Having been raised on this and other science fiction, decades later I find myself living in a house with about as near a whole-home automation setup as can be economically obtained. I first "read" There Will Come Soft Rains at the age of about ten from a cassette tape audiobook of The Martian Chronicles my mother checked out from the library. But in watching the "smart" home soldier on without masters to serve, we may see in that conceit one of the most accurate foretellings of the near-future home. Like many of Bradbury's short stories however, the fantastical house is a canvas on which to paint a much grimmer theme: the occupants are absent, having been instantaneously vaporized by a blast from the recent nuclear war. In many ways, his vision was an extrapolation of the exploding array of labor saving devices becoming widely available in post-war America, and certain elements-like the swarm of vacuuming mice that today's consumers would probably refer to as "micro-Roomba's"-are downright prescient. In his 1950 short story There Will Come Soft Rains, Ray Bradbury imagined the mechanized home of the not-so-distant future. After a long wait the door swung down again. Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away rubbers, raincoats for today." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing. "Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one!" But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels.
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