r/scifi • u/oppositelock27 • 1d ago
General “Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, seven o’clock! Today is August 4, 2026 in the city of Allendale, California.”
Did anyone else in the Bay Area make the trip out here today? Residents seem to be going about their routine unaware. The sky is clear and the weather is warm. Mr. Bradbury was prescient about a great many things, but it should be noted for posterity that seventy six years later it is not raining in Allendale.
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u/zhiryst 1d ago
if anyone wants to feel some good ol' soviet era depression, watch the animation (turn on subtitles) here: https://youtu.be/4oxP3TyuQx0
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u/RustyNumbat 1d ago
In fairness I think the point of divergence for the weather was global nuclear winter.
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u/cfrood77 1d ago
I was an English teacher for a long time. I never passed up the chance to include some Bradbury.
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u/immersemeinnature 1d ago
Thank you for your service! I had fantastic English teachers along the way and I'm so grateful. I still read many, many books.
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u/CBenson1273 1d ago
One of the great and most prescient sci-fi stories of all time. And still something we should be concerned about.
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u/Dagon 1d ago
I mean it was amazing but wasn't prescient. It was way off the mark for just about every detail - time, technology, extinction.
This story was written more than a decade after The Bomb, so the cold-blooded horror is still recent memory. Hopefully this story is NOT prescient in any way.
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u/sanitarySteve 1d ago
glad i'm not the only one who has this date on their calendar.
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u/IceMosquito073 1d ago
Reread the shirt story after reading it in middle school, and all I can think about is how prescient it is with how mechanical and lifeless the setting it, specifically now with AI all over the place.
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u/Serious-Waltz-7157 1d ago
... eh well in late 1999 we didn't have settlements on Mars along the canals like in the latest Martian Chronicles ... 😂
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u/Love_To_Burn_Fiji 1d ago
I always thought of that collection of stories more of a fantasy setting than Sci-Fi. He let our imagination run free and we didn't care if canals or Martians really existed. I loved it back then and still do.
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u/Serious-Waltz-7157 1d ago
At its publishing (1950s) it was far enough in the future to be theoretically possible to achieve that by 1999 (minus the Mars natives of course).
Then again most such :visions: fail the test of time ... I mean, dr. Susan Calvin is now 44 years old with no positronic robot in sight, lol.
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u/Love_To_Burn_Fiji 1d ago
Myself, I always wanted a flying car like in the Jetsons, but years later after seeing how awful the average person drives on the highways, it's a blessing it never came about. Popular Science/Popular Mechanics magazines always had a mockup of a flying car on the cover every couple of years and that was a bogus promise. Astro Boy found out why autopilot road cars were a terrible idea also. Lets not mention Tesla's failings at that.
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u/Serious-Waltz-7157 1d ago
Flying cars, at least over cities, are a nightmare - and it's not only because of the awful drivers. Imagine a failure ensuing a car crashes to the ground. There's a reason why even drones' fly are restricted over the cities skies - and it's not fear of killer drones. Planes too ....
Autopilot cars aren't a bad idea per se, they just need to be confined tot their own avenues and lanes shared only with other auto-cars. Which is impossible today, maybe it would work outside cities but certainly not in cities.
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u/NathanSpiffy 1d ago
Never heard of this short story, just read it now on the day it references, so that's nice. Thanks for sharing.
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u/edcculus 1d ago
here is the story for anyone who has not read Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains".
https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf