The nursery short story

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury, Gary Kelley (Illustrator)

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The advanced technology of a house first pleases then increasingly terrifies its occupants.

45 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 1950

About the author

Ray Douglas Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in 1947.

His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences. Next came The Illustrated Man and then, in 1953, Fahrenheit 451, which many consider to be Bradbury's masterpiece, a scathing indictment of censorship set in a future world where the written word is forbidden. In an attempt to salvage their history and culture, a group of rebels memorize entire works of literature and philosophy as their books are burned by the totalitarian state. Other works include The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric!, Quicker Than the Eye, and Driving Blind. In all, Bradbury has published more than thirty books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays. His short stories have appeared in more than 1,000 school curriculum "recommended reading" anthologies.

Ray Bradbury's work has been included in four Best American Short Story collections. He has been awarded the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, the PEN Center USA West Lifetime Achievement Award, among others. In November 2000, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was conferred upon Mr. Bradbury at the 2000 National Book Awards Ceremony in New York City.

Ray Bradbury has never confined his vision to the purely literary. He has been nominated for an Academy Award (for his animated film Icarus Montgolfier Wright), and has won an Emmy Award (for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree). He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the creative consultant on the United States Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. In 1982 he created the interior metaphors for the Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center, Disney World, and later contributed to the conception of the Orbitron space ride at Euro-Disney, France.

Married since 1947, Mr. Bradbury and his wife Maggie lived in Los Angeles with their numerous cats. Together, they raised four daughters and had eight grandchildren. Sadly, Maggie passed away in November of 2003.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday in August 2000, Bradbury said, "The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me. I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you'll come along."

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 815 reviews

November 22, 2022

Whoopee, finally my first review of a science fiction story! 😊

This story for me was like confronting yet consorting with the EVILS of technology!

Being an electronics & telecommunication engineer myself (though I consider myself more of a literature-lover than a tech-fanatic 😊), I adored this story based on magic, technology, and the future to bits!!

During my teens, I would ponder if technology is a boon or a bane. Then I stopped ruminating any longer on the ills of technology, because of the prolific inventions being profusely lauded and inundating human lives in entirety, moreover everyone partaking in its bounteous growth!
What is the use to mull over the vile of technology when you see the costliest of iPhones being established as a status symbol in society? Isn’t so?

Reading this story was like an epiphany for me! It was like confronting all the violent and evil effects of technology like video games (PubG and many more) and sensing what the metaverse is on the verge to offer us all and foreseeing the corrupt future, yet consorting with it. After all, I am using my laptop, and the internet, to post my review and share moments of bliss with my virtual GRs friends! But again, this is an example of the positive use of technology and not the negative.

Without digressing any further and not falling victim to the flood of my emotions, let me quickly give you all an extremely abridged synopsis without any spoilers-

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Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" is a short story in which the Hadley’s parents become concerned when their children's soundproofed HappyLife Home, costing them $30K begins to reflect their young children’s violent fantasies.
The children of George and Lydia (Wendy and Peter) are obsessed with their nursery, which is a virtual entertainment room. Wendy and Peter have recently been conjuring up the African veldt in the nursery, and George and Lydia are concerned about the veldt’s vicious and brutal character.
“The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun — sun. Giraffes — giraffes. Death and death. “
They try to turn off the nursery, but subsequently, they reluctantly give their children one more minute.

““All right — all right, if they’ll just shut up. One minute, mind you, and then off forever.” “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” sang the children, smiling with wet faces.”
The kids summon George and Lydia to the nursery, then what follows was beyond my contemplation. It was a shocker to me!

Warning - Only if you are intrepid and lionhearted, please venture into reading this story, or else drop it. It might leave you bemused and in angst!

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The nursery delineates that death has become a prominent thought in Wendy’s and Peter’s minds. George orders the nursery’s machinery to change the veldt, but due to the malfunction caused due to overuse or tampering by the children, it refuses to do so! ☹
George even discovers an old wallet of his on the nursery floor, engulfed with toothmarks, and smothered in lion’s odor, and blood. Isn’t it scary? The parents later hear humans' screams and lion’s roars coming from the nursery.
The children are adamant and outrightly deny forgoing and abandoning the nursery.
I was surprised to see Lydia falling victim to the blindness of her mother’s love and joining the children in pleading George for a minute more, for viewing the nursery, until George relented. This fatherly relenting costing them something irrevocable. (concealing spoilers)!!

The story poses many critical questions, bringing forth the future. Engendering questions worth pondering! I must say to a great extent the present is already disseminating the evil threats of over-abuse and negative-implementation of technology!
Apart from majorly portraying the evil side of technology, the story renders a twinge to many parents to reflect on the structure of boundaries they lay between children and technology-usage. Today’s generation is born with and in gadgets and withering away inside gadgets. What a plight? Alas ☹

It is horrific to see humans not being able to stay away from technology for a moment! This is referred to as SLAVERY to technology. It has dissipated the innate human innocence most ruthlessly.

The story leaves the readers mulling over 3 major issues of children-parent relationship, the docility imposed on humans by technology, and the absence of real physical relationships in our lives and basing altogether on the virtual world to whet and quench our appetite for relationships.

This is entirely my personal takeaway from the story, and it is not meant to hurt the sentiments of avid technology lovers. So, pardon me in advance! 😊

I can’t help but downpour infinite stars from the sky of technology on this brilliant, grandiose, magnificent futuristic piece of a story written in an era when the concept was totally inconceivable and incredible to digest!

