Man cursed to be rained on forever

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Dave92f1

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Looking for a short story. Classic science fiction (~1940 to 1990).

A man is cursed such that no matter where he goes, the weather will always be rainy where he is.

Eventually he sells his services to farmers who need rain, etc.

Maybe Robert Heinlein?
 
From Stack Exchange - a possibility but not a short story, instead almost a full chapter of a longer book:-

Rob McKenna (from the fourth book in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy) The rain isn't making him insane, but it's certainly made him depressed.

And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.
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Haha I like that the guy sees a way to see the cloud has a silver lining--that he decides to make money.
I was thinking about the Mickey Rooney Twilight Zone where he grows so big and it occurs to me he could have made a fortune as a giant in movies or the circus or something.
 
Alex The G and T said:
There is a Lorry driver in Douglas Adam's "The Salmon of Doubt," who gets rained on everywhere he goes.

Maybe that character appears in more than one Adams story.
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That is Rob McKenna, lorry driver and Rain God, Danny referred to in the Hitchhiker's Guide.

I second that.
Except... I'll have to read it yet again, not remembering that he ever sold his rainmaker services. In my memories, he just keeps grumbling and just keeps driving and just keeps getting rained on.
 
Ravensquawk said:
not remembering that he ever sold his rainmaker services. In my memories, he just keeps grumbling and just keeps driving and just keeps getting rained on.
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I remember that, once the phenomena was discovered, he began getting paid from Spanish holiday resorts to NOT go there on holiday.

Was there also not something about Saudi Arabia offering him money to go there to irrigate the deserts?
 
Dave92f1 said:
Looking for a short story. Classic science fiction (~1940 to 1990).

A man is cursed such that no matter where he goes, the weather will always be rainy where he is.

Eventually he sells his services to farmers who need rain, etc.

Maybe Robert Heinlein?
Click to expand...
I think you're talking about a short story called "Rain, Rain, Go Away" by Isaac Asimov. It was published for the first time in 1959 as part of the collection called "Earth Is Room Enough." However, the story's plot doesn't exactly match the one you described. In this particular story, the Llewellyn family notices that it's always raining over their house while it's dry everywhere else. They eventually discover that their neighbor, a seemingly ordinary man named Angus, is actually responsible for this unusual localized weather pattern. Angus confesses that wherever he goes, rain follows him, and he's learned to accept and adapt to this peculiar condition. However, the story doesn't involve him offering his rain services to farmers. It seems like your description might be inspired by different elements from classic science fiction stories, though I'm not aware of a story that perfectly fits all your criteria. Would you like to hear about similar stories or themes? Let me know!
 
BlueMorpho said:
I think you're talking about a short story called "Rain, Rain, Go Away" by Isaac Asimov. It was published for the first time in 1959 as part of the collection called "Earth Is Room Enough." However, the story's plot doesn't exactly match the one you described. In this particular story, the Llewellyn family notices that it's always raining over their house while it's dry everywhere else. They eventually discover that their neighbor, a seemingly ordinary man named Angus, is actually responsible for this unusual localized weather pattern. Angus confesses that wherever he goes, rain follows him, and he's learned to accept and adapt to this peculiar condition. However, the story doesn't involve him offering his rain services to farmers. It seems like your description might be inspired by different elements from classic science fiction stories, though I'm not aware of a story that perfectly fits all your criteria. Would you like to hear about similar stories or themes? Let me know!
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Nooooo! Asimov's "Rain, Rain, Go Away" is about the family who befriends a neighbor family that plans their lives around avoiding rain.
The famous last line is "Honestly, you'd think they were made of sugar and afraid they'd...
... melt."

It was quickest to check the Wikipedia entry in case my memory had blurred.

But that story description, for which I don't know a title, sounds like a possible answer to the question.
 
Not a story, but maybe a storyline and recurring character in Al Capp's "L'il Abner" comic strip:
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Joe Btfsplk! Reminds me of reading Li'l Abner when I was 8, about him and the bug-eyed dude who gave a Triple Whammy and needed eyewash afterward. (Eight-year-olds do not understand Li'l Abner humor. Nor the big bazooms.)

I just read two SF classic short stories that had a curse-layer and a curse-victim, that had rain and floods in them -- "Saving Humanity" by Isaac Asimov and "The Iowan's Curse" by Charles G. Finney.

But the rain was just a part of the more general curse.

It causes me a salmon of doubt.
 
BlueMorpho said:
a short story called "Rain, Rain, Go Away" by Isaac Asimov.
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I must have read that once, the part about the family's neighbour does sound very familiar.
BlueMorpho said:
It seems like your description might be inspired by different elements from classic science fiction stories, though I'm not aware of a story that perfectly fits all your criteria.
Click to expand...
Ray Bradbury wrote a few about heavy rain too - "All in a Summer's Day," "There Will Come Soft Rains," and "The Long Rain." None fit the criteria.
 
Orcadian said:
No further forward in my understanding, alas. ;) Never read anything by Douglas Adams... Is a doubt is a quicksilver thing that you glimpse then it's gone?
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If you are going to read Adams, don’t start with that one.
 
Orcadian said:
No further forward in my understanding, alas. ;) Never read anything by Douglas Adams... Is a doubt is a quicksilver thing that you glimpse then it's gone?
Click to expand...
If you are inclined, read Hitchhiker's Guide first. (My 10-second check looked like Amazon has a lock on audiobook forms. They recently made some news for their hog's market share too. "Audible now has 63.4% of the U.S. audiobook market, Audible class action says.")

I liked it enough to be satisfied with Arthur Dent's adventures therein for years, and enough now to read The Salmon of Doubt for more on the unhappy man who doesn't know he is a rain god.

Also to find out whether it's the best fit for the question, or whether there's yet another story out there about a rain-cursed man who turns out to be good at sales and marketing.
 
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