Back in Junior High School I had found a book called “The Martian Chronicles”. It was a series of short stories chronicling humanity’s time on Mars. From their initial landing up until their last moments. Without giving too much away a war comes to Earth. The short story “There Will Come Soft Rain” gave an idea of Earth’s situation and it was a bleak one. The stories in this book helped me understand that a lot of science fiction stories fill you with melancholy. I remember a lot of those stories, but this story, although terribly depressing, was one of my favorites.

It starts off describing a future home where everything is automated. It comes off as a perfect home for a perfect family. Breakfast is made for a family. Morning announcements for them to hear. The weather and advice for proper attire is given. The garage door is opened to allow the car out. Except the house is empty.

“Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o’clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one!  
But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft thread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: “Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today…” And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.”

As the story progresses the reader begins to learn the house is empty and is left with the question, where is the family? It does not take long before being told what happened to the world of this house.

“Ten o’clock.
The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.”

The entire family as well as the city the house is located in were annihilated by nuclear war. Only the house was left standing. After this revelation, an understanding is reached. This story is about the actions of a house long after its masters have disappeared. It shows how simple machines that are programmed to do one thing will continue performing their duties without caring if it has anyone to serve. That to me is depressing. The destruction of the human race does not matter because lets face it, it was bound to happen. Its the persistence of these machines to continue doing their duties even when it does not matter. Do these robots realize that what they are doing is redundant, but are unable to stop because that’s the only thing they know how?

This is a theme that has been present in a lot of science fiction. Its also one of the most saddening themes. In the movie AI there is a robot boy who is as real as a boy can get. Wanting a mother that will love him, being able to get scared and feel love for others. That movie is another sad movie I cannot bring myself to watch again, but the ending always stuck with me. Technically it has a happy ending, but that is not how I saw it. Spoilers for those who have not seen it. In his pursuit to become a real boy, the robot travels to the bottom of the ocean in order to find the fairy that will let him become real. He finds her, but is unable to understand that she is a statue. He wishes to her to become a real boy over and over in hope that she will grant him his wish, but it never happens. He spends his entire lifespan in that submarine wishing that he would be real so he could finally be with his mother. By all definitions this robot was a sentient being, but as a machine he spent his whole life doing one thing, never deviating. Sure he is much more complex than the mice in the book, but it was inability to do anything else that depresses me. Sure the movie technically ends happily, but I did not see it that way. The robot bear that was his companion from the beginning is with him at the end as well. As the robot boy finally achieves happiness and drifts off to his eternal slumber he is left alone, unable to die. Where was his happy ending? He did not have one as he was just a robot destined be a teddy bear. I might have gone off topic with the bear, but watching him wonder what next was just too hard to watch.

End of the spoilers for AI. Start of spoilers for Wall-E. In the movie the Earth has been severely polluted, driving all humans off the world, leaving behind robots that will clean up their mess. We don’t see this part of the movie, joining thousands of years later after all those robots have fallen into disrepair. Instead we are introduced to Wall-E, one of the robots left to clean the Earth. Sure Pixar has the skill to make his tale a cute and lovable one, but that changes when you put some thought into his story. Wall-E has been on Earth a long time by himself. His only purpose was to clean the pollution. A job he happily carried out by himself for thousands of years. Luckily Wall-E managed to obtain sentience and make his time on Earth a nice experience, but the fact is that all that time he would perform the duty he was assigned to do, clean the pollution. It did not matter who he was doing it for because its what he was built to do. If Eva never came Wall-E would have spent the rest of eternity performing the same routine.

This theme is one that manages to depress me, but is also one that I love. It helps me become emotionally involved in the story as I cannot possibly fathom the lives of these machines as they perform the same thing over and over. They don’t do it to serve their humans masters, they do it because they don’t know how to do anything else.

In these three versions of there will come soft rain, I feel like each one is taking part at different times for example the poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” we can see it as a narrator talking to the audience before the war and telling everyone that once its over and the human race dies that nature will not care and will continue its normal ways. we see this through out the poem with the animals doing there normal routine and at the end “And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, would scarcely know that we were gone” (Teasdale,Sara). While in my opinion the short film by Budet Laskovyi Dozhd was based on the the end of the war. The bomb just went off and killed every living thing. Which is why there bodys of ash are still on there beds ( min 1.25) untouched. While in “August 2026: There Will Come Soft rains” by Ray Bradbury is more of an aftermath of everything, the bodys had been burnt to a crisp and all that remained was a shadow image of what the humans where doing before the blast. Yet in both we see just like the animals in the poem the machine lived on there days like if nothing had happened.
one thing that caught my eye was that in the short film the machine is destroying everything to get the dove, but the only thing that is not fully destroyed is Jesus. Also the dove shows up in a film. Before in “Blade Runner” before Roy dies which gives the idea that now he can be free and in peace. just like in the short film by Budet Laskovyi Dozhd when the dove appears it is the end of the machine in the house. The dove has brought freedom to yet another machine that was a slave to humans.

So this was an interesting piece that had a very well used foreshadowing later within the text. I like the concept of the clockwork house that operated on its own which made me think about the previously inhabitants of said house. I began to feel as if the house was previously inhabited by robots as the house kept on a strict time frame for each event. “The five spots of paint—the man, the woman, the children, the ball—remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.” (Pg. 1) This specific quote was useful in identifying the previous inhabitants and I personally enjoyed the comical Humor of including the ball as one of the prints in the wall.

I am personally in questioning to why the Dog is alive and why to describe it calming down they used the phrase “biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died.” (Pg 2) in a story where the dog represents the last remaining survivor of the family (I assume as the house recognized the dog) I wonder why the author would use such a strong word to describe it calming down. I am in more surprise to why the clockwork house does not have a specific time to feed the dog who is attempting to claw his way into the kitchen for people food. I was wondering if the family had to manually feed the dog by themselves which I guess is fine as it helps show their not as useless as characters in a providing setting such as in the story “When The Machine Stops”

“if mankind perished utterly;”(pg. 3) So I don’t quite know if all of mankind has been wiped out as the book describes other living creatures such as birds and dogs roaming around but so far by the environment we get an idea that humans may be out of the picture. I do like how the house is kinda acts as a living being who makes choices and even yells as it is on fire. The fire was a very interesting part of the story as the fire also acted as a living creature “which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again,” (pg. 4) this being only one of the scenes where the fire is personified as living as it destroys the house and the house also acting as a living creature fights against it to no avail as its resources has gone dry. The machines fight nature as the humans are away and nature seems to win as machines in this novel require the watchful eyes of humans to keep it stocked.

How delightfully disturbing is this short story! The casual tone the narrator has throughout, as it mentions the silhouettes left on the scorched side of the house, where a whole family was presumably wiped out in a sudden nuclear blast was slightly disconcerting. Something I really liked from the story was the author’s epic word choice and vocabulary. Here’s an example:

The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly (p. 2).

In those lines the author tells us the state of abandonment of the house and how it’s mechanized attendants keep working regardless of their masters being absent, but in a very dramatic fashion that adds to the feel of the story.

I found it interesting how the house itself was an entity, and all the automated appliances and mechanized cleaners were all a part of it. The anthropomorphization of the house through the author’s word choice really gives you a sense that it is a sentient being with somewhat rudimentary emotions, for example:

…it had shut up its windows and drawn shades like an old maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia (p. 2).

We’re told that the house has a sense of paranoia, which in this case would be an artificial emotion that was programmed into it. Surely if the house were actually sentient, it would realize the situation of its masters. At the end I got a sense of despair, after the house burns down and we can still hear its automated voice marking the start a new day.