Before I close, I want to give a big shout-out to my GRs friend, Jennifer, for recommending this story😊Thanks, dear Jennifer!

I am constantly amazed at the predictive capacity of Golden Age science fiction writers. In the early 1950’s, Ray Bradbury wrote this story on the dangers of immersive entertainment and technology advancements could have on children. He aptly describes a smart home and a lifelike (too lifelike) virtual reality room (sort of a Star Trek holodeck). This story must be more impactful in today’s world of ubiquitous screens, immersive video games, and augmented reality. In the early 1950’s the transistor was only recently invented, televisions were not common, and radios were not yet portable.

I first ran into this story decades ago when I read, “The Illustrated Man”. I just reread it, as part of a Science Fiction Facebook group I belong to. I love the little tie into Peter Pan and Neverland by naming the kids Peter and Wendy. It struck me as an ‘evil twin’ of Moore and Kuttner’s “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” which was written earlier.

Bradbury's prose is pedestrian in this piece, compared to some of his more flowery and near poetic work, but it’s more effectively written as a straight cautionary tale.

science-fiction short-stories

Lyn

1,850 reviews16.4k followers

Certainly one of Bradbury’s best short works and maybe his most recognized.

The Veldt was first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1950, and this has been a ubiquitous entry into many collections of his work and has been published on its own in countless anthologies.

A family has a smart house (a recurring theme in his work) where machines and robots do virtually all of the work. Most notably, the children’s nursery can create a virtual scene from the imagination of the two kids – Peter and Wendy, in a choice of names that cannot be coincidence. Juvenile images of fairy tales and innocent make believe has tuned into an unsettlingly realistic scene from the African veldt. When the parents go into the room, the temperature increases and they can even smell the blood of the lions’ latest kill.

A psychologist suggests that all the automation has been bad for children and he recommends cutting them off from the disturbing scene. Peter and Wendy (and perhaps the room as well) are none too pleased.

Emotionally chilling and allegorically prophetic Bradbury has in The Veldt anticipated in Peter and Wendy the Millennials fifty years before the first one was born.

A must read for Bradbury and SF fans.

Ray Bradbury demonstrates in this very short story his brilliant writing skills. It is not easy to put so much suspense and tension on so few pages, but Ray Bradbury succeeds here masterfully.

Because I'm obsessive compulsive, I decided to write reviews for the stories in the anthologies I read, and include them on my 2017 bookshelf. I started with Poe, and Lovecraft. but I will include Bradbury, also. The Veldt is the first story in The Illustrated Man anthology. It's about a family living in a "smart" home, where the children's bedroom is essentially a holodeck like in Star Trek: TNG. The children, Peter and Wendy (yes, this is an homage to Peter Pan), are enamored by Africa and so their bedroom looks out on an African veldt, complete with a pride of lions, essentially hunting yards away from their walls. I believe most people could predict where this one goes, but I found the story fascinating for the fact that it was written in 1951 and accurately descriptive of some of the technological advancements made in the name of efficiency, but amounts to laziness. (The house ties your shoelaces for you.) I really enjoyed this story, and how it ties into the overall wraparound story of The Illustrated Man. I categorize it as a classic because it meets all three of my criteria: longevity, constructing a new paradigm, and exceptional elements.

adventure author-r-bradbury classic

Kate

40 reviews36 followers

Suddenly remembered having read this a few years back in the process of recovering vivid imagery that made a particularly strong impression on me, and leaving a belated review. My memory is quite faint, as I have not returned to this in a while, but very much due for a reread. The story, like all other Bradbury novels, has a very Ray Bradbury sense about the text. Eccentric, with a touch of odd and exotic imagery here and there, and with a stubborn man who, against others' objection, makes a foolish mistake.

Alice

229 reviews43 followers

4. 25*

There's this magical house with a magical nursery that changes into "The Veldt" which is the grassland of Africa.

4-star-5-star

Prophetic in its depiction and, emotionally, quite unsettling; in which children are ready to kill their parents.

Stacey

266 reviews448 followers

When you read a short story like this one, there's no mistaking the reasons Bradbury is regarded as a master storyteller. His stories are at their most powerful when he's writing of children, as here, and such as Dandelion Wine, or All Summer In a Day. He creates a sense of inevitability, even resignation. You can see the ending coming, you even know why it's coming, and which turn you took to get you there. Still it drags you along to the end, and the story lingers, long after you've read the last word.

This theme turns up repeatedly in Bradbury's shorter works, this idea of mind numbing and load lightening technologies destroying our connection as families, in society. As our external lives become more automated, our selves begin to disintegrate, and our natural attachments can become lost. In this story, children use technology to satisfy their every whim. What makes it so chilling is that one can see elements of our current reality in the fantasy. Maybe what makes him the master is his ability to frame our faults as "developed" people into a story that we must hope could never come true.

my-review-or-notes short-story-or-novelette

This is a creepy little short story. It also asks a question that some might feel is appropriate in today’s world…

In The Veldt (first published in the Saturday Evening Post under a different title, and published under this title in Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man), we are in the far future. Peter and Wendy (the children) live with their parents in an ultra-modern, do-it-all-for-you home. The home cooks, cleans, bathes, nurtures, entertains, etc. , all the occupants. The nursery, to which Peter and Wendy appear to be addicted, is a virtual reality room which creates whatever the children chose to imagine. Pretty cool stuff!

