There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

"Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn."

Bradbury describes the fully automated smart home, but its technology does obviously not extend into the garden exterior. Funny - that in reality robot vacuum cleaners and robot mowers were actually among the first gadgets in automated smart homes.

I perceive this as a flaw in the story. The author had a very prophetic vision of technology in future, and with the silhouettes on the wall he produced a strong emotional image, but he didn't realize the contradiction.

Except, of course, if he envisioned manual lawn mowing as a future leisure activity!

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!).

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.

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

Well. This is the day. It looks like this poster from the Vietnam War era may have come to pass. [0]

[0]https://www.etsy.com/listing/1266371519/vintage-original-197...

Lucky for us.

Dimension X, 1950: https://ia800901.us.archive.org/33/items/OTRR_Dimension_X_Si...

Burgess Meredith Reads Ray Bradbury, 1962: https://dn720300.ca.archive.org/0/items/meredith-bradbury/01...

Edit: Ray Bradbury read by Leonard Nimoy, 1975 https://archive.org/download/bradbury-nimoy/1-There%20Will%2...

I wonder if the latest Jurassic Park: Rebirth film drew from this?

There is a reference to global warming that is similar to the poem. That the world will heat up, and humanity will die, and the earth will continue on as it has for a million years. The film mentioned the “the earth will shake us off, like a summer cold”.

This seems fairly comparable to the soft rains poem in this piece.

For most of my life it's felt like we've been moving away from this scenario, but lately it's felt like we're sliding back towards it

This story was adapted into a short animated film in 1987:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LNHYz89sNc

(Russian, with subtitles.)

Today is August 4, 2026

I read Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky recently and I think it takes more-or-less takes direct inspiration from this story (and the poem) with modern aesthetics. I liked it, it’s more dark-humorous than strictly bleak, but still pretty bleak as you read between the lines.

The original download link's file having "...(1).pdf" in the name got me looking for a duplicate download for longer than I'd like to admit.

The story of a smart home that can't tell when you're not home! :-)

And nobody asinine enough to ask "where's my jetpack" because we'd need Von Neumann self replicating machines, a supply chain and significantly more robust coding to get there.

He might have done better to push it another 50 years. Problem being the other half of the MAD deal.

Not that the future isn't bleak, but I take heart we didn't all die in a massive thermonuclear war this timeline in the multiverse.

https://wnyc.org/story/bradbury-centennial-with-neil-gaiman

Yetide Badaki's marvelous reading begins at 3:50

Ray Bradbury has some great ideas, but I hate his writing style. It’s far too flowery, he’s on a spectrum that contains Hemingway at one extreme, and Bradbury near the other.

I prefer Hemingway. Writing style at least.

Mandatory link: the Zarelli soundtrack, using Leonard Nimoy's reading.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0DflgiMYRQP3UXtZ47NBus?si=XGR...

Yeesh how bleak

One of my favorites of Bradbury’s.

Haunting.

Earlier this year...

There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46847297 - Feb 2026 (52 comments)

(I’ve turned off duplicate detection due to the significance of the date.)