"There Will Come Soft Rains" | |||
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Short story by Ray Bradbury | |||
Country | United States | ||
Language | English | ||
Genre(s) | Science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction | ||
Publication | |||
Published in | Collier's Weekly | ||
Publication type | Periodical | ||
Media type | Print magazine | ||
Publication date | May 6, 1950 (issue date) | ||
Chronology | |||
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"There Will Come Soft Rains" is a science fiction short story by author Ray Bradbury written as a chronicle about a lone house that stands intact in a Californian city that has otherwise been obliterated by a nuclear bomb, and then is destroyed in a fire caused by a windstorm. The title is from a 1918 poem of the same name by Sara Teasdale that was published during World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic. The story was first published in 1950 in two different versions in two separate publications, a one-page short story in Collier's magazine and a chapter of the fix-up novel The Martian Chronicles.
The author regarded it as "the one story that represents the essence of Ray Bradbury".[1] Bradbury's foresight in recognizing the potential for the complete self-destruction of humans by nuclear war in the work was recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Board in conjunction with awarding a Special Citation in 2007 that noted, "While time has (mostly) quelled the likelihood of total annihilation, Bradbury was a lone voice among his contemporaries in contemplating the potentialities of such horrors."[2] The author considered the short story as the only one in The Martian Chronicles to be a work of science fiction.[3]