Unfortunately, parents George and Lydia find themselves asking what use they are to the children, since the house can do everything better for the children than they can… with one exception: the house never disciplines the children or requires anything of them. Of course, George and Lydia might do so, but – in the spirit of the times/house/technology – don’t feel they can or should. After a time, they begin to worry about the children and the complete lack of relationship between parent and child. Or, more accurately, the subtle animosity displayed by the children toward their parents…

I’ll say no more as I don’t want to spoil the ending, but – suffice it to say – it’s creepy. It is insinuated as only Bradbury can do, but that is where Bradbury excels: Allowing your own mind to fill in the details.

An enjoyable quick read that I recommend to any Bradbury lover!

Disturbometer : 5 out of 10.

I often find writers from the early previous century's take on what the future would look like humorous. It's almost as if they don't take into account what things actually cost and the economics of scale. Nor do they seem to take into account what lies beyond the realms of possibility from a scientific point of view, which often gives the so-called science fiction from the early and mid - 20th century a magicky, fantastical feel.

The story is fun as a window to the past, even though predictable. Too predictable unfortunately to be as scary as it's reputation claims it to be. Read this as part of a "most disturbing stories ever" list that I discovered during Halloween.

alternate-world dark fantasy

Super classic super sci-fi from the master, Ray Bradbury.

I just read this for my creative writing class. I was very well-written, suspenseful, and included some classic Ray Bradbury themes I've enjoyed in Fahrenheit 451. It was on the other hand rather dark but also sobering when the natural conclusion of letting technology take over your life was portrayed. Just a note that there are some brief descriptions of death, one blasphemy, and two instances of swear words.

short-stories

Stephen

1,517 reviews10.8k followers

4.0 stars. A superb short story from Ray Bradbury and one that is quite a bit "darker" than much of his short fiction. It originally appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1950 under the title, "The World the Children Made" and was than included in the anthology

The story is dark, cynical look at the dangers of allowing technology (like TV) raise our children. In the story, two parents install a machine called the “Happylife Home”(think early computer with A. I.) that allows the house to be run by itself. It cooks, cleans and even piuts the children to sleep. As part of the upgrade, the children's nursery becomes a virtual reality room, able to become any setting the children desire.

I won't go any further so as not to disclose any spoilers, except to say that the parents become concerned about the effect of the technology on themselves and their children and trouble follows. A very strong Bradbury story.

1980-1989 children-behaving-badly science-fiction

Kon R.

223 reviews93 followers

This was super creepy from start to finish. It's always fun to see what kind of futuristic technological advances authors come up with in older publications. I think authors love to showcase wonders then immediately warn the reader of it's hidden dangers (I, Robot anyone?). I don't remember reading this before, but upon completion it all sounded way too familiar for it to be my first read of it. This story obviously has a way to stay hidden in your subconscious. If you look up the word "foreshadowing" in the dictionary this story can be found directly underneath.

I want more of horror sci-fi if it's anything like this.

Kelly R

175 reviews31 followers

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I cannot give this book any stars because I really hated reading it. As a work of literature it was beautiful. I saw everything perfectly drawn up in front of my eyes as if the Story were a picture rather than just words on a page. As I read The Veldt I was horrified. I had to stop reading at times because I was sobbing. When I got to the end I was so sick I ran crying to my dad.
I would never recommend this book to be read, but I cannot honestly say that I regret reading it.

If you are looking for a story that makes you think, that is so beautifully written everything appears in front of your eyes, and if you like Bradbury's works: this is a book for you.

As for how "good" I thought the book was, I am inclined to give it close to 5 stars.
As to how much I liked reading it, I cannot bear to give it one star.

never-to-read-again

Steph

226 reviews38 followers

I'm in the middle of reading a long book and wanted a break with something Halloween S and creepy and this was short and disturbing. I really like it and think after this book I'm reading I will turn to a couple of really good scary books because that was creepy and it is the season for being disturbd

“I wish you were dead!”
“We were, for a long while. Now we’re going to really start living. Instead of being handled and massaged, we’re going to live.”

Well, that was... something--a brilliantly sickening reflective something.

(read for school)

classics read-for-school science-fiction

And if you yearn for an exceptionally strange tale. ..

Eery and chilling, this short story envisions a not too implausible future with a terrifying twist.

Thomas

69 reviews392 followers

I had to read this book for my english class and I really enjoyed it!
This book is a futuristic (sci-fi) horror story, with a futuristic house that literally does everything for its residents! It was really entertaining and the ending was PERFECT!
We have to keep in mind that this book has been written in 1950 and the written kind of gave us his thoughts on the future by creating a futuristic house! If you haven't read it yet, I think you should because when I read it, I actually felt a little bit concerned with all of the technologies we have nowadays! Be careful guys!
A very very great book!

Prashant

199 reviews145 followers

Since aeon this society has questioned the efficacy of love.

I know we have made millions of movies, written trillions of stories and have had hundreds of thinkers all depicting the helplessness of human emotions. We have the tendency to swoon, drool and even succumb for the ones we love.

But this is not the love that we are talking about in this story. Here, it's the one which because of the absence of physical attraction may not be as complex as the love between a couple. But still, it's much talked, discussed and abused in the social circle.

It's filial love.

This story posed the questions which frequently come to the surface of my mind.

Many a times I have had an argument with my parents and have wondered how can I balance my love and respect for them with my personal growth and learning from life.

Countless times I have wondered if in the future parents will loose their significance and will be replaced by our pseudo emotions for yet another gadget of those times.

