Ray Bradbury's 'There Will Come Soft Rains' — a Haunting Vision of a Post-Human World
There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]
In this classic 1950 short story, Ray Bradbury imagines a fully automated house that continues its daily routines long after its human occupants have been annihilated by nuclear war. The house serves breakfast, cleans, and even reads poetry, but its mechanical perfection only underscores the absence of life. As the day unfolds, a fire breaks out, and the house's desperate attempts to save itself fail, leaving only silence. Bradbury's tale is a chilling meditation on technology's indifference to human fate and the fragility of civilization.
The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes; this was the one house left standing.
- paulorlando
It seems quaint now, but it’s astonishing how much the fear of war (especially nuclear annihilation) affected mid-century fiction.
In addition to "There Will Come Soft Rains" we have short stories like Stephen Vincent Benét’s "By the Waters of Babylon."
In that story, society has been bombed back to the stone age. Even religion is a stone age recreation. Something like hot and cold running water seems like it must come from gods’ magic.
This short story was particularly meaningful for me when I read it in school. I lived the same distance from New York City as the protagonist. And this was during the last days of the Soviet Union, which had placed my small hometown on its top 10 places to bomb list.
In Walter M. Miller Jr.'s book A Canticle for Liebowitz, we’re back in society that's recreating itself, with the Catholic Church acting as a centralizing force again, as after the fall of Rome and European plagues. Monks discover, collect, copy, and maintain shreds of texts.
Apart from increasing society-level anxiety, that focus on the dramatization of nuclear war is considered to have turned people away from nuclear power. Imagine the different potential outcomes had our authors not been so talented. You can go back to Plato’s Republic for explanations of why sad music, for example, is bad for society. But maybe the real effect was on swaying public opinion, protest movements, regulations, and where people choose to focus their productive talents.
- thrtythreeforty
I read this story in 4th grade. It felt like the future. Now, it feels like most of the technology is within reach - at least, it could be built. The automated stove being the main exception.
But the most unrealistic part of this story is how all the IoT automation continues to work in the absence of the Internet.
- mrloopex
Born in 1968 I missed “duck and cover” but rode the wave of Reagan brinkmanship with my skater friends until 1990, watching all the broadcast TV PSAs and songs and art about nuclear war. It was real. It pervaded daily life: the notion that two old white men were having a pissing contest with every human as disposable bargaining chips. And as always, 25% of the US population cheered for purification of the planet because Jesus was coming (see: Hal Lindsay).
- twotwotwo
Okay, a stretch for HN, but: singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada named an album released last year Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (meaning There Will Come Soft Rains). She talked about how she and her brother read The Martian Chronicles as kids and she remembered the Sara Teasdale poem quoted at the end. She said she composed the songs at a difficult time in her life and, I guess, something about that image in the story (and the poem in it) resonated then.
For anyone curious, there's a Tiny Desk Concert of songs from the album at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9PoZ0Vcb_s and an interview, in English, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcQbB7Dc83U
- nahuel0x
USSR animated version (1984): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oxP3TyuQx0
- armagon
The most striking incongruity with our modern era to me is that the family was all outside when the blast occurred. With pervasive screens, we just don't get outside like we used to.
And why on earth was that dad mowing when the house was able to take care of it?
- schoen
I think an appreciable number of people upvoting this and reading it or re-reading it may not have noticed why it was submitted today (the date on which the story takes place is tomorrow!).
- WillAdams
One thing which I find striking here is that a modern home and attendant conveniences roughly embodies 10--15 horsepower of effort, or the work of 40 or so full time house staff.
Thus far, the only notable robots are little disks which vacuum up floors (and they're getting outlawed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104371 ) and some innovations just haven't become widespread (an uncle of mine piped his home for a central vacuum system, compleat w/ a switch at each connection for on/off) --- I really can't recall a device with widespread demand since DVD and then Blueray players (or maybe the Wii? the PS2 counts as a DVD player arguably). I don't know anyone who has done more than read about "Smart Mirrors" for example....
What will be the first device to bottle up AI and other modern technologies in a package and become widely in-demand/distributed?
- r3trohack3r
A rendition of this was aired on X-Minus One
https://archive.org/details/OTRR_X_Minus_One_Singles/XMinusO...
- philosopherNoob
Though it makes me mourn for life lost when I read it even now, I never cared much for “There Will Come Soft Rains”. It’s a story exploring how what we make could continue on without us (for a time). But “The Pedestrian” (1951) is included at the end. It’s the last two pages out of that six page PDF. I think that one’s more apt to modern life. I read that one ages ago and it unsettled me.