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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#51

Post by brazzy »

philosopherNoob wrote: post #20

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.

What's the most unsettling to me is that the one thing that makes it less apt to modern life is the implication that at 8 PM, everyone is at home. Nobody still working or commuting.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#52

Post by cachius »

schoen wrote: post #22

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!).

> "Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#53

Post by srean »

philosopherNoob wrote: post #20

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.

I relate strongly with The Pedestrian. I love going for long walks at odd hours.

In the United State police's defence once I was walking all by myself at 3 in the morning in Mountain View, peeking and crouching among the bushes for good shots with my camera. A police car approached me. It ended up being a non-threatening conversation. It was early 2002. All in all quite surprising given my brown skin and then long beard.

https://ibb.co/j9XFgjDS

https://ibb.co/Y7VyGb1w

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#54

Post by ethagnawl »

myself248 wrote: post #25
SamuelAdams wrote: post #12

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.

"shake us off" sounds more like George Carlin: > We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.

You left out the best part:

> The planet is fine, the people are fucked.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#55

Post by antonvs »

pbronez wrote: post #5

Yeesh how bleak

It was published 5 years after World War II was ended via the first ever nuclear warfare. The silhouettes on the house wall are a clear allusion to the shadows of people left on buildings in Hiroshima. The bleakness was a warning and reminder of what was at stake at the time.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#56

Post by antonvs »

kurthr wrote: post #31
tomhow wrote: post #3

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.)

Yes, I set a calendar notification then. Don't mind the dup, though.

After the apocalypse, this story will appear every August on HN, even though there’s no-one left to read it. But there will, somehow, still be complaints about the dup.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#57

Post by flyinghamster »

water-data-dude wrote: post #16

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

You're not kidding. I read this in the late 70s, and it's a bit of a gut punch to revisit it now, on the very day of the story, in a world where smart homes are somewhat there and nuclear saber-rattling is once again the theme of the day.

Of course, writing about the future means you won't get everything right - especially once specific dates or years enter the picture and technologies are in use that haven't been invented (or invented and discarded) yet. Nobody predicted that World War III would last as long as it has, or be so full of utter stupidity. On the technological front, film projectors are relics in this era, and film-based storage never really caught on. On the other hand, videotape wasn't around in 1950, and even audio tape was a fairly new technology.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#58

Post by cachius »

More books and stories are listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_holocaust_fict... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_and_post-a...

The Beast of Heaven by Victor Kelleher is very relevant to current affairs. Two AIs guard a nuclear weapon in endless discussions, drawing heavily from Milton's Paradise Lost and the bible.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2333226.The_Beast_of_Hea..., borrowable at https://archive.org/details/beastofheaven0000kell/page/2/mod...

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#60

Post by Brian_K_White »

briansm wrote: post #49
schoen wrote: post #22

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!).

Reminds me of when November 2019 came and went (the date that Blade Runner is set in)

Several years ago when a meme about Back to the Future was going around I made: https://gifyu.com/image/blAbD
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