Compared to the story, the animated short had a much darker feel to it. The creepy, drawling voice of the house’s ‘head robot’, along with the chilling high violin notes only added to a sense of strangeness of it all. The fact that what in the story had been a disembodied voice was now personified by a cold, snake-like automaton that seemed to have a “face” with “eyes” and “fingers” coming out of it only made it that much disturbing.

Out of all the differences between the two versions, one that stood out to me was the ash silhouettes in bed, rather than the blank spaces on the burned side of the house. It makes me feel that something more ominous than a nuclear blast occurred, something so terrible that it vaporized the inhabitants of the house while leaving everything else intact. One of the ash remains still has a watch on its wrist and another one is hugging a teddy bear. Also, the fact that in the movie the date goes from December 31st, 2026 to January 1st, 2027 caught my attention. It happened on New Year’s rather than a random day of the year like in the story.

Finally, it was Sara Teasdale’s poem that tied everything together. The poem tells us of how after mankind perishes due to war, nature will continue its course as if nothing had happened. In the context of the short story and the animated short, thinking all the way to the future of 2026, where mankind has presumably destroyed nature, it will be the machines, the automatons, and the technology that will carry on without noticing mankind’s demise.

*And now i have to do this again*
Okay so the video based on “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury a short story is a tragic one that shows how our world will inevitably cease to be. It follows an semi autonomous robot tendril following up on his duties set for it by its masters. The film is a gritty look or gritter look at how a radioactive fallout wipes out all of civilization and the only things left are the machines that we created to help in our everyday lives. The robot goes about its duties as diligently as it had before and it gives it a surreal tone, that the things that brought it into existence no longer exist and it is oblivious to this knowledge doing everything it did prior to the fallout. one of the many things that stood out to me was the ash that the residents end up becoming, the robot, as sophisticated as it was made out to be, couldnt tell the difference between dead or alive, giving it that feeling of “shit this is for real” and a sense of morbidness that only a Russian directed film could supply an audience with, cause it didnt mention any of that in the short story, kinda wish it did cause that was an amazing addition and liberty taken. another thing was the liberties taken with the film, the addition of the music and the monitor and the door opening was great. which brings me to another point. this family seemed to be a nuclear one, meaning that they were adjusted to and lived in a society in which there loomed the presence of radiated fallout and warfare, by which i am referring to the hazmat suits the wall spits up when the robot announces that its time for work and school (4:24) this was what i believe to be a clever use of the time period and surroundings, we also get a glimpse of this sort of life when we see the house they lived in, a dome, fallout shelter design, looking like it was built to last and withstand anything (5:02). The other thing that was pretty smart and indicative of the proper way to establish a sense of morbid dread was that it was on New Years Eve that this family died, the fact that just before the day of renewal was a day of reckoning for this family, they didnt even know it was coming as made evident by there sleeping positioned ash corpses. what i liked about this film was that i gave the story a face, something visual that we could see and really feel the utter sense of hopelessness in the story. what i felt in this was a feeling of surreal that i felt once before and i will never forget it, (really old reference approaching) it reminded me of that time in pokemon season one when that ninetales waited like 200 years for its dead trainer to return, but it didnt, and then took it upon itslef to maintain the mansion of its trainer out of the memories it had with him. that was a heart wrenching and bizarre moment for me as a child to see and thats what im seeing again in this film. what also sttod out to me and i wont touch on it to much here, was the animation, it was a product of the time it was created yes, but also gives it that much more depth in terms of “shit this is really happening”department. the slowness and rigid style and animation give it a feel of doom and gloom that could only be reminiscent of a Russian made film, which is amazing. another thing that they couldve done that would have been amazing was the fire scene, to see just how the firefighter droids were crushed under the weight of the house becuase they were to late to do anything since the fire had consumed the much of the house already, but i guess they didnt cause like i said that house was built to last. someone should animate that, maybe ill make that one day.

Alas, this was a great film, i give it one pigeon smashing its head into a monitor out of a possible robot tendril destroying a house.

heres that reaally obscure reference i made 😀

You know, this short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains” was very interesting and truly was one of a kind (but not really). It kind of rehashes the same ideas we’ve been discussing throughout some of our previous readings.