At this speed, life is complex enough for us to manage our friends and family. What if the speed doubles or triples or worse than that, becomes hundred times more?

With parents already leaving the kids in the hands of technology at the early age to make then "tech savvy" and ahead of their times. It's about time that we wonder if nurturing process is completely taken over by technology.

Will giving birth to someone be enough to make him/her feel the attachment towards the parents? I don't think so.

This story by Bradbury takes us to the Happylife Home which mechanically provides for anything that a person can ask for. Your every desire is fulfilled and every question is answered.

In this home the parents live an independent life from their kids who have a nursery which can give them anything and take them anywhere within seconds.

Then the time comes when the parents feel the need to control and look after the interest of the kids and of themselves.

But have the kids gone too far ahead to see the rationality behind their parents actions?

Have the kids evolved themselves with the machine so much that others have become dispensable?

These are the questions answered in the end of the story.

We are left wondering with more in our plate than we would have asked from the author.

Well, that's the beauty of a good story. Is it not?

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Radwa

Author 1 book2,023 followers

A futuristic horror story, with a futuristic house that literally does everything for its residents, from tying their shoes to rocking them in their sleep. The house comes with a special (psychological?) room called the "nursery," which manifests anyone's thoughts. It's used as a way to analyze the psychology of the children.

If you think of fairies, the room will give you fairies, and if you think of killing lions, there'll be killing lions. A big con for me was how "preachy" the story seemed, but other than that it's a brilliant story about the dangers of technology. Creepy kids and a scary house? yes please!

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The Veldt, a short story by Ray Bradbury

“George, I wish you’d look at the nursery. ”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, then.”

“I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to
look at it.”

“What would a psychologist want with a nursery?”

“You know very well what he’d want.” His wife paused in the middle of
the kitchen and watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper for
four.

“It’s just that the nursery is different now than it was.”

“All right, let’s have a look.”

They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which
had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed
and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them.
Their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the nursery light flicked
on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the
halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft
automaticity.

“Well,” said George Hadley.

They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was forty feet
across by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost half again as
much as the rest of the house. “But nothing’s too good for our children,”
George had said.

The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high
noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia
Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede
into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt
appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the
final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with
a hot yellow sun.

George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow.

“Let’s get out of this sun,” he said. “This is a little too real. But I
don’t see anything wrong.”

“Wait a moment, you’ll see,” said his wife.

Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at
the two people in the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell of
lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty
smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And
now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery
rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered
on George Hadley’s upturned, sweating face.

“Filthy creatures,” he heard his wife say.

“The vultures.”

“You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they’re on their
way to the water hole. They’ve just been eating,” said Lydia. “I don’t know
what.”

“Some animal.” George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burning
light from his squinted eyes. “A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe.”

“Are you sure?” His wife sounded peculiarly tense.

“No, it’s a little late to be sure,” be said, amused. “Nothing over
there I can see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for what’s
left.”

“Did you bear that scream?” she asked.

‘No.”

“About a minute ago?”

“Sorry, no.”

The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with
admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle
of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one.
Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they
startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone,
not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a
quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!

And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly
and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and
your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated
pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an
exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the
sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the
smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.

The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terrible
green-yellow eyes.

“Watch out!” screamed Lydia.

The lions came running at them.

Lydia bolted and ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside,
in the hall, with the door slammed he was laughing and she was crying, and
they both stood appalled at the other’s reaction.

“George!”

“Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!”

“They almost got us!”

“Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that’s all they are. Oh, they
look real, I must admit – Africa in your parlor – but it’s all dimensional,
superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind
glass screens. It’s all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here’s my
handkerchief.”

“I’m afraid.” She came to him and put her body against him and cried
steadily. “Did you see? Did you feel? It’s too real.”

“Now, Lydia…”

“You’ve got to tell Wendy and Peter not to read any more on Africa. ”

“Of course – of course.” He patted her.

“Promise?”

“Sure.”

“And lock the nursery for a few days until I get my nerves settled.”

“You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a
month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours – the tantrum be
threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery.”

“It’s got to be locked, that’s all there is to it.”

“All right.” Reluctantly he locked the huge door. “You’ve been working
too hard. You need a rest.”

“I don’t know – I don’t know,” she said, blowing her nose, sitting down
in a chair that immediately began to rock and comfort her. “Maybe I don’t
have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don’t we shut
the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?”

“You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“And dam my socks?”

“Yes.” A frantic, watery-eyed nodding.

“And sweep the house?”

“Yes, yes – oh, yes!”

“But I thought that’s why we bought this house, so we wouldn’t have to
do anything?”

“That’s just it. I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and
mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a
bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub
bath can? I cannot. And it isn’t just me. It’s you. You’ve been awfully
nervous lately.”

“I suppose I have been smoking too much.”

“You look as if you didn’t know what to do with yourself in this house,
either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every
afternoon and need a little more sedative every night. You’re beginning to
feel unnecessary too.”

“Am I?” He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was really
there.

“Oh, George!” She looked beyond him, at the nursery door. “Those lions
can’t get out of there, can they?”

He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped
against it from the other side.

“Of course not,” he said.

At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a special plastic
carnival across town and bad televised home to say they’d be late, to go
ahead eating. So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching the dining-room table
produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.

“We forgot the ketchup,” he said.

“Sorry,” said a small voice within the table, and ketchup appeared.

