Ray Bradbury wrote the short story "All Summer in a Day" in 1954, when all that was known about the planet Venus was that it has heavy constant cloud cover and rain storms. Bradbury imagined Venus to be like a rainforest. Today we know that it has little water—its water was boiled away by runaway global warming. It is mostly carbon dioxide with sulfuric acid. The storms are actually slow moving at the surface and much faster at high altitudes. The atmosphere is so heavy the pressure is like being a mile below the ocean on Earth—impossible for humans to live on.
The characters in the story are waiting for the return of the Sun which comes roughly every seven years. For most of the children, they are waiting for a chance to lash out at Margot, a girl from Earth who remembers the Sun. They distrust both the predictions and Margot's memory.
Bradbury's short story "All Summer in a Day" is set on the planet Venus, where it rains constantly and the sun only shines for a brief period of time every seven years. At the beginning of the story, an elementary class full of children, who have grown up on the planet Venus and have never seen the sun, anxiously wait for the rain to stop. They are "ready" to finally experience sunlight for the first time as it shines on their gloomy, rainy planet later in the day. They are also excited to finally be able to leave their underground classroom to play outside for the first time. The only student that remembers what the sun looks and feels like is a quiet, sensitive girl named Margot, who is slightly older than her classmates and grew up in Ohio before traveling to Venus with her parents. Unfortunately, the elementary students resent Margot for her experience and knowledge regarding the sun and end up locking her in a closet while they enjoy the warm sunlight. Tragically, Margot does not get to experience the sunlight, which she desperately desires to see and feel.
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