The Veldt (short story)
| "The Veldt" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Ray Bradbury |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction short story |
| Published in | The Saturday Evening Post |
| Publication type | Periodical |
| Media type | Print (Magazine) |
| Publication date | 23 September 1950 |
"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.
In the story, two children solve their disappointment with their parents by escaping to a simulated grassland that proves all too real.
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 the 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.
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.
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