To begin with, this story is Sci-Fi. This means, it creates "fictionary science" or develops around science that does not exist. Usually, science is associated with high technology, but it also includes topics like aliens, for example. And "There Will come Soft Rains" is not the exception to the high-tech topic, as it unfolds around an automatic house.
So the story begins with a voice alarm clock telling the date and the hour. Here is where we are transported to the future: "August, 4, 2026". And so the house continues its daily life of service to its inhabitants. It bakes breakfast, cleans itself, the alarm tells the people that they are late for their specific activities... But there's a problem... there are no people at all living in the house. This means, the house is just doing what it "knows" to do: serve. It has all the technology housewise, but maybe in its construction they were missing to include a human detector. This could be useful for family trips, so that the house could turn off and not work uselessly.
But maybe there was actually a switch for the times the family wasn't in need of the house. But why wouldn't they turn it off? Why was the house still functioning? Why would it bake breakfast for no one? We had been told that this, the best house ever, was the last one probably in all Earth. And here came the part where we are told about the family's situation. In the passage, we are told about the shadows that dust left in their patio's wall. They were the family's shadows. Where did they go? Nowhere. They had been killed by a bomb while playing outside their house. Everything had flown away and their house was what remained of society... of humankind.
At some point in the story, we can infer that because of the house being the last one in the city, humans could have moved to another planet, running away from war; a war of any type, with any reason, but war. With the passage that actually tells us about the unfortunate fate of the family, you start to feel the way the author wanted us to feel when reading it. It is important to remember that this short story was written during cold war, and that a fear for everything to be gone in a sudden was common among people. But even if it was 2000 years ago or a lot more in the future, fear for death and suffer is a characteristic in human beings. The idea of war, the idea of death, of stopping to exist is not the happiest thought that a human can develop. So with this passage we can connect to each other by knowing that we all feel in some way sad for what happened to this family, which was killed while they were happily playing.
Then we have the only alive being appearing in the story: the family's dog. He desperately searched the house for his owners, with no success. He started desperating, and the lack of company or even an alive voice, made this poor creature die. The automatic mice, which were in charge of cleaning the house, did their job and took away the corpse of the dog and incinirated him.
At this point, we can notice how lonely the dog felt, which tells us that the bomb event was recent. The dog came into the hosue desperately, probably after having heard the bomb exploded. But the strange thing about that, is that everything was "dust in the wind", but the house and the dog. Probably the dog was in his dog house, which was probably made of the same technology of the house, and so made the bomb not affect it. We do not know, but I think that is one logical possibility. And so the dog died for lack of life, he could not stand loneliness. This is just a part in the story's development, but we feel bad for the dog, and we can wonder what would have happened if one of us stayed all by ourselves in a lonely world. Maybe we would not have survived for too long for one or another reason.
During the story we are also told about a poem, and in fact it is recited to us. It was the father's favorite one and was precisely called "There will come Soft Rains", and talked about faith for war to end.
Finally, the house has its moment. A tree falls and causes a fire, which gives "death" to the house, leaving nothing but the voice which said the date speaking: "Today is August 5, 2026." And that is how the story ends. The climax of the story and its resolution are quite close from each other.
The part of the house being burnt represents the climax. In the exposition, we are told about what the house can do. Then we have the point of the story where we realize it is empty and why. After that, we are told some events happening in the house, including the dog. The author could have written events about the house forever, like a rat or a fly entering the house; but he decided to give an end to the house, and this was through a fire. So this is when the story stops going "up" in the mountain plot, and gives a turn to it, making the resolution be when all that remained was the voice.
The ending probably shows us that no matter how hard we try to keep up our modern developments, nature will have its time to regenerate and charge humankind for everything we took away from her. In this case, just the fall of a tree and something as ancient as Earth itself, could remove the last vestige of humankind.
On the other hand, this could be a message for us, taking into account the time it was written in. War destroys. It does not solve conflicts, it does not have happy endings. It only destroys. And the attempts for having the best weapons, in this case bombs, could cause not only the enemy's death, but yours too. We are also told that humankind does not want war, and how in times of it we want to have soft rains coming.
I believe that, although short and without human beings as characters, it has a very clear message. The fact that the house is the main character, makes us look clearly to the effects of not having humans present, and that they actually caused what happened to the world: the end of it.
The story is simple, but with a very strong message.
(house Image from: http://www.greatinteriordesign.com; dog: http://www.glitter-graphics.com/graphics/39299)
A03EFF9D-3D12-5EC2-0F81-7A2286CDA0C8
1.03.01
In a way, all science fiction has to relate to "now", since topics treated everywhere have to do with our way of thinking, and these topics are discussed, exposed or wahtever by a thinking human being. (Unless there's an animal or plant that writes or paints, which would also be left to the interpretation of us human beings, so it's all the same, anyway). A man that discovers that his life is silly, absurd. The closest person to him, which was never that <linked> to him, the people that did not want others to fill their minds with knowledge so that ignorance would make them "H.a.p.p.y" (what a word in this world, so...). I cannot think of it as science fiction, because they have all the tools we have, the TVs, the incinerators, empty minds, non-empty minds, books... we are just technologically closer, or just like it. Science. Social Science? Technological Science? Fiction? Really? 