As for the nursery, thought George Hadley, it won’t hurt for the
children to be locked out of it awhile. Too much of anything isn’t good for
anyone. And it was clearly indicated that the children had been spending a
little too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his neck,
still, like a hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Remarkable how
the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children’s minds and
created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and
there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun –
sun. Giraffes – giraffes. Death and death.

That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table bad cut for
him. Death thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death
thoughts. Or, no, you were never too young, really. Long before you knew
what death was you were wishing it on someone else. When you were two years
old you were shooting people with cap pistols.

But this – the long, hot African veldt-the awful death in the jaws of a
lion. And repeated again and again.

“Where are you going?”

He didn’t answer Lydia. Preoccupied, be let the lights glow softly on
ahead of him, extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. He
listened against it. Far away, a lion roared.

He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, he
heard a faraway scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsided
quickly.

He stepped into Africa. How many times in the last year had he opened
this door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his
Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cow
jumping over a very real-appearing moon-all the delightful contraptions of a
make-believe world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling,
or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing. But now,
is yellow hot Africa, this bake oven with murder in the heat. Perhaps Lydia
was right. Perhaps they needed a little vacation from the fantasy which was
growing a bit too real for ten-year-old children. It was all right to
exercise one’s mind with gymnastic fantasies, but when the lively child mind
settled on one pattern… ? It seemed that, at a distance, for the past
month, he had heard lions roaring, and smelled their strong odor seeping as
far away as his study door. But, being busy, he had paid it no attention.

George Hadley stood on the African grassland alone. The lions looked up
from their feeding, watching him. The only flaw to the illusion was the open
door through which he could see his wife, far down the dark hall, like a
framed picture, eating her dinner abstractedly.

“Go away,” he said to the lions.

They did not go.

He knew the principle of the room exactly. You sent out your thoughts.
Whatever you thought would appear. “Let’s have Aladdin and his lamp,” he
snapped. The veldtland remained; the lions remained.

“Come on, room! I demand Aladin!” he said.

Nothing happened. The lions mumbled in their baked pelts.

“Aladin!”

He went back to dinner. “The fool room’s out of order,” he said. “It
won’t respond.”

“Or–“

“Or what?”

“Or it can’t respond,” said Lydia, “because the children have thought
about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room’s in a rut.”

“Could be.”

“Or Peter’s set it to remain that way.”

“Set it?”

“He may have got into the machinery and fixed something.”

“Peter doesn’t know machinery.”

“He’s a wise one for ten. That I.Q. of his -“

“Nevertheless -“

“Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad.”

The Hadleys turned. Wendy and Peter were coming in the front door,
cheeks like peppermint candy, eyes like bright blue agate marbles, a smell
of ozone on their jumpers from their trip in the helicopter.

“You’re just in time for supper,” said both parents.

“We’re full of strawberry ice cream and hot dogs,” said the children,
holding hands. “But we’ll sit and watch.”

“Yes, come tell us about the nursery,” said George Hadley.

The brother and sister blinked at him and then at each other.
“Nursery?”

“All about Africa and everything,” said the father with false
joviality.

“I don’t understand,” said Peter.

“Your mother and I were just traveling through Africa with rod and
reel; Tom Swift and his Electric Lion,” said George Hadley.

“There’s no Africa in the nursery,” said Peter simply.

“Oh, come now, Peter. We know better.”

“I don’t remember any Africa,” said Peter to Wendy. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Run see and come tell.”

She obeyed

“Wendy, come back here!” said George Hadley, but she was gone. The
house lights followed her like a flock of fireflies. Too late, he realized
he had forgotten to lock the nursery door after his last inspection.

“Wendy’ll look and come tell us,” said Peter.

“She doesn’t have to tell me. I’ve seen it.”

“I’m sure you’re mistaken, Father.”

“I’m not, Peter. Come along now.”

But Wendy was back. “It’s not Africa,” she said breathlessly.

“We’ll see about this,” said George Hadley, and they all walked down
the hall together and opened the nursery door.

There was a green, lovely forest, a lovely river, a purple mountain,
high voices singing, and Rima, lovely and mysterious, lurking in the trees
with colorful flights of butterflies, like animated bouquets, lingering in
her long hair. The African veldtland was gone. The lions were gone. Only
Rima was here now, singing a song so beautiful that it brought tears to your
eyes.

George Hadley looked in at the changed scene. “Go to bed,” he said to
the children.

They opened their mouths.

“You heard me,” he said.

They went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown
leaves up the flue to their slumber rooms.

George Hadley walked through the singing glade and picked up something
that lay in the comer near where the lions had been. He walked slowly back
to his wife.

“What is that?” she asked.

“An old wallet of mine,” he said.

He showed it to her. The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of
a lion. There were drops of saliva on it, it bad been chewed, and there were
blood smears on both sides.

He closed the nursery door and locked it, tight.

In the middle of the night he was still awake and he knew his wife was
awake. “Do you think Wendy changed it?” she said at last, in the dark room.

“Of course.”

“Made it from a veldt into a forest and put Rima there instead of
lions?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But it’s staying locked until I find out.”

“How did your wallet get there?”

“I don’t know anything,” he said, “except that I’m beginning to be
sorry we bought that room for the children. If children are neurotic at all,
a room like that -“

“It’s supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful
way.”

“I’m starting to wonder.” He stared at the ceiling.

“We’ve given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our
reward-secrecy, disobedience?”

“Who was it said, ‘Children are carpets, they should be stepped on
occasionally’? We’ve never lifted a hand. They’re insufferable – let’s admit
it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring.
They’re spoiled and we’re spoiled.”

