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For the film adaptation, see A Sound of Thunder (film).

"A Sound of Thunder" is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury, first published in Collier's magazine in 1952. It was reprinted in his collections The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953), R is for Rocket (1962), The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980), and A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005). It was later reprinted in The Young Oxford Book of Timewarp Stories. The Locus Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections lists it as the first of the top ten most republished science fiction stories *

Plot

This well-known story about time travel revolves around a business called Time Safari, Inc. Time Safari promises to take people back in time so they can hunt prehistoric animals, such as Tyrannosaurus rex.

In order to avoid a time paradox, they are very careful to leave history undisturbed on the principle that even the slightest change can cause major changes in the future. Travelers are only allowed to shoot animals that are already about to die, and they are required to stay on a path which hovers slightly above the ground. Hunting trophies are not taken; no souvenir is allowed except a photograph of the hunter standing next to the dead monster.

In the story, a hunter simply known as "Eckels" is about to embark on his trip. A democratic man named Keith had just won the presidential election the day before, defeating a supposed dictator named Deutscher. He seems jittery in the time machine, and when he sees the tyrannosaurus, he seems scared and declares killing the dinosaur impossible, and wants to leave. His guide, Lesperance, who is trying to kill the dinosaur himself, tells him he can leave, but Eckels goes the wrong way and veers off the path. Lesperance and the other guide, Mr. Travis, manage to kill the dinosaur but when they go back to the time machine Travis is furious when he sees Eckels' boots, realizing he went off the path. Travis threatens to leave Eckels in the past, but he lets him back on if Eckels removes the bullets from the dinosaur's body, as they couldn't be left in the past.

Upon returning to the present, Eckels notices subtle changes. English spelling is different, people and buildings are different, and, worst of all, Deutscher has won the election. Looking at his boots, the man finds a crushed butterfly, apparently the cause of the changes. He pleads to Travis to go back into the past, but Travis refuses and fires his rifle. It is left untold what he shoots, although it is presumed that he kills Eckels. The dark ending is the meaning of the title (the story's final words are "There was a sound of thunder".)

The story is a fictional exploration of the Butterfly Effect (or "sensitive dependence upon initial conditions," in the words of Edward Lorenz) through the literary device of time travel. Interestingly, the story pre-dates the work of Edward Lorenz by nearly 10 years, long before the term was coined and the principles understood by the scientific community. The same effect occurs in planetary dynamics and was studied by Henri Poincaré in the 1900's, but not under its modern name. These subjects are grouped into the mathematical field of chaos theory.

Alternate media versions

References

Story

Other media

Time travel in fiction | American short stories | Science fiction short stories | Works of Ray Bradbury

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "A Sound of Thunder".

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