Have the garage door open only if someone is actually in the car. Don’t have the sprinklers running while it’s raining. (Were the 1950s that lackadaisical about the environment?) Maybe have the house re-route uneaten food to a compost rather than just dumping it directly into the sea. If you set the alarm earlier, the prompts won’t need to be so urgent, like the haranguing, “off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one!”. Let’s begin by dispensing with some small recommendations about the tech. From Weird Fantasy #17, 1952 adaption, illustrated by Wally Wood That’s a fine goal per se, but here I want to make improvements to the story’s speculative technology in a way that keeps the essence of the story-and its themes-intact. Note that I’m not merely interested in the design of a smart home. What follows are thoughts for that update. So, let’s imagine that we were going to pen a speculative update of the story. Together, the following changes might make the story more internally consistent and bring it in to line with the modern state of tech. I’ve also been practising interaction design for 25 years so am in a good place to make suggestions. Could it be updated to engage and challenge readers once again?Īdmittedly, as a writer I’m no Ray Bradbury, but I happen to have done reviews of speculative technology for the past 7 or so years, and am in a good position to provide a critique. Some of the technological paradigms are outdated. Also, all three of the Allendale, Californias are near where I live, so I really hope this stays fiction.ĭespite my love for it, I must admit that some aspects of this story ring false for modern readers. is “only” at war with Afghanistan, drugs, and reason, and yet most of us would still be surprised if by that date our cities had been reduced to green, glowing piles of rubble with fully-automated houses in the exurbs. I suspect people will be paying more attention to it in the near future, since the story’s events happen over the 4th and 5th of August in 2026-only seven years in the future as I sit writing this article. We are still figuring out our relationship to automation, still grappling with the horrors of war, and suffering the cruelty of wealth inequality, so, it’s still relevant. But really it’s a memento mori and a prescient warning about automation, war, and wealth and raises questions about how these things might be linked. At a surface level, it’s a story about the last days of an abandoned, high-tech house. (At the very least, it will help you understand the rest of this article.) It was first published 69 years ago in Collier’s magazine, but don’t pass it by as a historical curiosity. 
If you haven’t read the short story, ‘ There Will Come Soft Rains,’ do so now.
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