Showing posts with label North American Lit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label North American Lit. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Prometheus Sunbound


We know its winter equivalent. But in summer? Is it possible to say we're sunbound?

In Ray Bradbury's "The Long Rain"(1950) a group of crashed astronauts make their way through the rainy jungles of Venus in search of a Sun Dome, which the indigenous Venusians keep destroying. One by one the crew goes mad. When the last of them reaches a Dome, we're not sure if its real or a hallucination.

Most everything Bradbury writes asks if what we are experiencing is real or, if not a hallucination, a construct. A heatwave is no different. The sun plays tricks on us, and the oasis we see is its opposite -- not water but a mirage.