August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains

by Ray Bradbury

Genres: Short Stories, School, Science Fiction, Classics

5 pages, Paperback

About the author

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).

The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".

Reviews

[Amanda Foto · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story where everything that is supposed to be alive is dead and what is non-living seems alive…lead to a discussion on the removal of man’s place as steward the natural world and wrestling with the question - is the elimination of suffering the peak of happiness?

(Read for a work seminar but really enjoyed it)

[☆ angela ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

god i loved this so much

[sofiac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Escrito en 1950, trata sobre un 5 de agosto de 2026 apocalíptico y depresivo. Hoy es 5 de agosto 2025, a un año de que sea haga real o no FOERTE

[Sophia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for my AP Lit class.

This is by far the most upsetting short story I have read this year.

You can feel the silence of the house and the absence of the family weights heavy on your shoulders.

To think that we are now living in the year that this story takes place and (at the time I am writing this) are only 6 months away from the date this takes place only adds to the horror. Everyone should read this because it is a brutal wake up call to the reality that we are living in.

Natural will not lose a wink of sleep when we die and should we really blame it?

[Nahyan Ameen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering Bradbury wrote this in the fifties, before people knew about global warming, this is a prophetic story. With the California wildfires being all over the news the last couple of years Mr Bradbury seems to have the gift of divination. Mark your calendars!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

not to be a sucker but the dog part really is emotional. to think that our automated devices and even with the rise of genAI now, if there really was an apocalyptic event where all humans died, would they be stuck in endless feedback loops to each other like this? beautiful writing

[jennavee 🎀 · Rating 3 out of 5]

little boring

[kary]

no rate since I do not rate books I read for school but I just read this while my dad went to sleep

[Вікторія Слінявчук · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best part of it is Sara Teasdale's poem

[Tima · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Lou Brault · Rating 5 out of 5]

Studied in English class this afternoon, a masterpiece.

[riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was SO good however i just wish it was longer

[Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

😟