And, at the same time as he is leaving clues as to what happened, Bradbury words the clues such that we readers are overwhelmed by an emotional sense of tragedy once we figure out the impact. The precise choice of words give us the clues to interpret the situation. Bradbury relies on us readers sharing what is known in cognitive science as common ground (e.g., we know what families are, we know what comfortable suburban life looks like, we know what nuclear war and fall out would be like, and so on).

The students, even international non-native English speakers, immediately comprehend that a nuclear attack has occurred and all that is left standing is a single house where a middle class family once lived a good life- even though none of that is explicitly stated.

When I teach the AI survey class and get to the section on natural language processing, I have the students read Bradbury’s robot house short story “There Will Come Soft Rains.” The story is one of those that says everything and yet it is all implied. If the big three were 70s music staples like the Eagles, the Beach Boys, and Aerosmith, rockin’ the airwaves with hard science, Bradbury was Simon and Garfunkel, spinning out slower-paced, more lyrical stories. re:verb’s co-producers receive no financial profits from the works featured in our show, and its produced content has always been intended solely for public educational purposes.While Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke were the big three scifi writers of the era, Bradbury always was there in the background. Penguin Cafe Orchestra - “Perpetuum Mobile”Īll content used in this episode is either licensed under Creative Commons, or sampled under the conditions of Fair Use: namely, the use of work for noncommercial, nonprofit educational purposes. New York, NY: Doubleday.Īccessible pdf version can be found here: Obsessed with its own self-protection, the house plays out the routines of domestic American life as if nothing has changed… until the forces of nature find a way to breach its walls.īradbury, R. Taking its title from Sara Teasdale’s 1918 poem of the same name, Bradbury’s story tells the tale of an autonomous, mechanized house that continues to operate despite the fact that its inhabitants (and the city surrounding it), have been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. This re:read selection is an ever-timely tale of a post-apocalyptic dystopia: Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950). This episode presents another installment in our “re:read” series, in which we take short works of literature and develop them into audio dramas featuring music, sound effects, and dynamic vocal performances.

Ray bradbury house story