George and Lydia Hadley live in a state-of-the-art dwelling called a Happylife Home with their two ten-year-old children, Peter and Wendy. At the opening of the story, Lydia asks George to look at the nursery, saying it’s different than it was. Lydia wonders if they should call a psychiatrist to come and have a look. George and Lydia walk down a soundproof hall with motion-sensor lights that illuminate their path to the nursery.

The nursery, like the rest of the house, is state-of-the-art technology. As George and Lydia stand in the center of the room, the nursery walls seem to recede, and an African veldt, or grassland, appears. The ceiling becomes a sky with a hot sun overhead. The nursery room begins to produce the smells and the sounds of a veldt as well. George and Lydia can smell the grass, hear antelope hoofs, and see vultures flying overhead. George remarks that it all feels a bit too real. Lydia sees a pack of lions who have just been eating. She and George see a carcass of cleaned bones and wonder what animal the lions have killed.  

After a moment, the pack of lions approaches the couple and stands fifteen feet away, staring them. Suddenly, the lions start running towards George and Lydia. The two run out of the room and slam the door behind them. Lydia cries with fear while George laughs. George reminds Lydia that the whole thing is artificial, an effect created by the nursery’s “odorphonics,” sound system, and visual projections. Nevertheless, Lydia is scared and concerned about the nursery and the children. She tells George they must not let the children read any more about Africa and asks him to lock the nursery for a while. George knows how much this would upset the children, but he agrees to lock the nursery for a few days until Lydia’s nerves are calmed.

Lydia sits in a chair that automatically begins to rock and comfort her. She wonders aloud whether their Happylife Home leaves them with too little to do, making them feel obsolete. When George sarcastically asks if that means Lydia wants to do the all the cooking and the cleaning herself, Lydia replies excitedly that she would. She points out that George has been unusually nervous lately—smoking more, drinking more, and needing a sedative to sleep at night. Lydia recommends they shut the house off for a few days and take a vacation. Lydia then worries aloud that the lions in the nursery might escape, but George assures her that this is impossible.

Later that evening, George and Lydia sit down to a dinner prepared by their mechanical dining room table. George thinks about the nursery as he chews his food. He marvels that the nursery is able to sense what the children are thinking about and create a world around them in response to their desires. He thinks about the scene in the nursery and the presence of death on the veldt. These thoughts make him uneasy; he thinks Peter and Wendy are too young to be thinking about death. He decides to shut the nursery down for a while for the good of the children. George then gets up from the table and walks to the nursery. As he enters, George hears a scream and a lion’s roar, and he can see the lions far off eating a fresh carcass. He realizes that the nursery has been the African veldt for the past month and worries about the children’s minds settling into this pattern. George yells at the lions to leave, but they do not obey him. He calls out to the nursery room that he wants a different scene, something from Aladdin. Nothing changes. George demands a second time and again there is no response.

Back in the dining room, George tells Lydia that the nursery isn’t working properly. Lydia thinks it might be because the children are obsessed with the veldt. George wonders whether Peter, who is a clever child, might have tinkered with the machinery. Just then the children walk in. George asks the children to join them and tell them about Africa and the veldt, but Peter denies any knowledge of it. Peter tells Wendy to go and see if there’s an African veldt in the nursery and she runs down the hall. When Wendy reports back that it isn’t Africa, George goes to see for himself. Sure enough, the scene in the nursery is different: a cool, green forest. George tells the kids to go to bed and the children leave. In the corner of the room, George finds his old wallet. It has blood on it and smells like a lion has chewed on it.

That night, George and Lydia lie awake in bed and talk about the children and the nursery. They think Wendy probably changed the veldt to a forest but they don’t know why. George voices regret that they ever got the nursery in the first place. He feels that they have spoiled the children and spoiled themselves with all of the leisure the house and the nursery provide. Lydia notes that the children have been cold toward them ever since George told them they couldn’t visit New York via rocket on their own. George announces he’ll have David McClean, a psychologist, come visit the nursery the next day. A moment later, the couple hear the sound of screaming from the nursery. The screams sound familiar to them. George speculates that the children have broken into the locked nursery.

The next day, Peter asks his father if he intends to lock up the nursery for good. George explains that he won’t so long as Peter and Wendy conjure places other than the African veldt. George also tells Peter they are considering shutting off the whole house for a month. Peter expresses shock at the idea. He says he hated it when George shut off the picture painter. George did this so that Peter could learn to paint himself, but Peter says he doesn’t want to do anything but look and listen and smell. George tells him to go play in the nursery. Before leaving, Peter warns his father not to shut the house off.

Sometime later, David McClean arrives at the house. George asks him to look at the nursery. As they approach the nursery door, they hear the familiar screams of lion victims. They enter the nursery, which is again an African veldt, and tell the children to leave. The two men watch as the lions feed and George tries to see what it is the lions have caught. McClean tells George that he has a bad feeling—so bad that he wants George to tear down the nursery and have the children come and see him every day for a year for psychological treatment. McClean explains that the nursery has become a channel for the children’s destructive thoughts. He also admonishes George for spoiling his children. He says that the nursery has replaced George and Lydia as the children’s parents and that threatening to take it away is causing the children to feel hatred toward them. McClean goes on to encourage George to change his own life and to take more responsibility. As they watch the lions finish their meal, George wonders whether the lions could become real. Just before leaving the room, McClean finds Lydia’s blood-soaked scarf lying by the door. The two men walk to the fuse box and shut off the nursery.

Later in the day, the children are extremely upset when George tells them they are turning off the house and going on a vacation. Lydia asks George to turn on the nursery for a few minutes to calm them, but George refuses, saying David McClean is coming in thirty minutes to help them pack and then they are leaving. George begins turning off all of the appliances in the house and tells the family that they have lost their way. Peter starts to beg the house not to let George turn everything off. Peter then screams at his father that he hates him and wishes he were dead. The children beg and plead for the nursery to be turned on, and Lydia tells George that it couldn’t hurt to satisfy their desire for a minute. George finally relents, agreeing to turn the nursery on for just one minute while he finishes dressing for their trip. The children celebrate and run off to the nursery with their mother.

George goes upstairs to dress and Lydia joins him a few minutes later. They talk for a moment and are interrupted by the children calling them from downstairs for their parents to come quick. Worried, George and Lydia hurry down to the nursery. The children are nowhere to be seen, and the lions are there, staring at them. Suddenly, the door to the nursery slams shut. George and Lydia have been locked inside. George yells for Peter to unlock the door. He hears Peter on the other side telling someone not to let them turn off the nursery and the house. As George begins to try and reason with the children, the couple hears the lions walking toward them. They turn around to see the pack surrounding them and growling. As the beasts pounce, George and Lydia’s screams replicate those they have been hearing emanate from the nursery for the past month.

Sometime later, David McClean arrives at the nursery doorway. He sees Wendy and Peter eating a picnic lunch near the water hole on the veldt. McClean asks the children where their parents are, and the children say they’ll be here soon. McClean sees the lions in the near distance feeding on a fresh kill. Vultures are flying overhead. Wendy offers McClean a cup of tea.

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