In 1950 Ray Bradbury wrote a short story called There Will Come Soft Rains. The story appears in a collection called The Martian Chronicles. The title comes from poem of the same title, written in 1918 as a response to the horrors of World War 1:
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
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.
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
The Ray Bradbury story is set in the (then) distant future and describes, in a typically eery and unsettling way, the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. One house, in Allendale Carlifornia, fully automated to provide for the comfort of its owners, carries on functioning after the owners are both vapourised by a nuclear blast. Beds continue to be made, meals prepared, floors cleaned, and dishes washed, by systems oblivious to the fact the owners are no more. The house recites to the ladyof the house one of her favoruite poems, There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale. Then a fire starts by accident and the house burns to the ground.
I was reminded today that the date of the story (in the original version) is August 4, 2026. I looked for my copy of The Martian Chronicles when I got home but couldn’t find it. Here, however, are the opening few paragraphs:
The full text of the story can be found here (among a number of other places). It’s out of copyright.
In the Dark 