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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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

#341

Post by jandrese »

ben_w wrote: post #178
frmersdog wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head, events in popular science fiction that have "already occurred": First Laughing Man Incident - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2024) Third Impact - Neon Genesis Evangelion (2015) Fourth Corporate War - Cyberpunk (2022) Geisel Library Walk - Rainbows End (2025) 2020 Tokyo Olympics - Akira (2020)

> Rainbows End Very good timing, not for walking houses and sharding of consensus reality with ubiquitous AR, but for physical destruction of books to speed up scanning.

Vernor Vinge has always been uncommonly prophetic, even by Sci Fi author standards.

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

#342

Post by OkayPhysicist »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #332
ElevenLathe wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear of nuclear war was useful for midcentury US elites because it could be transmuted into fear of Communism. Since 1991 it just isn't as useful for that purpose, so the culture industry doesn't push it anymore. Their use against Japan in WW2 has also (just about) fallen out of living memory.

[flagged]

Whenever the "tens of millions killed by communism" number gets trotted out, it's invariably considering everybody who died due to lack of assigned resources under communism. Which is fine, but it means you need to go over to the west and count up all the people who died of preventable means (not to mention making per-capita adjustments) as well for a fair point of comparison.

Every person who died of preventable illness because they couldn't afford healthcare? Death by capitalism. Every dude who puts a bullet in their head because of financial strain? Death by capitalism. Every person who's ever died of complications of malnutrition while their country exports food (the U.K., large swathes of Africa).

Numbers are meaningless when you don't put them in context.

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

#343

Post by jandrese »

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.

There Will Come the Soft Rains feels like it was written right after a visit to the World's Fair back in the Atomic Era. A critique of the unlimited promises about the future but virtually no thought put towards the possible consequences of said future. It's a very post-war story.

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

#344

Post by 20after4 »

graemep wrote: post #296
hedora wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only it was as low as 25% today. Some members of the Trump administration / military say a specific goal is to bring about Armageddon, and have not been fired for it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran... Other religious fanatics outside the gov’t take a more circumspect public stand on this particular holy war, but aim to use the Supreme Court to convert the US into a religious dictators…

Your links do not substantiate your claim. There are quotes of Peter Hesgeth apparently expressing some pretty whacky beliefs, but not that particular one.

Hegseth is a crusader more than he's a bringer of Armageddon. Unfortunately, there are plenty of christian Zionists in the administration who do indeed want to bring about Armageddon. This other guardian article covers the topic much more thoroughly:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/...

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

#345

Post by jandrese »

kibwen wrote: post #17
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

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 fall of the USSR chopped the legs out from under these stories. Nobody is worried about Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan unleashing global thermonuclear war. That scare tactic just doesn't work. Even back in the 60s a lot of that paranoia was the result of internal propaganda.

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

#346

Post by jonahx »

XorNot wrote: post #258
troyvit wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the most unrealistic part of this story is how all the IoT automation continues to work in the absence of the Internet. It's actually one way this story about the apocalypse is more hopeful than the present day. We don't need the internet to make most of the things in that story work, but in our timeline we'd add it anyway to get and sell those good analytics.

Except that isn't really why it happened: iot being Internet tied is because it's much, much easier to get devices to work when you control at least one side of the server with skilled professionals rather then your average home user. And no one has really come up with an alternative: home assistant is good, but it's not for the non-techy. I will squarely blame IPv4 for some of this: NAT has meant that the key applic…

> it's much, much easier to get devices to work when you control at least one side of the server with skilled professionals rather then your average home user.

No, practicality is not the main reason these unnecessary connections are added. The main reasons are 1. to sell and enforce subscriptions and 2. to collect and sell data.

Is it just easier to get your car seat warmers to work when they can connect to the internet and make sure you're paid up?

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

#347

Post by tavavex »

automatic6131 wrote: post #143
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.

> In the living room the voice-clock sang, Connecting to Brand(tm) servers... Connecting to Brand(tm) servers... Connecting to Brand(tm) servers...

In the real 2026, the automated firefighting system wouldn't work - it would lose connection to the internet and fail to verify whether the customer is still enrolled in the Max Protection Pro subscription.

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

#348

Post by fallinghawks »

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…

It shouldn't be astonishing. The bombs dropped in Japan did create nuclear shadows of human beings when their bodies were annihilated. When Bradbury wrote it (1950), that was very, very fresh.

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

#349

Post by darkwater »

excalibur wrote: post #206
darkwater wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I should have said "at least the day before"

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

#350

Post by mbernstein »

the_af wrote: post #202
inigyou wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

I'm not a spambot - it just felt sort of poignant for today. Ultimately, doesn't bother me that it got downvoted. Created some discussion, I got maybe mistaken for a bot - so all good ;).
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