Alien Induction

All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury

Jun 26th, 2025 by Rusty

"All Summer in a Day" is a 1954 science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury. It is about a class of children on Venus who are eagerly awaiting the one day every seven years when the rain will briefly stop and the sun will shine.

Non-Spoiler Summary In A Nutshell:

Rain clouds Margot is a nine year old girl whose family moved from Earth to Venus when she was four. She remembers the sun shining on Earth - something that it rarely does on Venus. All of the rain and cloud cover on her new planet are affecting her emotions, but her chance to see the sun once again is quickly approaching. The story takes place on the one day when the rain will stop and the sun will shine for a couple of hours. All of the children in Margot's class are eagerly awaiting their first glimpse of the sun, but when the teacher leaves for a few minutes they decide to pull a very mean prank on Margot.

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!"

My Two Cents:

I remember reading "All Summer in a Day" when I was in grade school, and only recently did my sister remind me of it. A great short story that is full of many lessons.

• The good:

A classic Ray Bradbury story!
The writing is superb! This is Bradbury at his best with some amazing descriptions of the rain, the jungle and even Margot's health.

• The bad:

Ugh! This story really tugs at your heart-strings! I admit it... I almost cried.
It will make you hate bullies even more!

Fact Sheet:

Page Count: 4
Word Count: 1,942
While "All Summer in a Day" never won any major awards, the 1980 book Stories of Ray Bradbury (which included this story) placed sixth on the 1981 Locus Poll for best single author collection.

Where you can find "All Summer in a Day":

This short story first appeared in the March 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
"All Summer in a Day" has been collected in many anthologies - most recently in the 1990 version of Stories of Ray Bradbury^† - a great collection of many of his pre-1980 short stories.
You can read this short story for free at an archived version of FanFiction.net.