“They’ve been acting funny ever since you forbade them to take the
rocket to New York a few months ago.”

“They’re not old enough to do that alone, I explained.”

“Nevertheless, I’ve noticed they’ve been decidedly cool toward us
since.”

“I think I’ll have David McClean come tomorrow morning to have a look
at Africa.”

“But it’s not Africa now, it’s Green Mansions country and Rima. ”

“I have a feeling it’ll be Africa again before then.”

A moment later they heard the screams.

Two screams. Two people screaming from downstairs. And then a roar of
lions.

“Wendy and Peter aren’t in their rooms,” said his wife.

He lay in his bed with his beating heart. “No,” he said. “They’ve
broken into the nursery.”

“Those screams – they sound familiar.”

“Do they?”

“Yes, awfully.”

And although their beds tried very bard, the two adults couldn’t be
rocked to sleep for another hour. A smell of cats was in the night air.

“Father?” said Peter.

“Yes.”

Peter looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor
at his mother. “You aren’t going to lock up the nursery for good, are you?”

“That all depends.”

“On what?” snapped Peter.

“On you and your sister. If you intersperse this Africa with a little
variety – oh, Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China -“

“I thought we were free to play as we wished. ”

“You are, within reasonable bounds.”

“What’s wrong with Africa, Father?”

“Oh, so now you admit you have been conjuring up Africa, do you?”

“I wouldn’t want the nursery locked up,” said Peter coldly. “Ever.”

“Matter of fact, we’re thinking of turning the whole house off for
about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence.”

“That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of
letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and
give myself a bath?”

“It would be fun for a change, don’t you think?”

“No, it would be horrid. I didn’t like it when you took out the picture
painter last month.”

“That’s because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son.”

“I don’t want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else
is there to do?”

“All right, go play in Africa.”

“Will you shut off the house sometime soon?”

“We’re considering it.”

“I don’t think you’d better consider it any more, Father. ”

“I won’t have any threats from my son!”

“Very well.” And Peter strolled off to the nursery.

“Am I on time?” said David McClean.

“Breakfast?” asked George Hadley.

“Thanks, had some. What’s the trouble?”

“David, you’re a psychologist.”

“I should hope so.”

“Well, then, have a look at our nursery. You saw it a year ago when you
dropped by; did you notice anything peculiar about it then?”

“Can’t say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight
paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by
parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing.”

They walked down the ball. “I locked the nursery up,” explained the
father, “and the children broke back into it during the night. I let them
stay so they could form the patterns for you to see.”

There was a terrible screaming from the nursery.

“There it is,” said George Hadley. “See what you make of it.”

They walked in on the children without rapping.

The screams had faded. The lions were feeding.

“Run outside a moment, children,” said George Hadley. “No, don’t change
the mental combination. Leave the walls as they are. Get!”

With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered
at a distance, eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.

“I wish I knew what it was,” said George Hadley. “Sometimes I can
almost see. Do you think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and -“

David McClean laughed dryly. “Hardly.” He turned to study all four
walls. “How long has this been going on?”

“A little over a month.”

“It certainly doesn’t feel good.”

“I want facts, not feelings.”

“My dear George, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only
hears about feelings; vague things. This doesn’t feel good, I tell you.
Trust my hunches and my instincts. I have a nose for something bad. This is
very bad. My advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn down and your
children brought to me every day during the next year for treatment. ”

“Is it that bad?”

“I’m afraid so. One of the original uses of these nurseries was so that
we could study the patterns left on the walls by the child’s mind, study at
our leisure, and help the child. In this case, however, the room has become
a channel toward-destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them.”

“Didn’t you sense this before?”

“I sensed only that you bad spoiled your children more than most. And
now you’re letting them down in some way. What way?”

“I wouldn’t let them go to New York.”

“What else?”

“I’ve taken a few machines from the house and threatened them, a month
ago, with closing up the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close
it for a few days to show I meant business.”

“Ah, ha!”

“Does that mean anything?”

“Everything. Where before they had a Santa Claus now they have a
Scrooge. Children prefer Santas. You’ve let this room and this house replace
you and your wife in your children’s affections. This room is their mother
and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And
now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there’s hatred here.
You can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you’ll have to
change your life. Like too many others, you’ve built it around creature
comforts. Why, you’d starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your
kitchen. You wouldn’t know bow to tap an egg. Nevertheless, turn everything
off. Start new. It’ll take time. But we’ll make good children out of bad in
a year, wait and see.”

“But won’t the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up
abruptly, for good?”

“I don’t want them going any deeper into this, that’s all.”

The lions were finished with their red feast.

The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two
men.

“Now I’m feeling persecuted,” said McClean. “Let’s get out of here. I
never have cared for these damned rooms. Make me nervous.”

“The lions look real, don’t they?” said George Hadley. I don’t suppose
there’s any way -“

“What?”

“- that they could become real?”

“Not that I know.”

“Some flaw in the machinery, a tampering or something?”

“No.”

They went to the door.

“I don’t imagine the room will like being turned off,” said the father.

“Nothing ever likes to die – even a room.”

“I wonder if it hates me for wanting to switch it off?”

“Paranoia is thick around here today,” said David McClean. “You can
follow it like a spoor. Hello.” He bent and picked up a bloody scarf. “This
yours?”

“No.” George Hadley’s face was rigid. “It belongs to Lydia.”

They went to the fuse box together and threw the switch that killed the
nursery.

