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I read this in a collection of sci-fi short stories when I was in elementary school, so circa mid-to-late 1980s. It might have been published by Scholastic. It's a very short story.

It may have been set on Mars; the planet is low gravity. Sometime in the future, this planet, it could be the Moon or Mars, has been colonized.

A boy who's been out by himself playing baseball; his ball and bat are futuristic and the ball comes back to him. Then the boy is running home because of a "hail" warning, and his mother is possibly shouting at him from the door to run faster because the "hail" could kill him.

Later on, after the storm is over, trucks are coming to collect the "hail" on the ground. The mother wonders to herself why the people on Earth found these clear shiny rocks so enticing. (I think it's made clearer that they're diamonds, but I'm not sure.)

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  • Huh. Apparently, that's a theory about Saturn and Neptune, that it rains diamonds there. Haven't found anything yet, though.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Jul 24, 2014 at 22:00
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    Probably not Steve Buick's "Diamond Rain" (web.archive.org/web/20160110125552/http://…)
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 21:41
  • @FuzzyBoots - I thought of that one and discounted it
    – Valorum
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 21:42
  • I read this in the early eighties! I, too, Googled for the title but can't find it. I remember the boy being struck by a diamond and having it removed. (I think)
    – Mike G
    Commented Oct 1, 2022 at 23:53
  • I also read this in Elementary. It's likely, then, that it was in a Language Arts textbook.
    – Turbo
    Commented Nov 1, 2022 at 14:38

1 Answer 1

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There was a kids book in the 70's called Zillions that was abit like that , published by Penguin books i think

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    Hi, welcome to the site. You could improve this answer by editing it to explain why you think this might be the correct story, i.e. the ways in which it matches the one described in the question. Also note that the querent indicated that they were looking for a short story, not a book.
    – LogicDictates
    Commented May 1, 2022 at 19:03
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    There don't appear to be any stories with the title "Zillions".
    – DavidW
    Commented May 1, 2022 at 19:29
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    @DavidW - I believe OP is referring to Trillions by David Fisk (scifi.stackexchange.com/a/260740/20774) which doesn't match the description of the story, aside from a child being present as diamond-like objects fall from the sky.
    – Valorum
    Commented May 2, 2022 at 9:18
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    That is what i meant, sorry i read it along time ago. Thankyou for working out what i didn't know i knew. :)
    – Mark Kelly
    Commented May 16, 2022 at 4:56
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    @valorum It's actually Nicholas Fisk, although you may be conflating his pen name with his real name (David Higginbottom). Great author who was kind enough to reply to a letter from me many years ago!
    – Peter
    Commented Oct 2, 2022 at 6:29

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