A Sound of Thunder [short story]

"... a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time."

A great short story! Damn Eckels, you had one job to do - STAY ON THE PATH!!! Idiot.

"There was a sound of thunder."

Good old solid Ray Bradbury. This one is considered a masterpiece, and one can see why: synthetic, eloquent, dramatic, when it was published it was probably one of the first stories to explore the consequences of what would come to be known as the butterfly effect applied to time travel paradoxes. However, I would not go as far as agreeing with critics and readers claiming it's THE masterpiece of time paradox short stories of all times, what with the predictability, more than ominousness, of the foreseen conclusion, maybe due to the somewhat clumsy introduction of the political threat at the very beginning.
When it comes to synthesis, growing uneasiness and existential horror, other short stories come to mind that convey the same show more narrative in a more powerful way. One in particular, whose title is lost in the mists of menopause brain fog and which shows an obstinate resistance to Googling, uncharacteristic for these times, saw a bunch of scientists witnessing two bronze suspended balls slamming into each others rythmically, and travelling in time, farther and farther at every swing, with consequences that still send a chill to the spine from a long lost pre-teenage first reading.
If someone has a title for that story, please, please, write it in the comments below.
That is to say, this one is a good one, but it didn't stand the test of time, with The Man in the High Castle going mainstream, and the surprise-ending sci-fi short stories building a taste for more refined experiences of intellectual discomfort.

EDIT: the following are further considerations inspired by Lyn's great review. They came up as part of a dissenting comment and then started making more and more sense as an addendum to this review.
Gratitude and acknowledgements go to Lyn for inspiring this modest spark of reflection with their illuminating and (way more) knowledgeable explanation of the behaviour of stable systems.


If we think of history as something more than the consequences of a great man happening to be born, it may be argued that, in certain conditions, in his absence someone else would have come up with very similar actions. That is to say, while life does not seem deterministic at the individual choices' level, when we zoom out and take in consideration economy, geography, and all the broader forces at play, larger human events on the long distance are unlikely to be the sole product of one mind. The opposite - a person being the product of larger forces - seems to be more plausible.
Then, we have to take in consideration the SCALE OF THE TIMEFRAME in which events unfold. The butterfly in the short story is plausible as a cause because we are talking about hundreds of millions of years, but in that case changes would have been way wider than just a politician winning or losing. Therefore, the conclusion seems quite clunky. Look at the other short story I cited, for an example of how changes would mote likely unfold, THE FURTHER WE GO BACK IN TIME.
On the other hand, Alexander, Hitler, Einstein or Napoléon not being born would be more likely to affect the political features of modern times on the small scale of Western history. This is why I preferred other, more subtle short stories on the same theme: they kept this scale in mind with better results. show less

An interesting story about time travel and its ripple effect by sci-fi master Ray Bradbury. The story follows a rich hunter who wants to travel to the past to kill a dinosaur. But it turns out to be unlike what he expected and the repercussions dawn on him only later.
I enjoyed how Bradbury introduced the butterfly effect with the help of a butterfly. While the story is much simplistic about time travel, it still enthralls.
On a side note, President Deutscher reminded me of the former President of the US.

I am writing this review more than twenty-five years after reading the story - so long ago that I didn't remember the title or the author. Someone else had to identify it for me by the description.

However, I have remembered the plot of this short story for more than twenty-five years. That alone should tell you something.


I was young enough when I read this to find it really scary, in a sort of world-more-fragile-than-I-thought way. Now, looking back at it, the meaning has changed for me.

When I was eleven, the thought of the world disappearing and being remade because some idiot stepped on a butterfly was deeply scary. Now I'm older, I find myself wondering whether there is a different interpretation. We can never go back to the past show more to change the present, but our present is someone else's past. If we act today, we can change the future, make it better than if we did not act.

Or, as someone else said, in even fewer words, "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now."


I can't say I actually enjoyed this story. It wasn't what I would call fun. Now that I know which story it is, I don't have any real desire to read it again. But I would definitely recommend that you - whoever you are - read it for the first time. I hope that you do, and I hope it sticks with you as long as it did with me, and that you find it as rewarding. show less

A very good short story, one that makes me sincerely hope that time travel will never be possible.

The classic example of the Butterfly Effect involving a prehistoric butterfly.

From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect):

In 1898,[1] Jacques Hadamard noted general divergence of trajectories in spaces of negative curvature. Pierre Duhem discussed the possible general significance of this in 1908.[1] The idea that one butterfly could eventually have a far-reaching ripple effect on subsequent historic events made its earliest known appearance in "A Sound of Thunder", a 1952 short story by Ray Bradbury about time travel (see Literature and print here).