The two children were in hysterics. They screamed and pranced and threw
things. They yelled and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture.

“You can’t do that to the nursery, you can’t!”

“Now, children. ”

The children flung themselves onto a couch, weeping.

“George,” said Lydia Hadley, “turn on the nursery, just for a few
moments. You can’t be so abrupt.”

“No.”

“You can’t be so cruel…”

“Lydia, it’s off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies as of
here and now. The more I see of the mess we’ve put ourselves in, the more it
sickens me. We’ve been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for
too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!”

And he marched about the house turning off the voice clocks, the
stoves, the heaters, the shoe shiners, the shoe lacers, the body scrubbers
and swabbers and massagers, and every other machine be could put his hand
to.

The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical
cemetery. So silent. None of the humming hidden energy of machines waiting
to function at the tap of a button.

“Don’t let them do it!” wailed Peter at the ceiling, as if he was
talking to the house, the nursery. “Don’t let Father kill everything.” He
turned to his father. “Oh, I hate you!”

“Insults won’t get you anywhere.”

“I wish you were dead!”

“We were, for a long while. Now we’re going to really start living.
Instead of being handled and massaged, we’re going to live.”

Wendy was still crying and Peter joined her again. “Just a moment, just
one moment, just another moment of nursery,” they wailed.

“Oh, George,” said the wife, “it can’t hurt.”

“All right – all right, if they’ll just shut up. One minute, mind you,
and then off forever.”

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” sang the children, smiling with wet faces.

“And then we’re going on a vacation. David McClean is coming back in
half an hour to help us move out and get to the airport. I’m going to dress.
You turn the nursery on for a minute, Lydia, just a minute, mind you.”

And the three of them went babbling off while he let himself be
vacuumed upstairs through the air flue and set about dressing himself. A
minute later Lydia appeared.

“I’ll be glad when we get away,” she sighed.

“Did you leave them in the nursery?”

“I wanted to dress too. Oh, that horrid Africa. What can they see in
it?”

“Well, in five minutes we’ll be on our way to Iowa. Lord, how did we
ever get in this house? What prompted us to buy a nightmare?”

“Pride, money, foolishness.”

“I think we’d better get downstairs before those kids get engrossed
with those damned beasts again.”

Just then they heard the children calling, “Daddy, Mommy, come quick –
quick!”

They went downstairs in the air flue and ran down the hall. The
children were nowhere in sight. “Wendy? Peter!”

They ran into the nursery. The veldtland was empty save for the lions
waiting, looking at them. “Peter, Wendy?”

The door slammed.

“Wendy, Peter!”

George Hadley and his wife whirled and ran back to the door.

“Open the door!” cried George Hadley, trying the knob. “Why, they’ve
locked it from the outside! Peter!” He beat at the door. “Open up!”

He heard Peter’s voice outside, against the door.

“Don’t let them switch off the nursery and the house,” he was saying.

Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at the door. “Now, don’t be ridiculous,
children. It’s time to go. Mr. McClean’ll be here in a minute and…”

And then they heard the sounds.

The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, padding
through the dry straw, rumbling and roaring in their throats.

The lions.

Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the
beasts edging slowly forward crouching, tails stiff.

Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.

And suddenly they realized why those other screams bad sounded
familiar.

“Well, here I am,” said David McClean in the nursery doorway, “Oh,
hello.” He stared at the two children seated in the center of the open glade
eating a little picnic lunch. Beyond them was the water hole and the yellow
veldtland; above was the hot sun. He began to perspire. “Where are your
father and mother?”

The children looked up and smiled. “Oh, they’ll be here directly.”

“Good, we must get going.” At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions
fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the
shady trees.

He squinted at the lions with his hand tip to his eyes.

Now the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink.

A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean’s hot face. Many shadows flickered.
The vultures were dropping down the blazing sky.

“A cup of tea?” asked Wendy in the silence.

ClassicsStories

Beware, children are at the helm! A story about the Children's Railway: minskblog — LiveJournal

For more than 60 years, the Children's Railway has been operating in Minsk, the roles of drivers, conductors and controllers are performed by schoolchildren. Children in grades 5-7 are recruited for training, in autumn and winter they undergo theoretical training at the training center, and in spring and summer - practice, during which everyone can ride on the narrow gauge railway from Chelyuskintsev Park to the forest park area in Slepyanka. Along the way, the railway crosses three highways, a bridge and an overpass.

The main station of the Children's Railway does not look so childish, it would have passed for a full-fledged station in one of the regional centers: -partisan Konstantin Zaslonov, it was renamed in 1971. The station building was designed by architect Georgy Zaborsky, the same one who designed the obelisk on Victory Square in Minsk. Inside the station there is a ticket office and a waiting room:

After buying a ticket, you can take a seat in the carriage:

The ticket must be checked by controllers, they usually work with younger guys:

This is a narrow-gauge railway standard for the USSR with a width of 750 millimeters:

The length of the main track is 3 kilometers 790 meters, the journey takes only 10 minutes one way:

We show the tickets, get on the train:

Here, too, everything is grown-up, there is even a stopcock:

There is a trash can hanging between each row of seats, there is no such service even in adult trains:

3

Having passed three intersections, an overpass and a bridge across the channel of the Slepyanskaya water system, the train arrives at the Sosnovy Bor station:May and some other holidays here arrange various performances, set up tents:

But on ordinary days, the clearing is completely empty, there is absolutely nothing to do, and the most interesting thing is that even a mobile phone does not catch here, although it is only 300-400 meters from the nearest street:

