Ray Bradbury and the thunder struck stories. Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder"

It is this interpretation of the story that Wikipedia disseminates among millions of Internet users:
"Eckels, an amateur hunter, goes on a safari to the Mesozoic era for a lot of money along with several other hunters. However, the hunt for dinosaurs is subject to strict conditions: you can only kill an animal that is about to die anyway (for example, killed by a broken tree), and when returning, it is necessary to destroy all traces of their presence (including removing bullets from the animal’s body) so as not to make changes to the future. People are on an anti-gravity path so as not to accidentally touch even a blade of grass, since this can bring unpredictable shocks to safari leader Travis warns:

Crush a mouse with your foot - it will be tantamount to an earthquake, which will distort the appearance of the entire Earth and radically change our destinies. The death of one caveman is the death of a billion of his descendants, strangled in the womb. Perhaps Rome will not appear on its seven hills. Europe will forever remain a dense forest, only in Asia will lush life blossom. Step on the mouse and you will crush the pyramids. Step on a mouse and you will leave a dent in Eternity the size of the Grand Canyon. There will be no Queen Elizabeth, Washington will not cross the Delaware. The United States will not appear at all. So be careful. Stay on the path. Never leave it!

While hunting, Eckels, seeing a Tyrannosaurus, panics and leaves the path. After returning to their time, the hunters suddenly discover that their world has changed: the spelling of the language is different, and a dictator is in power instead of a liberal president. The cause of this disaster is immediately clarified: Eckels, leaving the path, accidentally crushed a butterfly. Travis raises his gun. The fuse clicks. The last phrase repeats the title of the story: “...And thunder struck.”

MEANING
The story is often cited in works on chaos theory because it illustrates the so-called butterfly effect. However, the term is a later development and is not associated with the butterfly that Eckels crushed, but rather a scientific paper published in the 1960s by Edward Lorenz entitled "Predictability: Can the Flapping of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Cause a Tornado in Texas?"
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C8_%E3%F0%FF%ED%F3%EB_%E3%F0%EE%EC

Did Ray Bradbury really devote his story to expounding and popularizing the principle of mechanistic determinism?

Not at all. This "science fiction" story is actually a political-philosophical parable. The Tyrannosaurus that Eckels was afraid of is a symbol of tyranny. It is not the killing of the butterfly, but the fear of tyranny that allows dictators to come to power. The fear of the “little man” (Eckels) helped the fascist Deutscher become President of America. It is only in this sense that Travis's murder of Eckels appears motivated.

This means that already in the early 50s Bradbury saw the threat of fascism in the United States.

This seemingly superficial parable meaning of the story either eludes its interpreters due to their political immaturity, or is deliberately ignored by them.

Ray Bradbury
A Sound of Thunder

The advertisement on the wall blurred, as if it had been covered in a film of sliding warm water; Eckels felt his eyelids closing and covering his pupils for a split second, but even in the instant darkness the letters glowed:

JSC SAFARI IN TIME
WE ORGANIZE A SAFARI ANY YEAR IN THE PAST
YOU CHOOSE YOUR PLAY
WE TAKE YOU TO YOUR PLACE
YOU ARE KILLING HER

