There Will Come Soft Rains

• Genre: PostApoc
• Published: 1950
• Author: Ray Bradbury
• ISBN#: As part of The Martian Chronic
• Reviewed by: ZombieBait on Fri 19 Oct 07

This short story is about a day in the life of a futuristic smart house shortly after the apocalypse.

What seems odd from the very beginning is that, literally, the lights are on but no one is home. The house prepares breakfast and reports the weather for the day, but no one eats the food so it is dutifully disposed of and the dishes are cleaned and replaced in the cupboards. Cleaning mice, not unlike many small Roombas, do their usual circuit. As the story progresses, the reader is lead to the grim conclusion that the family had been relaxing in the back yard when a nuclear explosion destroyed the world around them. The most striking image for me was the silhouette on the back of the house – a boy and a girl, presumably siblings and former occupants of the house, and a ball arcing through the air, never to be caught. The only organic action in the automated house occurs when the family dog returns home, dying. The house's only reaction is to dispose of the body after the dog breathes its last with another wave of cleaning mice.

As the hours pass, the house begins its evening routine, from dinner to filling and emptying the bath for the children. The only clue the reader gets to the family's identity is when the house offers to read “Mrs. MacClellan”'s favorite poem by Sarah Teasdale.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
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;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.


Note: Sarah Teasdale's work is public domain since it was composed prior to 1923 and the author died over 70 years ago.

When a flaming branch crashes through a window and ignites cleaning chemicals, the house does its best to defend itself. Its reservoir of water has been used up by drawing baths for an absent family and no water can flow in from the ruined sewage system. The house that cared for humans had no humans to care for it and inevitably the house 'dies'. The reader is then granted a glimpse of the surroundings. There is nothing but a wasteland where a neighborhood once stood and the house in the story had been the last structure standing. Just as in the poem that this story shares its name with, the message is that for all of man's achievements and inventions, we can't last forever.

What I liked:
- This is a wonderful example of “show, don't tell” that you hear so often in creative writing classes. If the reader was told everything at the beginning the story would lose all of its appeal.
- The house and all of its services are realistic – no one likes the drudgery of cooking and cleaning every day, so why not automate it? I think it's perfectly reasonable that the automation went to the point of existing entirely without human intervention even though it was created expressly to care for humans.
- The contrast of what would have been scenes out of a Norman Rockwell picture – children at play, mom tucking the children in at night – with the bleakness of a world just after a nuclear blast.


What I didn't like:
- I can't actually think of anything. Other people may find things to dislike but I've loved this story ever since I first read it in seventh grade. I admit it, I'm biased.

Final Scoring:

Personal Recommendation: If you haven't already, read it!

Availablity:
  Easily found in many short story volumes. There is also a short film and radio version (see forums)
  Amazon  

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