E46: re:read - Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"
This episode presents another installment in our “re:read” series, in which we take short works of literature and develop them into audio dramas featuring music, sound effects, and dynamic vocal performances.
This re:read selection is an ever-timely tale of a post-apocalyptic dystopia: Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950). Taking its title from Sara Teasdale’s 1918 poem of the same name, Bradbury’s story tells the tale of an autonomous, mechanized house that continues to operate despite the fact that its inhabitants (and the city surrounding it), have been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Obsessed with its own self-protection, the house plays out the routines of domestic American life as if nothing has changed… until the forces of nature find a way to breach its walls.
Work read for this episode:
Bradbury, R. (1950). There will come soft rains. The Martian Chronicles. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Accessible pdf version can be found here: https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf
Music sampled in this episode:
Penguin Cafe Orchestra - “Perpetuum Mobile”
Change Taq - “Trancefer"
Change Taq - “Iridescent Creeper”
How to Disappear Completely - “Seraph 1”
All content used in this episode is either licensed under Creative Commons, or sampled under the conditions of Fair Use: namely, the use of work for noncommercial, nonprofit educational purposes. re:verb’s co-producers receive no financial profits from the works featured in our show, and its produced content has always been intended solely for public educational purposes.