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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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

#201
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.

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

#202
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nature won't know or care if humanity erases itself. You got downvoted for paraphrasing the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains", from which Bradbury took the title of his story. I supposed that's to be expected online. Small consolation, but at least some of us understood you :) 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 u…

It's common for spammers to use an LLM to post a short summary of a thing in the thing's comments, to attract upvotes.

Oh! I didn't even think it could be a spambot. You may be right :(

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

#203
post #99
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great sleight-of-hand of the 20th century is that it never went away, we all just collectively decided to stop thinking about the fact that at every given moment for the rest of human history we'll never be more than thirty minutes away from total nuclear annihilation.

The world doesn't have enough nuclear weapons for "total nuclear annihilation".

To end all humans with the weapons directly? Indeed not.

To break all logistics chains, ending most industrial output, reducing carrying capacity back to the pre-industrial age? That I think is still doable.

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

#204

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 beca…

[flagged]

Because those other groups are not privileged. Criticizing the people in power is always okay and it should be encouraged.

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.weaverobotics.com/ And Toyota robotics has been trying to solve loading dishwashers for at least 7 years. And that's all the housework required really, vacuuming, mopping, dishwasher un/loading, picking random stuff off the floor, dusting is another minor thing to have done. The vast majority of labor has already been solved with dishwashers and washing machines and dryers, electric ovens and stoves.

Loading dishwashers has been solved. Instead of moving the dishes from the storage place to the cleaning place, you just make them both the same place.

My mother loves fridge magnets, and there was a functional magnet on the dishwasher. It consisted of two oblong wooden signs connected by a chain. The top had a magnet and the bottom dangler was reversible. The top read "DISHES ARE", and you could swap the bottom to read "CLEAN" or "DIRTY"

Now some may ask why anyone would need a sign for such an obvious status. But my parents are boomers, and they maintain a pipeline of dishes such that Dad licks his plate clean, then they are scraped into trash, then rinsed in the sink, then placed in the dishwasher. So perhaps the dishwasher may only be cutting grease and sanitizing, but to the uninitiated, we are thankful for that magnet-sign to tell us whether the dishes are clean, or just look that way.

They also rinse and clean many things before putting them in the trash or recycling. They don't even drink sugary sodas, but every Diet Coke can is meticulously restored to pristine metallic gleam before Dad stomps and crushes them.

I was pleased to augment Mom's magnet collection by traveling to Europe via London. Now there is an official TfL notice on her refrigerator to "MIND THE GAP".

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day is young!

It happened the day before, since children were still playing. We are safe.

My impression was that it had happened several days to a few weeks prior. Enough time for the house through ordinary daily activity to largely exhaust its water reserves. Of course most of today's actual houses don't keep that much on hand, but it sounds like this one had a sizable store at one point.

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

#207

The most interesting thing about science fiction to me isn't the things the authors get right, but what they get wrong. Like, the whole house talking in a ChatGPT voice, intelligent appliances, etc: brilliant prescience. But he still thought we'd be having linoleum on our floors...

The one that stuck out to me was all the automation, full breakfast etc but the house has to remind them to pay the bills.

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

#208

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 beca…

I've always thought, easily, we humans were our own worst enemy. But that's nothing new, it's been known for many different eras. What gets me is we don't seem to care. Obviously many do, but why not enough?

Egomaniacs seem to always be the problem, but when one pops up in a country, the people, whether they have a choice or not, protect/ignore them. Your disposable remark, to me, is the key. Most need to wake to this fact and at least talk about it. (As for Hal Lindsay, he's just like any other nutjob author who uses grains of some truth to create fear and anxiety to promote his narrative.)

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

#209
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His source and claims seem backed up - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Great_Planet_Earth

Where do you see there that 25% of the U.S. population cheered for nuclear annihilation?

25% might be low for the "better dead than red" crowd, given the lasting and widespread popularity of communism in the worker's paradise that is America.

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

#210

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?

The things we enjoy doing, we prefer to do ourselves. For example: coding.
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