There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf](users.wpi.edu)
67 pointsby pmg1015 hours ago16 comments
  • twotwotwo10 minutes ago
    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 resonated then.

    For anyone curious, there's a Tiny Desk Concert of songs from the album at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9PoZ0Vcb_s and an interview, in English, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcQbB7Dc83U

  • schoenan hour ago
    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!).
    • ghaff22 minutes ago
      I didn't get the link to the current date. But aside from the fact there was no Mars linkage probably my favorite Bradbury short.
  • philosopherNoob2 hours ago
    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.
  • SamuelAdams2 hours ago
    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.

    • myself24832 minutes ago
      "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.

  • backpackviolet31 minutes ago
    I read Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky recently and I think it takes more-or-less takes direct inspiration from this story (and the poem) with modern aesthetics. I liked it, it’s more dark-humorous than strictly bleak, but still pretty bleak as you read between the lines.
  • water-data-dude2 hours ago
    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
    • kibwen2 hours ago
      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.
  • pmg1015 hours ago
    Today is August 4, 2026
  • purple-leafy3 hours ago
    Ray Bradbury has some great ideas, but I hate his writing style. It’s far too flowery, he’s on a spectrum that contains Hemingway at one extreme, and Bradbury near the other.

    I prefer Hemingway. Writing style at least.

    • Mikhail_Edoshin3 minutes ago
      As "Forever and the Earth" shows it wasn't just stylistic, but essential.
    • squigz2 hours ago
      Interestingly, I had the exact opposite reaction - I enjoyed the writing itself, but didn't find the premise all that interesting.
      • purple-leafy2 hours ago
        My friend, we exist at opposite ends of a spectrum ha
        • squigz2 hours ago
          Honestly I'm just tired of the doom and gloom. I should probably keep in mind this was written in 1950.
          • purple-leafy2 hours ago
            Try some Arthur C Clarke, less doom and gloom
  • andai3 hours ago
    This story was adapted into a short animated film in 1987:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LNHYz89sNc

    (Russian, with subtitles.)

  • HomeDeLaPot3 hours ago
    The story of a smart home that can't tell when you're not home! :-)
  • MengerSponge3 hours ago
    https://wnyc.org/story/bradbury-centennial-with-neil-gaiman

    Yetide Badaki's marvelous reading begins at 3:50

    • dredmorbius2 hours ago
      OT: Selected Shorts is wonderful.

      My one complaint: it's rarely revealed when a story was published, and it took me far, far, far too long to realise that many of my favourites were many decades old.

      That said, hearing a story read and acted by a skilled player is its own joy. I'm a good reader, but I'm not that level of good, and a few decades of listening to Shorts has improved my own inner-reading voice.

      Available as a podcast, though the back-catalogue is parlous brief, largely due to copyright, I suspect. Still worth following.

      • MengerSponge2 hours ago
        With the right podcatcher* settings the back-catalogue issue goes away. It's still annoying when you want to share a particularly moving story with friends.

        *) Overcast user here: "Smart Speed has saved you 419 hours beyond speed adjustments alone"

  • MrBuddyCasino2 hours ago
    Mandatory link: the Zarelli soundtrack, using Leonard Nimoy's reading.

    https://open.spotify.com/track/0DflgiMYRQP3UXtZ47NBus?si=XGR...

  • Aloha3 hours ago
    One of my favorites of Bradbury’s.

    Haunting.

  • pbronez3 hours ago
    Yeesh how bleak
    • flenserboyan hour ago
      if you find this to be bleak, don't read his "The Small Assassin", or much of anything in The October Country.
  • tomhow4 hours ago
    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.)