Amazing Rain is an illustrated

Illustration

An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 Sam Brown

Sam Brown (artist)

Sam Brown, pseudonym of Adam Culbert, is an American illustrator and author most noted for his website, explodingdog. The gimmick of the site is that he draws pictures based on titles that visitors to the site send him via email or twitter...

. Published in November, 2004, it contains all new artwork, which nonetheless appears to be based on the artwork of his website, explodingdog.com.

Plot summary

The book begins with the main character describing the city he (or she; the character's gender is unclear) lives in, "the city you can not see out of". Many of the city's residents believe it is impossible to leave the city, but the main character suggests that he and the reader should leave, "because there is something I want to talk to you about".

Leaving the city, the main character and the reader drive until their car breaks down, at which point they continue on foot until they come across a house where a strange person (who looks like what is presumably an alien

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

 on the explodingdog site) invites them in, offers them soup, and tells stories. The first story is the story of the king, a narrative about a king who believes he has improved the land he rules, making his people happy (by forcing them to wear happy masks, a point that is not mentioned in the narrative but clear from the artwork). The king has also built "an amazing army" and "wonderful weapons".

Next, the alien host tells about the future. For example, in the future we will get our food

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...

 over the internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. The title of the book comes from the statement that, "in the future, the rain will never mess up your hair".

In the end, with the king's rockets raining down on them, the main character and the reader flee. The main character has decided that "I love you" and "I want us to be together". Torn to shreds by the rockets, they flee into the ocean, where they are eaten by fish.

Connections to explodingdog

Amazing Rain reveals some things about the characters that appear in the explodingdog.com drawings. The beings that appear to be constructed from cardboard boxes are revealed to, in fact, be made out of cardboard. The story of the king reveals a possible reason that several explodingdog characters are seen wearing masks.