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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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

#281

Post by adamc »

apelapan wrote: post #278
billiam wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quaint? We are the closest we've ever been to nuclear annihilation, according to the experts: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/

Nuclear annihilation on any sort of global scale is further off than ever in the past 60-70 years or so. The doomsday clock is mostly worrying about climate change, conventional war and Facebook boomers spreading and believing fake news. I don't mean that things are fine, just that Nuclear annihilation is less of a concern than some make it out to be.

No. The past year has substantially nudged things in the other direction.

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

#282

Post by Imnimo »

billiam wrote: post #259
paulorlando wrote: post #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 co…

Quaint? We are the closest we've ever been to nuclear annihilation, according to the experts: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/

The doomsday clock covers general catastrophe, not just nuclear annihilation.

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

#283

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

twotwotwo wrote: post #28

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 t…

Thank you very much for making me aware of this wonderful artist.

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

#284

Post by adamc »

rob74 wrote: post #252
armagon wrote: post #177

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?

That's one of the usual failures of science fiction: most authors imagine technological progress, but don't also predict what societal changes it might bring. So this family had a quaint picture-book suburban 1950s life, just with robots. Same as Asimov's Detective Baley smoked a pipe and had a traditional 1950s marriage with a stay-at-home wife - just with robots...

I think you have to distinguish what the author can imagine and what the audience could likely accept. Part of writing stories is engaging the readers, who have biases of their own.

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

#286

Post by inigyou »

SoftTalker wrote: post #269
marmarama wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bars, restaurants and supermarkets have glass fronted refrigerators and freezers the world over, and yes, most are double glazed. They're just less efficient and more likely to break. In a commercial environment that's worth it to show off the contents, but the trade off is different in a domestic setting.

I mean, supermarkets have huge freezer and cooler cases with no doors at all. The efficiency loss is just the cost of merchandising.

This actually isn't so bad with chest freezers, as the cold air in the freezer doesn't mix too much with the warm air above.

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

#287

Post by inigyou »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #274
inigyou wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fridge dispensed a verification can.

Which of these apocalyptic landscapes contain traffic lights?

Minecraft Bedrock Edition (the one Microsoft most heavily pushes) uses a traffic light to show when you need to pay more money, I heard.

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

#288

Post by lantastic »

paulorlando wrote: post #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 co…

On topic of fear of nuclear war:

After reading Daniel Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine, I'm surprised we as a species are still around.

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

#289

Post by blooalien »

worksonmine wrote: post #133
nahuel0x wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as we know life is only present on Earth, we presuppose that in the vastness of Cosmos there are other instances of it or that it can re-emerge from almost zero, but the reality is that we simply don't know. So maybe there is a possibility that wiping out all the life on Earth also wipes it from the entire Cosmos, forever.

"Humanity" is far from "all the life on Earth". Nature will be better off once it happens.

> Nature will be better off once it happens.

As long as "it" happens before we poison or otherwise harm our planet beyond some "tipping point" after which Earth becomes "inhospitable" to most/all "complex" life in general.

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

#290

Post by hamdingers »

chpatrick wrote: post #156
thrtythreeforty wrote: post #134

I read this story in 4th grade. It felt like the future. Now, it feels like most of the technology is within reach - at least, it could be built. The automated stove being the main exception. But the most unrealistic part of this story is how all the IoT automation continues to work in the absence of the Internet.

Check out Home Assistant.

This. Not only does everything still work in an internet outage, mine actively detects and heals most internet outages by power cycling the modem with a smart plug.
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