The Roots of Spec: "There Will Come Soft Rains"

There are a lot of people out there who write analyses of speculative fiction, but most of them focus on novels and films - the glamorous side of spec. There's less attention paid to short stories, the workaday side of the field. That's a shame, because spec - and science fiction in particular - has deep roots in short fiction. Even today, if you have dreams of being an author on par with an Asimov or Clarke, you're probably doing a lot of work in short fiction before you get to novels.

So in this series, we're going to look at some famous short stories and consider what makes them classics - information you can perhaps use in your own work. And we'll start with one of my favorites: "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury, a highlight from the Martian Chronicles. If you're not familiar, you can read the whole story here - consider reading (or re-reading) it before listening further.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" is the story of a house - a house that survived a war that wiped out just about everything else. First published in 1950, it is a product of its time, but also includes elements that grant it life beyond that.

The story is built around the "house of the future" - already a well-established trope in science fiction even at this early date. What Bradbury does is take this premise in a very different direction than most of his peers, subverting it in a way that's both chilling and poignant. It's this approach that gives "There Will Come Soft Rains" purchase today in spite of its anachronistic elements. You might think about how you could give a similar spin on one of today's spec cliches - the horror of social media, for example.

Many short story writers become almost fixated on twist endings, to the point where they treat the bulk of the story as one long set-up for a punchline in the final paragraph. "There Will Come Soft Rains" contains a twist, but note that the reveal is in the middle of the story, and there's enough detail that an observant reader can piece everything together well before that. Putting the reveal so early doesn't harm the story because it's not just a twist - the whole story matters. A reader who figures out that all of the human characters are dead won't feel cheated like he would if that was the only part that matters.

Maybe the most interesting thing about "There Will Come Soft Rains" is the emotional element. A common criticism of modern fiction is that too many people have forgotten how to add emotions without killing off a character. There is death in this story, but it's all in the background - indeed, there's almost nothing alive here, save a brief appearance by a dog. Bradbury managed to extract this emotion from things - machines and a house. There's something tragic about the machines blindly executing their orders without knowing that their tasks that long since rendered futile, and when the house burns down at the end - taking with it the last sign that anything ever lived here - it's downright touching. Above all, it proves that there is more to science fiction than long descriptions of machines or self-congratulatory "predictions."

Above all, what we have here is a collection of simple elements that create a narrative bigger than the sum of its parts. This is something you'll see in every great short story, and it's something that every would-be novelist can learn from writing short fiction. Speaking of which, if any of you have any suggestions as to future installments, feel free to let me know. Something famous, something obscure - maybe I can learn something from this, myself.