There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
Note: There Will Come Soft Rains is in stock and shipping. Collectors who currently have Lettered and Deluxe rights by way of their Solaris pre-order have been emailed a private link to place orders. Remaining copies will be available to the public on Thursday February 13th at 10am ET.
There Will Come Soft Rains is the second title in Short Stops, a series from Conversation Tree Press dedicated to bringing exceptional shorter works of fiction to life through beautifully bound, letterpress-printed, limited editions that begin shipping immediately upon announcement.
Frontispiece by Guillem H. Pongiluppi
“The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants,
big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.”
Conversation Tree Press is proud to present There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury, one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated American authors. First published in 1950, the short story is a poignant reflection on technology, nature, and human absence.
In a post-apocalyptic future where humanity has been wiped out, a fully automated house miraculously survives, carrying out its daily routines as if nothing has changed, unaware that there is no one left to hear it. As nature slowly reclaims the world, the house recites Sara Teasdale’s haunting poem of the same name.
Bradbury saw There Will Come Soft Rains as the story that best captured the essence of his writing and considered it the only true science fiction piece in his classic collection, The Martian Chronicles. His foresight in depicting nuclear self-destruction was recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Board, which, in awarding him a Special Citation in 2007, acknowledged him as “a lone voice among his contemporaries, contemplating the potentialities of such horrors.”
The Martian Chronicles celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, and this story is a reminder that Bradbury’s vision of humanity, technology, and nature remains as thought-provoking and relevant as ever.
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Edition Information ❦ Short Stops ❦ Availability ❦ Artwork ❦ Marbled Paper ❦ Typography ❦ Printing ❦ Ray Bradbury
Edition Information
There Will Come Soft Rains is a limited edition of 300 unnumbered copies, letterpress printed by Hand & Eye Letterpress in London, England. It features a full colour illustration by Guillem H. Pongiluppi and is quarter-bound in book cloth and custom hand-marbled paper from Daniela Prina in a waved palm pattern. The endpapers are GF Smith Colorplan with a linen finish.
The author’s name and title are foil stamped on the spine in the same style as The Paper Menagerie, ensuring a uniform look across all Short Stops titles.
It measures 6 x 9 inches with 19 pages including front and back matter, and all copies are signed by the artist.
As with all of our books, this edition will not be reprinted.
US$110 plus shipping.
About Short Stops
Books in our Short Stops series are a little different from our other editions that come in multiple states. They will:
- Only be announced and offered for sale when they are completely finished with shipping beginning on the same day orders are made.
- Feature shorter works of fiction.
- Have a trim size of 6in by 9in, slightly smaller than the 6.7in by 9.5in books we’ve done before like Peter Pan and our next book which will be revealed on Monday February 24th.
- Have no rights associated with them and do not include a slipcase.
- Always be offered to current Deluxe and Lettered rights-holders first, even though they have no rights attached to them. Rights holders may skip it entirely without losing rights to the next book from the Press, and having a copy of the most recently published book in the Short Stops series does not give any rights to the next in the series.
We have a number of other Short Stops titles planned for this year.
Availability
Copies of There Will Come Soft Rains are now available to collectors who pre-ordered Deluxe copies of Solaris numbered #1-150 and all Lettered copies. An email has been sent with a private link to order and copies will begin shipping today. If you did not receive an email and you believe you should have, please let me know.
The private pre-order period ends at 10am ET on Thursday February 13th, at which time remaining copies will become available to the public.
All copies ship from Ontario, Canada. At the time of writing there are no tariffs on goods sent to the U.S. from Canada. Please see the note on tariffs here and if you have any questions please let me know.
For logistical and practical reasons we cannot combine orders for this title. Thank you for your understanding.
Artwork by Guillem H. Pongiluppi
Guillem H. Pongiluppi has created a haunting, full-colour illustration for our edition that captures the story’s atmosphere of solitude and the poignant contrast between human absence and technological persistence.
Guillem is a freelance digital illustrator with over 20 years of experience in the industry. He specializes in historical research, virtual archaeology, fantasy, and science fiction. He has worked as an art director, concept artist, and matte painter for both pre-production and post-production in movies and video games. Additionally, he has built a long career as an illustrator in the board game and book cover industry.
Custom Hand-Marbled Paper by Daniela Prina
The custom hand-marbled paper was created by Daniela Prina of Papiers Prina in Belgium. It features a waved palm pattern and is designed to complement the slate blue-gray book cloth, which was in turn chosen to match Guillem’s artwork.
The carefully curated palette reflects the story’s themes of nature, technology, and post-apocalyptic desolation. The colors include black for structure, smoky yellow for a sinister atmosphere, moss green for nature’s resilience, and cool blue and light teal for the cold, abandoned world. Bronze brown and silver evoke metallic elements of technology, while red copper suggests fire and destruction. A dove gray paper unifies the palette, emphasizing its cool tones
Typography
I’ve typeset There Will Come Soft Rains in Robert Slimbach’s Warnock Pro and the title in Margot Lévêque’s Romie.
Printing
We are proud to have collaborated once more with Phil Abel and Robert Hetherington at Hand and Eye Letterpress. Hand and Eye has a distinguished history of not only letterpress-printing their own editions, but collaborating with Folio Society, No Reply Press, Lyra’s Books, and, of course, with Marcelo Anciano on their very own Areté Editions.
Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theatre, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theatre. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honours.