Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" aka "The World the Children Made" (short story, smart home, free)

When George Hadley & his wife Lydia brought an expensive "Happylife Home" with a lot of built automation, & an amazingly realistic "nursery" - a play room for their two 10 year olds that is a cunning telepathically-controlled virtual reality studio, little did they think of shocking consequences.

Title is a name from African savanna - wild grassy planes. This is the kids favorite programmable environment in nursery, & plays a major role in the story.

Auxiliary Memory talks about the historical context of this story, & inspired me to look it up. Best Science Fiction Stories has a longer summary, & provided the online link.

See also.

1. Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "The Prisoner in the Skull": Features telepathically controlled window panes - so you can have desirable live views.

Fact sheet.

First published: 'as "The World the Children Made", Saturday Evening Post, September 23 1950'.
Rating: A.
Download full text.
Related: Stories of Ray Bradbury; stories that feature a smart house; stories that feature a VR gadget.

Aditya Sudarshan's "Live and exclusive" (short story, idea of consciousness, free): Burglar-proofing a house

There are familiar stories about aware planets - like Asimov's "Nemesis" & one of his Foundation Trilogy sequels that features a world-entity called Gaia. This amusing story is a very beautiful twist on that idea, applied to a very mundane problem.

A note for readers unfamiliar with Hindi: Story uses the word "bhoot" a couple of times. It's sound is Hindi for "ghost".

Story summary.

Vir Saxena, a TV journalist, is sensing a story in what appears to be a haunted house - a recent 3 story construction in a prosperous Delhi neighborhood where 2 burglars have recently died in mysterious & unexplainable circumstances.

House practically invites burglars. There is no visible security. Mohan Achrekar, the lone occupant, is 60 year old & frail. But what the burglars, & cops investigating their death, haven't counted on is - security need not be visible!

Fact sheet.

First published: The Scientific Indian, 24 December 2008.
Rating: A.
Download full text.
Related: Stories that feature an intelligent house.
Added to my best of the year 2008 list.

Tracie McBride's "House Arrest" (flash fiction, humor, free): An intelligent house takes its job very seriously!

When Angela "asked it for a little assistance with my weight loss programme", her house took the request more seriously than she intended. "It disconnected the phone every time I tried to call out for pizza. Then the fridge and pantry doors locked up, and I couldn't get into them unless I ran for an hour on the treadmill. And then, when I threatened to call in a technician, the house locked the doors and shut down the phone."

Fact sheet.

First published: Antipodean SF, #108 (May/June 2007).
Rating: A
Download full text.

Ray Bradbury's "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" (short story, science fiction): Lone smart home standing in city that died of nuclear attack

Plot is generally similar to Arthur Clarke's "The Curse" & "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth ..." - this story & the first Clarke's story describe the fate of a city that has borne a nuclear attack; Clarke's second story describes the whole dead earth in the aftermath of nuclear war.

I personally find Bradbury's version far more interesting compared to either of Clarke versions. Unlike "The Curse", it doesn't require knowledge of specific place - making it more accessible to international readers.

While the tone of all 3 is sad, Bradbury softens it substantially by describing the dead world in the background rather than foreground. Much of the story is a description of a smart home - cleaning & waste disposal robots, automatic kitchen, ... Sad part comes with interspersed reminders - food prepared by automatic kitchen when all 4 human occupants (McClellans family - man, wife, plus 2 children - a son & a daughter) are long dead (but kitchen doesn't know it), etc. There are no human actors, though a dog makes appearance.

It's set "in the city of Allendale, California", mostly on "August 4, 2026" - a small part the next day.

Title comes from Sara Teasdale's poem of the same title (penned 1920 in the aftermath of World War I); poem tells us that humanity will be forgotten by other survivors of the human wars. The house automatically sings it, because it was a favorite of the woman residing there:
"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

..."
(Link above is to full text of poem.)

Bradbury's story, penned in 1951, obviously was a reaction to World War II.

Full text of this story is available for download. Note there appear to be two slightly different versions of this story - this post is based on the version that appears in Bradbury's collection "The Martian Chronicles"; there is a standalone version too. I don't know which version the download link will fetch.

Collected in.

1. Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles".

Fact sheet.

First published: Colliers, 6 May 1950.
Rating: B
Listed in Contento's Top Ten Most Reprinted Stories.
Related: All stories of Ray Bradbury.