There Will Come Soft Rains (short story)

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This article is about the short story. For the poem by Sara Teasdale, see There Will Come Soft Rains.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" is a short story by science fiction author Ray Bradbury which was included in the collection The Martian Chronicles.

[edit] Plot summary

Set on April 28th-29th 1985 (later versions are dated August 4, 2026 to avoid confusion) in an unspecified city (in the city of Allendale, California in later versions), "There Will Come Soft Rains" details the daily tasks of a robotic house after its inhabitants (Mr. and Mrs. McClellan and their son and daughter) have died in a nuclear war. The house is undamaged, fully automated and sensitive to its owners and their requests and needs. It continues to serve the dead family, unaware of their absence, though aware of other external and internal disruptions such as the weather and birds attempting to land on it. Throughout the story, the house makes breakfast, disposes of it uneaten, and performs various domestic tasks. The house communicates via a set of recorded and synthesized voices, starting a morning wakeup call at 7:00 AM and at 7:15 it announces the date three times in the kitchen.

The title comes from Sara Teasdale's poem, "There Will Come Soft Rains" which is selected and recited by the audio system of the house to entertain the already non-existing Mrs. McClellan at 9:05 PM in the study. The poem talks about the extinction of mankind, thus giving a dramatic power to the actual events of the story.

Only one living thing makes an appearance in the story: a wild dog (though a family dog in later versions), which had been slowly dying from radiation poisoning. It makes its way back to the house only to die; its corpse is then swiftly removed by the house's automated cleaning robots.

The author at one point mentions the family's silhouettes which were permanently burned onto the side of the house (as seen at Hiroshima) when they were vaporized by the fireball flash of the atomic blast.

In the end, the house catches on fire when a tree branch falls through a window and smashes into bottled cleaning solvents, which shatter and spill onto the stove. Though the house attempts to save itself with water and chemical extinguishers, its days of meaningless service have left it understocked for emergencies and it quickly succumbs to the blaze. As another day dawns, the house has been reduced to a smoking pile of rubble. Only one wall remains standing and as its built-in sensors detect the sunbeams, the last and lone recorded voice keeps tolling out the new day's date over and over again.

[edit] Adaptations

• In 1953, an adaptation of the story was published in issue 17 of the comic book Weird Fantasy, with art by Wally Wood.

• In 1956, the story was made into a radio play for the X Minus One series. The episode is available as an mp3.

• In 1962, actor Burgess Meredith recorded this story, which was released on LP by Prestige Lively Arts (30004), along with "Marionettes, Inc.", also by Ray Bradbury.

• In 1977, August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains was released. It used the resources of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop under the direction of Malcolm Clarke.^[1]

• In 1984, Soviet studio Uzbekfilm produced "There Will Come Soft Rains" as a short animated film.^[2]

• In 2008, a theater/dance/puppetry adaptation served as the final act of a New York Fringe Festival show named after the story.^[3]

• The 2008 video game Fallout 3 references the story, featuring a robot in a townhouse (belonging to a McClellan family, at 2026 Bradley Place) still serving its dead owners long after a nuclear war. The robot can be instructed to read the eponymous poem to the (long-dead) children, among other household tasks.

[edit] References