Short Story of the Week
A Sound of Thunder, Ray Bradbury (1952)
Each week, I’m selecting a short story to share with you. No more than 15 or so pages, each think of them as bite-sized entrées into a genre, author, or style.
The term ‘The Butterfly Effect’ was coined in a 1969 paper, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”, by meteorologist Edward Lorenz. Officially. In reality, though, it’s hard not to read this 1952 Bradbury story and give it to him. This one was a real surprise and delight moment for me – definitely a great read. Sidenote, it did rather take me out of it when Bradbury mentioned that one of the other hunters travelling with the protagonist was named Kramer (I’ve been watching too much Seinfeld recently, and it was hard not to picture Cosmo strapped into the time machine). However, that’s ultimately a ‘me’ problem, not the fault of the story.