8.4 /10 1 Votes
Media type Print (Magazine) Originally published 23 September 1950 Original language English Publication type Periodical literature | 4.2/5 Goodreads Publication date 23 September 1950 Country United States of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Genre(s) Science fiction short story Published in The Saturday Evening Post Adaptations The Illustrated Man (1969) Similar Ray Bradbury books, Classical Studies books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"The Veldt" is a short story written by American author Ray Bradbury. Originally appearing as "The World the Children Made" in the 23 September 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, it was republished under its current name in the 1951 anthology The Illustrated Man.
Contents
In the story, two children solve their anger with their parents by escaping to a simulated grassland that proves all too real.
Plot summary
The Hadley family lives in an automated house called "The Happylife Home," filled with machines that do every task. The two children, Peter and Wendy, become fascinated with the "nursery," a virtual reality room able to reproduce any place they imagine.
The parents, George and Lydia, begin to wonder if there is something wrong with their way of life. Lydia tells George, "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." They are also perplexed and confused that the nursery is stuck on an African setting, with lions in the distance, eating a dead figure. There they also find recreations of their personal belongings and hear strangely familiar screams. Wondering why their children are so concerned with this scene of death, they decide to call a psychologist.
The psychologist, David McClean, suggests they turn off the house, move to the country, and learn to be more self-sufficient. The children, reliant on the nursery, beg their parents to let them have one last visit, who let them. When they come to fetch them, the children lock them in as they are killed by a pride of lions. When David comes by to look for George and Lydia, he finds the children enjoying lunch on the veldt and sees the lions eating figures in the distance. This is revealed to be George and Lydia, whose remains were the figure eaten by the lions earlier on.
Adaptations
The story was adapted (by Ernest Kinoy) into an episode of the radio program Dimension X in 1951. The same script was used in a 1955 episode of X Minus One, with the addition of a frame story in which it was explained that George and Lydia were not really slain, and that the entire family was now undergoing psychiatric treatment.
"The Veldt" was adapted for the cinema as part of The Illustrated Man (1969).
"The Veldt" was adapted into a stage production by Bradbury and can be found in a volume titled The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit & Other Plays in 1972.
Circuito Chiuso ("Closed Circuit") a 1978 Italian crime film directed by Giuliano Montaldo explicitly refers to "The Veldt" and Ray Bradbury.
In 1984, Michael McDonough of Brigham Young University produced "The Veldt" as an episode of Bradbury 13, a series of thirteen audio adaptations of famous Ray Bradbury stories, in conjunction with National Public Radio.
The Canadian-produced anthology television series The Ray Bradbury Theater included the story, scripted by Bradbury, as Episode #29 (Season 4, Episode 11). It was first broadcast 10 November 1989, and starred Linda Kelsey, Malcolm Stewart, Shana Alexander, and Thomas Peacocke.
The BBC produced a radio play version in of "The Veldt" in 2007, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
In 1983, Swedish Television premiered a TV movie based on "The Veldt," under the title Savannen ("The Savannah"), with Bibi Andersson in the role of Lydia, and Erland Josephson playing David.
In 1987, a movie "Veldt" was made in the USSR (directed by Nazim Tulyakhojaev), where several of Bradbury's stories were intertwined. It was billed as the "First Soviet Horror Movie."
The 1994 video role-playing game Final Fantasy VI by Squaresoft features an in-game area called the "Veldt", which features many allusions to the original story (particularly regarding the origin story of Gau).
In 2010, Stephen Colbert read "The Veldt" for the NPR radio program Selected Shorts before a live audience at Symphony Space.
In 2012, shortly before author Ray Bradbury's death, Canadian musician deadmau5 produced a song titled "The Veldt," including lyrics by Chris James based upon the story. The music video, released after Bradbury's death, is dedicated to him and shows a young boy and girl wandering through an African veldt and witnessing several plot points from the story, including vultures, and a lion eating an unseen carcass. It is illustrated in a similar fashion to that of the video game Limbo.