Ray Bradbury, an automated house in 2026, and Hemingway's parrot

Here's something I should have remembered to post on August 4. Earlier this year I bought an Everyman’s Library edition of a Ray Bradbury short-story collection, and came across his plaintive 1950 story “There Will Come Soft Rains”, which I knew of but hadn’t read before. And discovered that it is set on a single day in the (then) distant future – August 4, 2026. The premise: in the aftermath of nuclear holocaust, an automated house continues to busily go about its daily routine - making breakfast, cleaning up, offering reminders - even though its flesh-and-blood occupants no longer exist. (Alexa, don’t mind us - we are all dead.)

On a much lighter note, another story I enjoyed was “The Parrot Who Met Papa”, about a parrot who hung out with Ernest Hemingway and is consequently worth a great deal to literature connoisseurs as well as blackmailers - since this chatty bird is capable of repeating confidential information about Hemingway’s friends and associates. Funny, irreverent, but also an affectionate homage – and it has a sweet little nod to Edgar Allan Poe at the very end. 

A couple of excerpts from both stories below…