It is August 4, 2026, and there have come soft rains.

[full_metal_ox]

At least to my southwest Florida Gulf Coast town.

(Living to reach science-fiction dates often leaves me with an odd melancholy sense of having missed out on the adventures that would’ve been playing out in Storyland, but I’m glad not to be inhabiting the rest of that classic Ray Bradbury story (1)—not that I would be by that point.)

(1) https://users.wpi.edu/~zrbutzke/Docs/BradburyStories(1).pdf (2)

(2) Whose title derives in turn from a classic Sara Teasdale poem:

"THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS"
(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Comments

[chanter1944]

My genuine advice is, don't go looking for the 1950's-era audio drama version of Zero Hour if you don't want to be viscerally disturbed. *shudders* One specific scene, especially, is too much for me, though the entire thing shades from ominous to horrifying to panic-inducing and through to aching with grief. Oof, I say! :(

[full_metal_ox]

I recall having read the text version of “Zero Hour”—with the gut-punch of a realization that (ROT-13) V jhyq’ir whfg ntrq bhg.