A 50-year-old short story written for today
Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" is set in Allendale, California on August 4, 2026.
This just in from reader Theophrastvs:
"here's a portentous calendricular note/post for today (only) Bradbury ~May 1950 wrote a short story about robotic assistants doing the daily choirs for an apparently extinct humanity and it's dated to occur August 4, 2026:"
In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock! As if it were afraid that nobody would.
Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!
In the kitchen the breakfast stove ejected eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.
"Today is August 4, 2026, the city of Allendale, California."
Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.
It's struck me recently how many stories (not all, but still) of nuclear apocalypse just had everyone vaporized or blown to bits. Nothing with all the mess and rotting.
So I guess Sci-Fi writers aren't prophets after all. That's a relief. Read this years ago. Thanks for sharing Theophrastvs.