Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains and James Tiptree Jr.'s The Last Flight of Dr. Ain

In his intriguing story There Will Come Soft Rains, Ray Bradbury portrays a dystopian future wherein all of humanity has been destroyed and all that remains is their creations, more specifically the technology they’ve created. By portraying this haunting image of a world decimated by simple human nature, Bradbury illustrates the idea that we, as a species, cannot resist our nature to expand beyond current limits and to explore unchartered territory, and in doing so, will have reached and will continue to reach places, literal and figurative, that we never should have visited or even had been willing to visit. The inevitable result is our demise.

In the story “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” the author Ray Bradbury wrote the story to make connections between modern day and the future. This story takes place in August 2026, where humans have perished from the land. The story begins in an empty house, where technology is calling to silence still believing humans are present, but all that is really left are the remains of the war that once took place. They reason for human’s disappearances is because, in the past of this story, humans became consumed by technology and they felt safe allowing it to be a main aspect of their lives.

Ray Bradbury’s short story, There Will Come Soft Rains, centers around a self-automated house within a technologically advanced and possibly post apocalyptic time period. Similar to many other works of Bradbury, the story begins with little to no context and can only be described as vague. However, Bradbury employs diction, metaphors, and imagery throughout to allow readers to grasp the setting and overarching atmosphere of the story.

“‘Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 20206, today is…’” (Bradbury 7). In Ray Bradbury’s short story, “There Will Come Soft Rain” The House is very high tech, efficient, and helpful. The story takes place in August, 2026; and shows what life could possibly be like if we do not take care of our enviroment.

Ray Bradbury’s August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains is a post-apocalyptic story of a single house standing in a city destroyed by nuclear warfare. With the story published in 1950, only five short years had passed from the infamous “Victory in Japan” commemoration that boomed across the United States celebrating the end of World War II. Although Americans were feeling victorious, they were haunted by the thought of nuclear warfare breaking out and the United States of America facing great repercussions for being the first to use the atomic bomb. These thoughts are what encouraged authors like Bradbury to speak out about what our future could hold. Bradbury tries to use a realistic story to make his generation question where these technology booms where taking mankind.

In his disturbing vision of the future represented in "There Will Come Soft Rains", Bradbury uses irony and juxtaposition to foreground the typical dystopian feature of society's illusion of perfection or normality. He asserts that in the event of such a cataclysm that this fictional society has suffered that it is completely absurd for the house (or society) to continue as if the world never ended. This alludes to Bradbury's post-war context where American society continued, without batting an eye at atrocious catastrophe that befell the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This evident in his use of irony in, "and one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study… until all the film spools burned,

In the short stories Fever Dream and There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury, a theme of evil and violence builds as the stories progresses. Through his use of figurative language and diction, Bradbury develops the plot to ultimately lead to physical and mental destruction.

Nuclear weapons pose a direct and constant threat to people. Not even close from keeping the peace, they breed fear and mistrust among nations. These ultimate instruments

In Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” through personification that emphasizes death, machines can have a negative effect on humanity’s future. In the short story, you can see that the time frame that the story taken place you can see that technology in the world has taken over. It has taken over so much that there is no use for humans any more. In the beginning of the story you can see that there is a lot of technology, then you realize that’s all that is.

“There Will Come Soft Rains” is a short story by Ray Bradbury set in place shortly after an atomic bomb struck Allendale, California. The dystopian story illustrates how technology will takeover and outlast nature and humans should nuclear power be used. The story is organized in chronological order, taking place on August 4, 2026, with hourly updates leading to the morning of August 5, 2026.

Nuclear war has not been far off from happening, and nuclear fallout scares are no surprise to world leaders. In 1999 Pakistan mobilized nuclear weapons while at war with India, making it the most significant military conflict between two nuclear-armed countries. Pakistan and India have other triggers such as attacks by Islamist militant groups, such as the attacks in 2008 on Mumbai (Helfand, Ira, Junkari, et al.).

“There Will Come Soft Rains” relies heavily on the technique of irony. According to Johnson, “There Will Come Soft Rains” is known as both Bradbury’s favorite short story as well as his most moving due to its use of irony (36). This story’s most obvious and central example of irony is the apocalypse itself. In the story, civilization as we know it was obliterated by atomic war, as shown by the decaying city giving off a “radioactive glow” (2). This serves as a classic example of humanity’s ironic potential for self-destruction. While humanity’s capacity to advance and improve its technology has no rival, in the end it is the same technology which should improve our lives that ends up taking our lives away. As Mogen explains, humanity’s superior

Mankind’s existence is simply kept alive because of Mother Nature’s grace. The human race frequently overlooks the power behind nature itself. The use of science-fiction and foreshadowing about the future was heavily used by the author Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” enlightens the reader about his personal opinion on nature taking its course after the extinction of mankind, technology dependence, and the uselessness of war. This story paints a mental picture based on the outcome of nature versus technology.

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury, 1950 is an exceptional example of “A true piece of writing.” Therefore, it must be thoroughly developed and ingeniously provocative; furthermore, the text shows real emotive language to describe its realistic and stylistic themes which can potentially change the readers mind state on the topic of the text.

I agree that Ray Bradbury was a brilliant prognosticator because many of the things he foretold in the 1950’s did end up coming true today in some form. Some examples would be the overuse of technology in everyday lives, reduced value for knowledge and education, and growing violence in the world. I share some of these concerns, specifically the need to resort to violence, and overuse of personal electronic devices such as mobile phones and computers.