A Sound of Thunder

Sound of Thunder, also a thunderclap (orig. A Sound of Thunder ) is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury ( 1920-2012 ). It was first published in 1952 in the magazine Collier's and also appeared in the short story collections The Golden Apples of the Sun and dinosaur stories.

Action

In the year 2055: A man named Eckels enters the company time safari GmbH and is fascinated by the idea of traveling in the past and to hunt animals.

After he paid, he travels with a group led by Mr. Travis in the prehistoric period, because Eckels wants to bring down a real dinosaur. Mr. Travis has Eckels out that he may never leave the path of time machine and should not touch anything, because otherwise the past and thus the future would be changed.

But when Eckels sees a real Tyrannosaurus Rex, he gets scared and panics, where he commits a serious error occurs and a butterfly. This event will change much in the present, in which they return and find a joyless, colorless and totalitarian ruled the world.

Importance

The story dealt with aspects of chaos theory, which later became known as the butterfly effect. These theories suggest that a tiny change in the initial conditions of a system can have a big impact on the result.

Although both refer to a butterfly as an example of similar phenomena, there is no evidence that they have influenced each other. Bradbury's story appeared ten years before Edward N. Lorenz's example and Lorenz initially used a Seagull as an example.

Filming

The short story was the inspiration for the sci-fi film A Sound of Thunder, with Oscar winner Ben Kingsley and Edward Burns in the lead roles.