There Will Come Soft Rain Summary
The beauty of science fiction is that there is no defining theme within its genre that makes something science fiction. Ideas may be repeated, turned into something yet unseen, but as Mark Twain has said: “There is no such thing as a new idea”. Science Fiction touches on a wide scope of ideas, one being Žižek’s argument that “a form of self-organization” might emerge from a human’s relations with a “computer-thing” replacing one’s relations with a human. This is seen in works such as Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rain or even The Matrix, although more literal than the former. Žižek’s theory is that computers are “capable of imposing its own agenda, so that human users no longer control and dominate the digital network but are themselves
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It is a city that possesses no free space and is constituted of a flurry of buildings that seem to never end, which forces the reader to ask how this place is maintained. Through Franz, the main character of this short story who is a student at the university and wishes to endeavor into following a dream of flight, we learn that seventy-five percent of their student population is enrolled in the architectural and engineering faculties, while the humanities appear to no longer have its place in his university, and the sciences have taken a step back, as shown through the following quote which shows that there once was a philosophy building at his university: “Consequently the physics and chemistry libraries were housed in the oldest quarter of the university, in two virtually condemned galvanized hutments which one contained the now closed philosophy school.” (Ballard 4) Which would also disprove an argument made that the university specializes itself in a handful of programs rather than many. Every action the citizens make is to benefit the city, and even those who have yet to start working are on the road to work for the city. Essentially, if one were to apply Marxist theories, the human beings continue being the proletariat, but now the entire, or most of the population
It is a city that possesses no free space and is constituted of a flurry of buildings that seem to never end, which forces the reader to ask how this place is maintained. Through Franz, the main character of this short story who is a student at the university and wishes to endeavor into following a dream of flight, we learn that seventy-five percent of their student population is enrolled in the architectural and engineering faculties, while the humanities appear to no longer have its place in his university, and the sciences have taken a step back, as shown through the following quote which shows that there once was a philosophy building at his university: “Consequently the physics and chemistry libraries were housed in the oldest quarter of the university, in two virtually condemned galvanized hutments which one contained the now closed philosophy school.” (Ballard 4) Which would also disprove an argument made that the university specializes itself in a handful of programs rather than many. Every action the citizens make is to benefit the city, and even those who have yet to start working are on the road to work for the city. Essentially, if one were to apply Marxist theories, the human beings continue being the proletariat, but now the entire, or most of the population