“It was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains.”

Tense and compelling, Ray Bradbury’s short story, The Long Rain, is one of the finest among his Mars and Venus stories. It is rich with atmosphere, as four soldiers who have crash landed on Venus, killing two others who had been with them, attempt to survive the constant rains of Venus, and make it through the jungle to the Sun Dome, and safety. Much like in the silent film, The Wind, starring Lillian Gish, Bradbury writes the rains of Venus as a force of nature that can drive men mad.

It becomes a war of attrition against the elements, as one by one the rain claims members of the small party. Their only desire is to escape the rain, to sit and read and drink cocoa and coffee in the warmth of the Sun Dome. Hindered by an electrical storm more like a living thing attacking them than a natural phenomenon, they reach the nearest Sun Dome only to discover the sea-dwelling Venusians have attacked it. The only hope remaining is if this tired, weary, and dwindling group can survive reaching the next nearest Sun Dome…

Bradbury’s description of the rains and the effect it has on the men is marvelous, making the trek for the reader both tense and involving. Will they reach the second Sun Dome only to discover it too has been damaged beyond repair by the Venusians? Or will the constant, torrential rains pick them off one by one, as they give themselves over to something more powerful than themselves?

A masterpiece from the mind of Ray Bradbury that anyone who loves Science Fiction should read at some point. Highly recommended. ( )