There Will Come Soft Rains By Ray Bradbury

Imagine for a moment what humanity will look like in fifty years, will there still be war, poverty, and crime? Will the people of earth experience another great technological revolution? Or will we be eradicated by crazed mad men with the power to suspend our short existence on a whim? These are the questions science fiction proposes, and attempts to answer. For the purposes of this essay science fiction will be defined as any work of fiction which contains themes of technological advancement and predictions of the future, while contemporary science fiction will reference any work created after 1945 . In its extensive history the genre of science fiction has gone through radical change, from its origins in the epic of Gilgamesh to modern works

The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.” (bradbury, 8) brings to light the destruction capable of nuclear weapons, and the danger of the nuclear arms race. Bradbury also writes “the entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing the law. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers.still farther over , their images burned on wood in one titanic instance, a small boy, hands flung flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down” (9) In reference to the human etched in stone exhibition highlighting the human price of war. The exhibition is a piece of the steps leading up to Hiroshima sumitomo bank where it is speculated a person sat waiting for the bank to open, the stone steps were bleached white by the blast save for a single dark spot where a person once sat. accompanying Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains several other depictions of nuclear war during the cold war popularized the use of science fiction to make sense of a threat so extreme it appears an impossible reality. Other prolific works of contemporary science fiction that warn of nuclear annihilation include Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon, Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr., later dr strange love, the day the earth stood still, as well as the twilight