![]() ![]() The precise choice of words give us the clues to interpret the situation. Bradbury relies on us readers sharing what is known in cognitive science as common ground (e.g., we know what families are, we know what comfortable suburban life looks like, we know what nuclear war and fall out would be like, and so on). ![]() The students, even international non-native English speakers, immediately comprehend that a nuclear attack has occurred and all that is left standing is a single house where a middle class family once lived a good life- even though none of that is explicitly stated. When I teach the AI survey class and get to the section on natural language processing, I have the students read Bradbury’s robot house short story “There Will Come Soft Rains.” The story is one of those that says everything and yet it is all implied. If the big three were 70s music staples like the Eagles, the Beach Boys, and Aerosmith, rockin’ the airwaves with hard science, Bradbury was Simon and Garfunkel, spinning out slower-paced, more lyrical stories. ![]() While Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke were the big three scifi writers of the era, Bradbury always was there in the background. ![]()
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