In reading a few of these posts I have noticed a couple of seperate threads about how Bradbury talks about technology of the houses overtaking the parental roles in the stories. This got me thinking, and I re-read both stories and I think that maybe it is more than just the parental roles that are being lost to technology. It is all family, all human relationships for the most part. In "The Veldt," the only time we see the children's relationship to each other is when they must bond together to save their beloved nursery... the technology. They never really act as brother and sister any other times, or for any other reasons.

As for the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" the lack of relationships is not so obvious. We don't have much insight into the actual interactions of the family itself, but the work the house continues doing even without response kind of shows us the things that the family did not do for each other. Many simple interactionslike telling each other the weather or making sure your children are awake are things they obviously do not do for each other. I was just wondering if anyone else saw this as expanded to almost all human relationships between the characters so completely involved in the technology and if anyone had any helpful insight to this topic.

I think the idea of the loss of both family and other meaningful human relationships is a common theme for Bradbury. It is very strong in F451 -- where the only "normal" family is branded by society as weird -- and stories like "The Pedestrian" and "The Dwarf" -- where the loss or absence of familial or human relationships is viewed as a terrible loss. These relationships are critical to a fully lived humanity and Bradbury's work.

I think Mr Dark is onto something here. Take a look at the context in which "Soft Rains" is placed in The Martian Chronicles: immediately following "The Long Years", the story of a man who has recreated his deceased family in android form; the android family continues to "live" after HIS death. There is an emptiness to their existence, as there is an emptiness to the existence of the house in "Soft Rains".

But such poignancy! Androids and the like can be things of beauty and wonder for Bradbury ("I Sing the Body Electric!", anyone?), but what are they without us there to appreciate them?

- Phil