There Will Come Soft Rains (short story)

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This article is about the short story. For the poem by Sara Teasdale, see There Will Come Soft Rains.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" is a short story by science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

The story is about a house in a post-human world. Through nuclear war, the inhabitants of the home have perished, only their silouettes left behind on the walls. The intelligent house continues to serve the absent people. Throughout the story, which spans one day, the house makes breakfast, disposes of it uneaten, and continues on with other domestic tasks. Though sensitive to time and even the weather, the house fails to register the absence of its owners. Counting the house as a character, only one other character makes an appearance in the story: the family dog. Starved and sick, it makes its way back to the house only to die, its corpse swiftly removed by the house's automated cleaning robots. In the evening, the house reads the poem, "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Sara Teasdale, underlining the premise of the story: that man, despite all of his achievements, will be forgotten the second he is gone. In the end the house catches on fire when a tree branch falls through a window and smashes into cleaning solvents, causing a chemical reaction. Though the house attempts to save itself with chemical extinguishers, it quickly succumbs to the blaze. The recorded voice of the house persists, tolling out the date over and over again.

The irony of the story is that as smart as the house is supposed to be, it never realizes that the family it is responsible for is dead and gone. It just goes to show that no matter how perfect something may seem, it can not last forever and it has its flaws.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" is also found as a chapter in Bradbury's 1950 collection of short stories in a novel titled The Martian Chronicles. The standalone short story and the chapter have slightly different endings. The version in The Martian Chronicles is known by the variant title "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains".

In 1956, the story was made into an radio play for the X Minus One series. The episode is available as an mp3.

In 1984, Soviet studio Uzbekfilm produced There Will Come Soft Rains as a short animated film.