Children take their duties very seriously, conductors stand by their cars, help passengers with small children get off, answer questions:

After turning around on the ring, the diesel locomotive stops at a special sign, the drivers are always in the cab, they don’t go anywhere: just a few minutes, after which the conductors call the passengers on the way back:

The journey to the starting point takes the same 10 minutes, the train arrives at the same platform from which it left only half an hour ago:

The train schedule depends on the day of the week, but the average running interval is about half an hour, so after dropping off old passengers, the train picks up new ones and leaves again along the same route:

Children's Railway operates from May to September, ticket price - 3. 5 rubles, children from one year old need a full ticket. On holidays, when mass events are organized, the price of tickets can increase several times. The ChRW is very popular with Minsk residents: on weekends, trains leave full every half an hour; during the 2016 season, young machinists transported about 43,000 passengers.
On December 24, in honor of the New Year holidays, the Children's Railway will resume work for two weeks with the New Year's Express 2017 program, they promise fairy-tale characters on the train and a theatrical performance at the Sosnovy Bor station.

Do you like what I do? Support the project:

Posts about Belarus:

01. Minsk Zoo
02. Minsk Zoo. Exotarium
03. By the roads of Belarus
04. Minsk on banknotes
05. Train to the National Airport
06. Festival "70 Years of Peaceful Sky". Aviation
07. Festival "70 Years of Peaceful Sky". Balloons and a concentration camp
08. Pronebo Festival
09. Minsk. Black spots of the Green Meadow
10. Minsk. Normandy format meeting
11. Children's railway

return to the block "Children about the war"

Little Tanya put a French book upside down and, moving her fingers along the page, quickly reads aloud.
- Vchela we spawned from cannons and puddles. My horse lanina in the legs.
- Tanya, Tanya! Kolya calls her. - Let's go to war.
- All right! I love needles in war. I will be a general.
- No, you will be a nurse.
- All right! And my dolls will also be sisters. Yes?
- Certainly!
Three chairs are installed in the corner of the nursery, which are covered with a large mother's scarf - this is a dressing station. A paper flag with a red cross flies over it.
- And who will be the doctor? - asks Volodya?
- Let Misha.
- Fat ten-year-old Misha is not happy.
- Smart! Be your own doctor. When I am a Cossack colonel.
“It's good to be a doctor,” Volodya convinces him. The doctor has silver shoulder straps, checker. All the wounded come to him and salute him. He is very important.
Misha doesn't give up.
- I don't like doctors. Let Tanya be a doctor, and the doll Nina and Varya be sisters of mercy.
- I'll be a doctor, please, - Tanya asks.
- Fine!
- Let's build trenches, offers, Kolya.
- Will we have guns? - asks Mitya.
- Certainly. After all, I am an artillery general, - Volodya declares importantly.
Children roll up the carpet, put it on top of the soft sofa, and the trench is ready.

Children and war. Allies. Taking wire fences. Painting by S.Begg.
// Niva. - 1915. - No. 52. - S. 969.

Volodya sets up his battery, pieces of hard cardboard rolled into tubes.
- Sight one hundred and eighty-two! First star - volley!
And he himself, puffing out his thick red cheeks, shouts out:
- Boom!.. Boom!..
Mitya opened fire in batches.
- Pah! Groin! T-r-r-r!..
“Mr. Colonel,” Volodya turns to Misha. - We need to do reconnaissance.
- Listen, General! Stop, crow, quietly!
Misha arches his neck and jumps in place. A black hot horse, and it is not so easy to deal with him, but Misha is an excellent rider.
- Hundred, trot - march! - Commands Misha and, throwing his head back and snorting, rushes to a dangerous reconnaissance.
- Mr. Doctor, Tanya, Volodya shouts, why don't you bandage the wounded?
- Where are the lazy ones? There are no lazy ones.
- Fool, pretend that they are.
- I'll tell my mother that you say "words."
- Sneak!.. Well, well, don't cry. I won't, Tanechka! Tie it up, like this.
- Come on, machine guns! Misha shouts and fusses, imitating a crowd of soldiers setting up machine guns.
- Ta-ta-ta! ..
- Boom Boom Boom!
The battle flares up in earnest. Misha is wounded in the head, but he does not leave his position. Tanya bandaged his wound with a handkerchief, and he is still selflessly firing rifle and machine-gun fire.
- Well done, Colonel! - Volodya encourages him. I will give you George...
- Glad to!
Work is in full swing at the dressing station. The doctor runs from one wounded man to another, bandaging them and babbling softly:
- Dear soldier, does it hurt? And I'll give you candy and chocolate. Drink up, drink up, drink up. It's not bare at all. And I'll give you a roll.
The wounded recover quickly and leave for positions, and they are replaced by others.
Dolls Nina and Varya, spreading their wax hands wide and staring motionless into space, are actively helping the doctor.
At a frantic gallop, but at the head of his hundred, Misha returns from reconnaissance. He was wounded in the arm, but that's nothing.
“The enemy has settled in the forest,” he reports to Volodya. - We had a dashing fight with them. If you please, I brought five thousand prisoners.
- Well done Colonel!
"Attack," the general commands. Forward, cheers!...
Artillery, infantry and Cossacks rush into a swift attack. Behind them, on their short, heavy legs, the medical staff minces, forgetting about their doctoral duties.
- Ula! Tanya screams the loudest.
The battle is over. The army is located near the fires and indulges in a sweet rest.
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