All Summer In A Day

All Summer In A Day is an extremely sad story. It is set on the planet Venus. In this book, Venus is a dreary,rainy place and only sees the sun once every 7 years. A girl,Margot, was from earth and was brought to Venus and remembers the sun. out of jeolosy she is locked in a closet on the day the sun is able to be seen . When the sun finaly is able to be seen, the children forget about Margot and go out side needless to say she is very sad when she realizes what had happened. Another event that is even more rare but slightly less dazzling is Halley's Comet. It can only be seen once every 76 years and is literally a once in a lifetime event. Fortunately for us, however we always have the sun unlike thoughs who live on Ray's Venus.

The Illustrated Man

The Illustrated Man was a somewhat sad story. A man in danger of losing his job gets tattoos all over his body in order to become a carnival's "illustrated man". His tattoo artist tells him that her tattoos can tell the future. She gives him two of these unique tattoos that tell the future and the carnival boss sets an unveiling but when he unveils the new tattoo it is a picture of him killing his wife. Needless to say his wife is furious the next day and as a result drives him to killing her. Later that night the carnies find his wife and chase him down and kill him. They then decide to look at his second tattoo and see something that shocks them, a group of carnies looking down on a tattooed man's back with a tattoo of a group of carnies looking . . . . . After reading I wondered if any one would every decide to become an "illustrated man" over night. To my knowledge only one has, Kevin Budden. He was tired of felling invisible so he went out one night and got his entire body tattooed in order to break a record of 28 hours of continuous tattooing. A little extreme way to get noticed if you ask me.

The Gift

The Gift is another classic written by Ray. In this story two parents wish to give their child a gift he has wanted for a while, a tree. To their dismay a tree isn't allowed to be taken on a flight. Not an airplane flight, as you might think, but a space craft. His father, desperate to save his son's Christmas, shows his son the stars and says they are his Christmas tree. As with the Veldt I wondered how far from the truth this story actually was. Once again a little bit of research went a long way. A commercial space flight industry is working on making space travel available to the general public or at least to those with $200,000 or more to spare.
Space tourism is gradually becoming more practical. In June 2004 scientist launched a fifteenth and final test of a prototype of a commercial space craft, SpaceShipOne which was a success. So once again Ray's inventive and futuristic ideas have proved to just be ahead of their time.

The Veldt

The Veldt is a fiction book based in the future. In this book two children murder their parents at the prospect of losing their beloved smart house. I guess having to tie your own shoes is to much for anyone to handle. After reading I had one question. How far from the truth is this book? My answer wasn't hard to find.
"Smart houses" have recently become easier to purchase although a smart house today only means the systems within a house work together. For example, in the book their bed literaly rocks them to sleep. Today a similar feature is now available in a "smart house," a bed that monitors your sleep and will adjust to make sure you have the deepest sleep obtainable. Pretty amazing but just one of many things to come. "Smart houses" are progressively becoming more like the home in the book. Written in 1950, almost 58 years ago, Ray had the imagination to dream of a world that may soon become a reality.