing the room down and placing the children in daily therapy.

Rima

A fictional bird girl in a lush South American forest whom Wendy briefly conjures in the nursery to conceal the African veldt from her parents.

Margot

A frail nine-year-old girl on Venus who moved from Ohio five years prior, distinctly remembers the warmth and color of the sun, and is cruelly locked in a closet by her classmates during the planet's brief two-hour sunbreak.

William (All Summer in a Day)

The schoolboy on Venus who bullies Margot, denies her descriptions and memories of the sun, and leads the class to lock her in a closet.

Venus (All Summer in a Day)

A world inhabited by children of rocket pioneers where rain falls continually for seven consecutive years, broken only by an hour or two of clear sunlight.

Margot's Sun Poem

A short poem composed and read by Margot in class: 'I think the sun is a flower, that blooms for just one hour.'

Venusian Jungle

A resilient, ash- and rubber-colored plant landscape resembling a nest of octopi with fleshlike weeds that grows perpetually and blooms briefly when the sun emerges.

Allendale, California (August 4, 2026)

The setting of 'There Will Come Soft Rains,' where a single automated house continues daily routines alone amid the rubble and radioactive glow of an otherwise obliterated city.

Voice-Clock (There Will Come Soft Rains)

The house's automated timekeeper that announces schedules, wake-up calls, birthdays, and reminders in a rhythmic tick-tock cadence to empty rooms.

Robot Mice

Small rubber and metal cleaning mechanisms equipped with pink electric eyes and moustached runners that dart out from wall warrens to vacuum dust and debris.

Charred West Face Silhouettes

The five burned outlines in white paint left on the charred exterior wall of the Allendale house depicting a man mowing, a woman picking flowers, and a boy and girl tossing a ball.

Baal

The demonic biblical figure used to describe the dark, sighing cellar incinerator into which the cleaning mice dump waste, paper, and the dead family dog.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" (Poem)

A poem by Sara Teasdale read aloud by the automated house, describing how nature, birds, and trees would neither know nor care if humanity were entirely eradicated by war.

Attic Brain

The central mechanical control unit in the attic of the automated house that directs the emergency water pumps and chemical-spraying snakes before being shattered by fire.