Oh, it was to be so jolly! What a game! Such excitement they hadn’t known in years.
The opening line sets the background for the narrative. Ray Bradbury is known, of course, as a master of the science fiction genre; he is one of the legends. That said, “Zero Hour” belongs every bit as much to the genre of suspense as science fiction and that suspends commences with the set-up that begins with its opening lines. Enjoyment of the story depend greatly upon buying into the set-up; on the first reading at any rate.
There was the universal, quiet conceit and easiness of men accustomed to peace, quite certain there would never be trouble again. Arm in arm, men all over earth were a united front. The perfect weapons were held in equal trust by all nations. A situation of incredibly beautiful balance had been brought about. There were no traitors among men.
The mundane, prosaic, commonplace quality of everyday existence continues to be described as a means of building up a slow pace of suspense. And then among all this exposition of the normality of life, a tiny little bit of strangeness creeps. These lines are the equivalent of the familiar trope: “It’s quiet…too…quiet.” Things are too normal. Things are too perfect in the world the narrator has been describing.
“We’re having trouble with guys like Pete Britz and Dale Jerrick. They’re growing up. They make fun. They’re worse than parents. They just won’t believe in Drill. They’re so snooty, ’cause they’re growing up. You’d think they’d know better. They were little only a coupla years ago. I hate them worst. We’ll kill them first.”
Mink is a young daughter having a conversation with her mother. The irony here is that Mink—in the beautifully innocent way that all kids have of being perfectly forthright and honest at times—is not even trying to be deceptive. She speaks the truth. The response by her mother to this honesty—this almost cruelly malevolent honesty—in the horrifically innocent way that all parents have being perfectly patronizing to children professing an honesty that cannot be taken seriously. This chasm turns out to be a secret weapon for those not so well conditioned as parents.
They trembled together in silence in the attic, Mr. and Mrs. Morris. For some reason the electric humming, the queer cold light suddenly visible under the door crack, the strange odor and the alien sound of eagerness in Mink’s voice finally got through to Henry Morris too.
This is a story that is utterly dependent upon the routine recognition of the commonplace. Like a Spielberg fantasy or a Stephen King story, the horror builds slowly as a result of the inability of the adult imagination to see as clearly as that of the child. The story suggests that a price is paid for maturity that the adult can never fully appreciate because it requires that imagination to believe in the unlikely that is the domain of the immature mind.
