A Sound of Thunder
| "A Sound of Thunder" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Ray Bradbury | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction short story |
| Publication | |
| Published in | Collier’s magazine (1952) The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953) R is for Rocket (1962) The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980) Dinosaur Tales (1983) A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005) Something Wicked This Way Comes / A Sound of Thunder (2005 audiobook) |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | 1952 |
“A Sound of Thunder” is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury, first published in Collier’s magazine in 1952. As of 1984 it was the most re-published science fiction story up to the present time.[1] It is based on the concept that was later termed the Butterfly Effect.
Plot summary
The story begins in the year 2055, a future in which the time machine has been invented but is still very temperamental. A hunter named Eckels pays to go travelling back into the past on a guided safari to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. As the party waits to depart they talk about the recent presidential elections in which an apparently fascist candidate, Deutscher, has just been defeated by the more moderate Keith, to the relief of many concerned. After the party arrives in the past, Travis (the hunting guide) and Lesperance (Travis’s assistant) warn Eckels and the two other hunters, Billings and Kramer, about the necessity of minimizing their effect on events when they go back, since tiny alterations to the distant past could snowball into catastrophic changes in history. The hunters must stay on a levitating path to avoid disrupting the environment and only kill animals which were going to die within minutes anyway.
Despite his earlier eagerness to begin the hunt, Eckels loses his nerve at the sight of the T. Rex. Travis tells him he cannot leave, but Eckels panics and veers off the path. The two guides kill the dinosaur, and shortly afterward the tree that would have killed the dinosaur in the absence of human intervention falls on the corpse. Travis’s elation quickly changes to fury when they find Eckels and see by his muddy boots that he did in fact fall off the path. Travis threatens to leave Eckels in the past unless Eckels removes the bullets from the dinosaur’s body, as they cannot be left behind.
Upon returning to the present, Eckels notices subtle changes. English words are now spelled strangely, people behave differently, and, worst of all, Deutscher has won the election instead of Keith. Looking through the mud on his boots, Eckels finds a crushed butterfly, whose death was apparently the cause of many changes. He frantically pleads with Travis to take him back into the past to undo the damage, but in reply there is only the ominous “sound of thunder,” the same sound which had previously preceded the arrival of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The reader is then left to assume that Travis shot Eckels and/or himself.
References
- ^ William G. Contento, Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections, Combined Edition, January 2008