There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf](users.wpi.edu)

54 points by pmg101 4 hours ago | 23 comments

petethomas 17 minutes ago |

Dimension X, 1950: https://ia800901.us.archive.org/33/items/OTRR_Dimension_X_Si...

Burgess Meredith Reads Ray Bradbury, 1962: https://dn720300.ca.archive.org/0/items/meredith-bradbury/01...

Edit: Ray Bradbury read by Leonard Nimoy, 1975 https://archive.org/download/bradbury-nimoy/1-There%20Will%2...

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.

schoen 26 minutes 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!).

SamuelAdams 1 hour 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.

water-data-dude 1 hour 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

kibwen 1 hour 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.

purple-leafy 1 hour 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.

squigz 1 hour ago | |

Interestingly, I had the exact opposite reaction - I enjoyed the writing itself, but didn't find the premise all that interesting.

purple-leafy 1 hour ago | | |

My friend, we exist at opposite ends of a spectrum ha

pmg101 4 hours ago |

Today is August 4, 2026

andai 2 hours ago |

This story was adapted into a short animated film in 1987:

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

(Russian, with subtitles.)

r721 23 minutes ago | |

Better quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quyaaszg6jc

HomeDeLaPot 2 hours ago |

The story of a smart home that can't tell when you're not home! :-)

MengerSponge 2 hours ago |

https://wnyc.org/story/bradbury-centennial-with-neil-gaiman

Yetide Badaki's marvelous reading begins at 3:50

dredmorbius 1 hour 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.

MengerSponge 1 hour 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"

MrBuddyCasino 1 hour ago |

Mandatory link: the Zarelli soundtrack, using Leonard Nimoy's reading.

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

Aloha 2 hours ago |

One of my favorites of Bradbury’s.

Haunting.

pbronez 2 hours ago |

Yeesh how bleak

flenserboy 40 minutes ago | |

if you find this to be bleak, don't read his "The Small Assassin", or much of anything in The October Country.

tomhow 3 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.)