In this, humanity or mankind, has been decimated, and what remains in the aftermath is that of technology and some of the animals that did not die off since the end of the war between humankind.

The story begins with one structure, a house, that has been left standing in the midst of rubble. Inside, the house’s technological features continue on with their daily routine despite the fact that their are no humans or people present.

I can pretty much infer from this that ‘human extinction’ was not one of the problems that were programmed into the line of code. So, with that in mind, they simply proceed with what it was programmed to do: to continually keep the house clean, tidy, and welcoming. Even though nobody, besides stray animals, is going to enter that house for a millennia.

Throughout the story, we are described the technology and some of the functions of what they do. For the most part, every piece of technology in the story is automatic. For example, the stove, cleaning mice, outside sprinklers, the lawn-mower, the fire suppression system, etc. Through all of these devices, it shows us how dependent humanity was on technology before the bombs fell, and it continues to tell me that humans could not quite function without it.

That being said, in the story, the year is 2052, and Bradbury has a very vivid imagination of what the future will hold. At the same time, however, I believe Bradbury is showing us that this is happening in our lives as we speak. We are drawing too close to technology and we need to push away to gain back our strength.

I understand my post was quite short, but these are the only ideas I drew from a four-page story.

What can I say about There Will Come Soft Rains? It’s quite interesting. My problem with it, however, is that it is only a four page text. That doesn’t leave much room for the expansion of ideas, but what it presented I did like. It reminded me of The Machine Stops, in both texts it is a machine that provide for the people of its society. What I loved about the machine in this text is that it showed us what it is like after we are gone. It almost feels like a sequel to The Machine stops had the machine rebooted itself just going on never even noticing that a grand change has taken place. But I think the the thing I liked the most about the short story, and its animated adaptation, is the subtlety in which it presented its themes of legacy, as well as technology and its destructive nature.

Bradbury tells the audience that the city in which the story takes place emits a radioactive glow and that it is in ruins(1). The fact that the city is in ruins and emits a radioactive glow is suggesting that there has been some sort of nuclear fallout. Not only does Bradbery subtly suggest that there has been some sort of nuclear fall out, but this was also published in 1950, only a couple of years after a certain important event in history: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; therefore, it’s safe to assume that ruined state of the city in the short story is a result of an atomic bombing. Naturally this tragic event was still fresh in the minds of people who lived during the time it took place, so people quickly made a connection between the text and the bombings. After seeing the power that atomic bombs had, people feared their power. This text is obviously a commentary on the destructive nature of man through the means of technology.

The text also address the theme of legacy. In our society one of the reason people find the need to be creating new and grander things are to make a name for themselves; a name that can echo through time and never be forgotten. It seems that Bradbery conveys this same idea through the text; the machine in the short story has been programmed to announce the birthday and anniversary of different people(1). More specifically the author, Bradbery, also uses the wording “It repeated the date three times for memory’s sake”, this quote really emphasizes the word ‘memory'(1). This, to me, really shows the importance of this societies desire to be remembered in history.

I must say, I LOVED the animated film adaptation of the text; I really enjoy dark, surreal imagery. It also connects to the poem and the atomic bombings in a much better way. The film goes full circle in it relation to the poem. The poem suggests that all things will come to an end with no evidence of their existence. The book ends with the machine repeating a phrase three times, just like it did in the beginning of the book(Bradbery, 4). In the animated film, however, it ended with the narrator reciting the poem, but right before that the machine gets destroyed in what seems to be an atomic explosion, after all there was a mushroom cloud(7:50, Dozhd, There Will Come Soft Rains). This directly connects to the the quote, “Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree/ If mankind perished utterly…”(9-10, Teasdale); not only has mankind completely perished, but the remnants of mankind as well. This shows not only how all things must come to an end, but how as humans we will probably bring about our own demise through technology, after all there was an atomic bomb in a home. Why was it there? Is it a social norm in this society for everyone to have a nuclear weapon in there home? Are humans that destructive?

