Ray Bradbury's 'There Will Come Soft Rains' is set today (2026-08-04)
Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" is set today (2026-08-04)
On August 4, 2026, the automated house in Ray Bradbury's classic short story continues its daily routine—preparing breakfast, cleaning, and reading poetry—despite the absence of its human inhabitants, who have been annihilated by a nuclear war. The story, first published in 1950, depicts a world where technology outlives humanity, and its eerie prescience resonates today as we approach the exact date it is set.
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done, Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;
- 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.
- gall
A warning about the linked copy: this isn't the standard text of Bradbury's story. I compared it with three other circulating copies and this version is only about 1,016 words versus ~2100. Notable omissions:
- the opening description of the empty house and the clock repeating into the silence
- almost the entire passage about the house's paranoid defenses, including its reactions to animals
- the dog searching the room for its owners, the pancake smell that attracts it, and the cleaning machines disposing of the body
- most of the nursery sequence, the artificial meadow, insects, animals, sounds, smells, jungle rain, receding landscape
- the cigar, warmed beds, much of the house's evening routine
- the fire consuming the Picassos and Matisses
- most of the extended description of the house dying
- much of the final image of dawn, rubble, etc
Worse, some passages are crudely compressed rather than deleted, e.g. the elaborate breakfast disposal, the chemical firefighting robots description.
Anyone encountering the story through this post should find another copy. This one appears to be an unlabelled, severely abridged, and rather badly corrupted version.
- 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).
- 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?
- 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...