Lastly I’d like to add a link to a short film about the bombings on Hiroshima. While I was watching, There Will Come Soft Rains, it reminded me of the short film about Hiroshima. They both emphasize the normalcy of their current society, and how they are destroyed in a flash due to technology. Both films also use surreal imagery to get across their dark tones.

There Will Come Soft Rains, Budet Laskovyj Dozhd, 1987

Teasdale, Sara. “There Will Come Soft Rains’. 1920.

Bradbery, Ray. There Will Come Soft Rains. 1950.

This week we had to read August 2026: There will come soft rain and then watch the 10 min video that was based on the story. I thought this story was pretty good overall, it defiantly had that science fiction feel to it. I had to read the story twice because i didn’t realize that the story was so dark until i watched the video and then reread the story. I thought it was kind of funny at first, but then i realized that it was pretty dark.

The story is about a house that is run by a machine that does daily tasks like wake the people up, prepare breakfast and clean the house etc…. The story takes place after a bomb has dropped and everyone in the home has died and turned to ash, but the machine continues to  do its daily routine. For example one of the things it says is ” Eight-one, tick tock, eight-one o’clock, off to school, off to work, run , run, eight-one”.(pg1)  Another one is ” Nine fifteen, sang the clock time to clean”. (pg 1)  These are what made me feel like it was kind of nice, but then got the feel that it sounded like an evil dark Dr. Seuss. It also talks about what was left of the people after the bomb. He said ” The five spots of paint- the man, the woman, the children, the ball- remained. the rest was a thin char coaled layer.” (pg 1)  This is describing the imprints of the peoples body that was left after the bomb. The Story continues with a dog that survived but is very beaten up comes in the house and walks around and eventually dies. The machine continues to its daily routine throughout the story to where it reads a poem every night before bed  to the lady of the house Mrs. McClellan. Since she is ash and can’t respond the machine still doesn’t realize everyone is dead and puts it on random choosing the poem There will come soft rains. I like when things that stories are based on like the title are involved in someway so i thought that poem was nice to choose especially with the kind of state the world is in, which is basically ruins. Towards the end of the story a tree goes through the kitchen window and lands on the stove starting a fire that sets the house a blaze. There is a part were Ray Bradbury describes the fire he says “The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picasso and Matisse in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings. Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colors of drapes.” (pg 3) I like how he describes the fire as almost a person sent on a mission to tear this house down. It made me feel like the fire was its own character. The fire eventually lead to an explosion that blew up the house leaving it like the rest of the world in ruins. The last sentence of the story is of the machine still doing its daily routine before it finally dies it says ” Today is August 5th, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is….” This shows that everything in this world will eventually die out weather it be animal, human or machine.

The video of There will come soft rains was pretty accurate to the story. However i felt the video was darker then the story really was, but it defiantly gave a really good visual interpretation of the story. In conclusion i think the story was a good read and it had a lot of different themes in it. Overall though tone was very dark and depressing.

This is a picture i found of the beginning of the story where the machine is making breakfast. This is what i thought the story and would look like bright and happy, but sill being as dark story.

Its a blast from the past

When i first started English in college the 2nd part of it, The class spent a quarter of the semester covering this book. First time i read it i was scared like wondering is this was the future of technology. Re-Reading this my ideas pretty much stayed the same on what i think this passage is trying to cover. I took an approach where i observed a Man Vs Nature approach. In the passage You can see that nature still out does technology. No matter how advance technology may become there will be a flaw that can be costly. I also stated that this passage is also a prediction because now we have house alarms that talk, and it reminds me of the house talking stating the time. I do believe that we are not far from this type of advancement where the house will be able to do almost all features.

In a way technology is to fulfill out needs but we can not count on technology as perfections. They may be able to act quickly but i see it as a train of thought. One example is when your on your way to a place  of work, after the first few times you get the hang of address but the common thing at a point would be to use our cell phone in the same matter of those times which makes you more dependent of it which cases a slow take over of your mind.

Another thing that crossed my mind reading this again was a connection to the MoMa Exhibit, One question i ask is , Do you think houses like this will be made to control population.  Increase of population is causing a certain amount of problems and the house does kill off everyone and self destruct/or should i say set its self on fire.  idk, thats just a thought that crossed my mind.

This passage did teach me to appreciate nature more and also try to do the simple things using my head first before  being dependent on technology

Think about it

if some one were to ask us whats 9X8

i bet we would all be quick to whip out a calculator because the feeling of being lazy can be relaxing but it hurts us in the end, because what if one day your ask that question and the calculator is mal functions. Slowly we are starting to loose the primary way we were taught things. There is nothing wrong with improvement but it doesn’t mean to be lazy

I love a good dark, deep, and sad story! Lets start with Ray Bradbury’s short story. At a glance, a typical sci-fi setting with technology being part of a daily routine. But look deeper and a haunting message has been laid out before us. I feel this story has something to do with nuclear war and fear of extinction. WHY might I come up with such a theory? Well its 1 am and my brain is just spilling out insane ideas. But lets look at what is given, at the very beginning in the title is given the year 1950, besides the story’s setting of 2026 in the title, which must be the year of publication of Bradbury’s short story (duhh). What is so significant of the year 1950? Well, I’m no history buff but that’s around the time of the Cold War. Cold what, you say? Plain and simple a long stand-off between countries threatening to launch their nuclear bombs. And 5 years before that was the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Hmm, how is that relevant to Bradbury’s story? Ok lets dig into the story. First off we know from the beginning that there seems to be no one in this home “The morning house lay empty.” (Bradbury, 1). Not really a twist but wait, we find out that this home is just an empty carcass of an empty city “The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.” (Bradbury, 1). And it mentions a radioactive glow, meaning this city has been affected by radiation and the city is in rubble, so it must be from a bomb…a nuclear bomb.

“Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.” (Bradbury, 1). Wow, that is still on page one and it gave me chills down my spine. Silhoutte body’s burned into the side of the house, most likely a nuclear bomb struck and this family must have just been carrying on their day normally without a care in the world. It seems that this nuclear bombing/disaster happened recently in the story. Going back to when you first see the mentioning of the dog, “A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.” (Bradbury, 2) and considering the, most likely, nuclear disaster, it seems that this disaster was particularly recent as radiation poisoning, especially in large amounts, can kill the affected fast. And this dog somehow survived the incinerating blast of radiation but still poisoned by its remaining effects. “The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores” (Bradbury, 2) obviously decaying from poisoning.

“Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone.” (Teasdale) A poem recited on page 3 of Bradbury’s short story, very dark a scary and hindsight to the story. Why was it used in Bradbury’s short story and how does it relate to my theory? Well, first off before the poem even begins in parenthesis says War Time, might not say anything nuclear but like any war in general it will bring destruction an extinction. This poem was originally published by Sara Teasdale in the 1920’s and that was 2 years after WWI so the fear and damage of war was still lingering.

The short animated film was a nice adaptation, completely different of course from the Bradbury story. It also contains evidence of my theory. At 1:26 you see ashes of body’s in the beds, and the fall down when the beds erect so it shows that the disaster happened recently. Which is why I think the machine does not really notice a change in both video and text, though its a robot so it doesn’t matter I guess. Back to 1:22 you see radiation suits hanging on the wall of this couple’s bedroom which supports my theory of fear of nuclear war and extinction because why would a family keep radiation suits laying around, because they were living in constant fear that one day they’ll need it, so they knew this disaster would happen. And not only that but in 7:47 when the machine attacks itself causing the explosion the explosion looks like a mushroom cloud, nukes cause that. And that scene symbolizes that our creations will destroy us.