Warm mucus pooled in Eckels' throat; he swallowed convulsively. The muscles around his mouth pulled his lips into a smile as he slowly raised his hand, in which dangled a check for ten thousand dollars, intended for the man behind the desk.
– Do you guarantee that I will return from the safari alive?
“We don’t guarantee anything,” the employee answered, “except dinosaurs.” - He turned around. - Here is Mr. Travis, he will be your guide to the Past. He will tell you where and when to shoot. If he says “don’t shoot,” it means don’t shoot. Do not follow his orders, upon return you will pay a fine - another ten thousand, in addition, expect trouble from the government.
At the far end of the huge office room, Eckels saw something bizarre and indefinite, writhing and humming, an interweaving of wires and steel casings, an iridescent bright halo - now orange, now silver, now blue. The roar was as if Time itself was burning on a mighty fire, as if all the years, all the dates in the chronicles, all the days had been dumped into one heap and set on fire.
One touch of the hand - and immediately this combustion will obediently reverse. Eckels remembered every word of the ad. From ashes and ashes, from dust and ash, they will rise like golden salamanders, old years, green years, roses will sweeten the air, gray hair will turn black, wrinkles and folds will disappear, everything and everyone will turn back and become a seed, from death it will rush to its source , the suns will rise in the west and sink into the glow of the east, the moons will wane from the other end, everyone and everything will be like a chicken hiding in an egg, rabbits diving into a magician's hat, everyone and everything will know a new death, the death of the seed, the green death, the return in the time preceding conception. And this will be done with just one movement of the hand...
“Damn it,” Eckels breathed; glares of light from the Machine flashed on his thin face - a Real Time Machine! – He shook his head. - Just think about it. If the elections had ended differently yesterday, I might have come here today to flee. Thank God Keith won. The United States will have a good president.
“Exactly,” responded the man behind the desk. - We were lucky. If Deutscher had been elected, we would not have escaped the most brutal dictatorship. This guy is against everything in the world - against the world, against faith, against humanity, against reason. People called us and asked - jokingly, of course, but by the way... They say, if Deutscher is president, is it possible to move to 1492? But it’s not our business to organize escapes. We organize safari. One way or another, Kate is the president, and now you have one concern...
“...kill my dinosaur,” Eckels finished his sentence.
– Tyrannosaurus rex. Loud Lizard, the most disgusting monster in the history of the planet. Sign this. Whatever happens to you, we are not responsible. These dinosaurs have a voracious appetite.
Eckels flushed with indignation.
-Are you trying to scare me?
- To be honest, yes. We do not at all want to send into the past those who panic at the first shot. Six leaders and a dozen hunters died that year. We give you the opportunity to experience the most damned adventure that a real hunter can dream of. Journey back sixty million years and the greatest haul of all time! Here is your receipt. Tear it up.
Mr. Eckels looked at the check for a long time. His fingers were trembling.
“No fluff, no feather,” said the man behind the desk. - Mr. Travis, take care of the client.
Carrying guns in their hands, they walked silently across the room towards the Machine, towards the silvery metal and rumbling light.
First day, then night, again day, again night; then day - night, day - night, day. Week, month, year, decade! 2055 2019, 1999! 1957! Past! The car roared.
They put on oxygen helmets and checked their headphones.
Eckels rocked on the soft seat, pale, teeth clenched. He felt a convulsive trembling in his hands, looked down and saw how his fingers squeezed the new gun. There were four others in the car. Travis is the safari leader, his assistant Lesperance and two hunters - Billings and Kremer. They sat looking at each other, and the years flashed past like flashes of lightning.
– Can this gun kill a dinosaur? - Eckels' lips said.
“If you hit it right,” Travis answered through his headphones. – Some dinosaurs have two brains: one in the head, the other lower down the spine. We don't touch those. It's better not to abuse your lucky star. The first two bullets in the eyes, if you can, of course. Blinded, then hit the brain.
The car howled. Time was like a film in reverse. The suns flew backwards, followed by tens of millions of moons.
“Oh my God,” Eckels said. “All the hunters who have ever lived in the world would envy us today.” Here Africa itself will seem like Illinois to you.

Ray Bradbury

A Sound of Thunder

* * *

JSC SAFARI IN TIME

WE ORGANIZE A SAFARI ANY YEAR IN THE PAST

YOU CHOOSE YOUR PLAY

WE TAKE YOU TO YOUR PLACE

YOU ARE KILLING HER

– Do you guarantee that I will return from the safari alive?

“We don’t guarantee anything,” the employee answered, “except dinosaurs.” - He turned around. - Here is Mr. Travis, he will be your guide to the Past. He will tell you where and when to shoot. If he says “don’t shoot,” then don’t shoot. Do not follow his orders - upon your return you will pay a fine, another ten thousand, in addition, expect trouble from the government.

At the far end of the huge office room, Eckels saw something bizarre and indefinite, writhing and humming, an interweaving of wires and steel casings, an iridescent bright halo - now orange, now silver, now blue. The roar was as if Time itself was burning on a mighty fire, as if all the years, all the dates in the chronicles, all the days had been dumped into one heap and set on fire.

One touch of the hand - and immediately this combustion will obediently reverse. Eckels remembered every word of the ad. From ashes and ashes, from dust and ash, they will rise like golden salamanders, old years, green years, roses will sweeten the air, gray hair will turn black, wrinkles and folds will disappear, everything and everyone will turn back and become a seed, from death it will rush to its source , the suns will rise in the west and sink into the glow of the east, the moons will wane from the other end, everyone and everything will be like a chicken hiding in an egg, rabbits diving into a magician's hat, everyone and everything will know a new death, the death of the seed, the green death, the return in the time preceding conception. And this will be done with just one movement of the hand...

“Damn it,” Eckels breathed; the glare of light from the Machine flashed across his thin face. – A real time machine! – He shook his head. - Just think about it. If the elections had ended differently yesterday, I might have come here today to flee. Thank God Keith won. The United States will have a good president.

“Exactly,” responded the man behind the desk. - We were lucky. If Deutscher had been elected, we would not have escaped the most brutal dictatorship. This guy is against everything in the world - against the world, against faith, against humanity, against reason. People called us and inquired - jokingly, of course, but by the way... They say, if Deutscher is president, is it possible to move to 1492? But it’s not our business to organize escapes. We organize safari. One way or another, Kate is the president, and now you have one concern...

“...kill my dinosaur,” Eckels finished his sentence.

– Tyrannosaurus rex. Loud Lizard, the most disgusting monster in the history of the planet. Sign this. Whatever happens to you, we are not responsible. These dinosaurs have a voracious appetite.

Eckels flushed with indignation.

-Are you trying to scare me?

- To be honest, yes. We do not at all want to send into the past those who panic at the first shot. Six leaders and a dozen hunters died that year. We give you the opportunity to experience the most damned adventure that a real hunter can dream of. Journey back sixty million years and the greatest haul of all time! Here is your receipt. Tear it up.

Mr. Eckels looked at the check for a long time. His fingers were trembling.

“No fluff or feather,” said the man behind the desk. - Mr. Travis, take care of the client.

Carrying guns in their hands, they walked silently across the room towards the Machine, towards the silvery metal and rumbling light.

First day, then night, again day, again night; then day - night, day - night, day. Week, month, year, decade! 2055 2019, 1999! 1957! Past! The car roared.

They put on oxygen helmets and checked their headphones.

Eckels rocked on the soft seat, pale, teeth clenched. He felt a convulsive trembling in his hands, looked down and saw how his fingers squeezed the new gun. There were four others in the car. Travis is the safari leader, his assistant Lesperance and two hunters - Billings and Kremer. They sat looking at each other, and the years flashed past like flashes of lightning.

– Can this gun kill a dinosaur? - Eckels' lips said.

“If you hit it right,” Travis answered through his headphones. – Some dinosaurs have two brains: one in the head, the other lower down the spine. We don't touch those. It's better not to abuse your lucky star. The first two bullets in the eyes, if you can, of course. Blinded, then hit the brain.

The car howled. Time was like a film in reverse. The suns flew backwards, followed by tens of millions of moons.

“Oh my God,” Eckels said. “All the hunters who have ever lived in the world would envy us today.” Here Africa itself will seem like Illinois to you.

The car slowed down, the howl was replaced by an even roar. The car stopped.

The sun stopped in the sky.

The darkness that surrounded the Machine dissipated, they were in ancient times, deep, deep antiquity, three hunters and two leaders, each with a gun on his knees - a blued blued barrel.

“Christ has not yet been born,” Travis said. “Moses had not yet gone to the mountain to talk with God. The pyramids lie in the ground, the stones for them have not yet been cut or stacked. Remember this. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler - none of them exist.

They nodded.

“Here,” Mr. Travis pointed with his finger, “here is the jungle sixty million two thousand fifty-five years before President Keith.”

He pointed to a metal path that went through a steaming swamp into green thickets, meandering between huge ferns and palm trees.

“And this,” he explained, “is the path laid here for hunters by the Company.” She floats six inches above the ground. It does not touch a single tree, not a single flower, not a single blade of grass. Made from anti-gravity metal. Its purpose is to isolate you from this world of the past so that you will not touch anything. Stay on the Path. Stay with her. I repeat: do not leave her. Under no circumstances! If you fall off it, you will be fined. And don't shoot anything without our permission.

- Why? – asked Eckels.

They sat among the ancient thickets. The wind carried the distant cries of birds, carried the smell of resin and the ancient salt sea, the smell of wet grass and blood-red flowers.

– We don’t want to change the Future. Here in the Past we are uninvited guests. The government does not approve of our excursions. We have to pay considerable bribes so that we are not deprived of the concession. A time machine is a delicate matter. Without knowing it, we can kill some important animal, a bird, a beetle, crush a flower and destroy an important link in the development of a species.

“I don’t understand something,” Eckels said.

“Well, listen,” Travis continued. – Let’s say we accidentally killed a mouse here. This means that all future descendants of this mouse will no longer exist - right?

“There will be no descendants from descendants from all her descendants!” This means that by carelessly stepping foot, you destroy not one, and not a dozen, and not a thousand, but a million - a billion mice!

“Okay, they died,” Eckels agreed. - So what?

- What? “Travis snorted contemptuously. – What about the foxes, for which these mice were needed for food? If ten mice are not enough, one fox will die. Ten foxes less - the lion will die of hunger. One less lion means that all kinds of insects and vultures will die, and an innumerable number of life forms will perish. And here's the result: after fifty-nine million years, a caveman, one of the dozen that inhabit the whole world, driven by hunger, goes hunting for a wild boar or a saber-toothed tiger. But you, my friend, having crushed one mouse, have thereby crushed all the tigers in these places. And the caveman dies of hunger. And this person, mind you, is not just one person, no! This is a whole future people. From his loins would come ten sons. A hundred would come from them, and so on, and a whole civilization would arise. Destroy one person and you will destroy an entire tribe, a people, a historical era. It's like killing one of Adam's grandsons. Crush a mouse with your foot - it will be tantamount to an earthquake, which will distort the appearance of the entire earth and radically change our destinies. The death of one caveman is the death of a billion of his descendants, strangled in the womb. Perhaps Rome will not appear on its seven hills. Europe will forever remain a dense forest, only in Asia will lush life blossom. Step on the mouse and you will crush the pyramids. Step on a mouse and you'll leave a dent in Eternity the size of the Grand Canyon. There will be no Queen Elizabeth, Washington will not cross the Delaware. The United States will not appear at all. So be careful. Stay on the Path. Never leave it!

Ray Bradbury

And the thunder struck: 100 stories

And I dedicate this book with love

NANCY NICHOLAS and ROBERT GOTTLIEB,

whose disputes helped me decide,

what stories to include in the collection

Drunk driving a bike. Foreword by Ray Bradbury

A few weeks later, at the end of May, I received a letter from Italy. Turning the envelope over, I read the following:

"IN. Berenson I

Tatti, Settignano

Firenze, Italy"

The address was written in small, lacy handwriting.

I showed the letter to my wife and exclaimed:

Lord, is this really the same Berenson, the great art historian? It can not be!

“Open the envelope,” said the wife.

I opened it and read:

Dear Mr. Bradbury!

This is the first letter from a fan to my idol that I have written in eighty-nine years of my life. Let it be known that I just read your article in the Nation, subtitled “The Day After Tomorrow.” This is the first time I have heard an artist, in the broad sense of the word, claim that creativity brings him joy, like a mischievous prank or an exciting adventure, that it gives him pleasure to realize his fantasies.

How different this is from the statements of workers in heavy industry, which literature has now become!

If you're ever in Florence, come visit us.

Yours sincerely,

B. Berenson

So, at the age of thirty-three, I received recognition from the man who became my second father. Recognition that my vision of the world, my creativity and my approach to life have a right to exist.

I needed this support. Each of us needs to hear from the lips of someone older, more honored and wise, that we are not crazy, that we are doing everything right. That's right, damn it, just great!

It’s so easy to lose faith in yourself when all the writers, all the intellectuals around you, repeat in unison what makes you blush with shame. After all, by all accounts, writing is hard, painful, dirty work.

You see, things are different for me. My fantasies have been guiding me all my life. They scream, and I go to the call. They swoop down on me and bite me on the leg - I save myself by describing everything that happened at the moment of the bite. When I put an end to it, fantasy lets go of my leg and runs off about its business.

This is how I live. Drunk and driving a bicycle, as one Irish policeman wrote in his report. Yes, I’m drunk with life and I don’t know where it will take me next. And still I set off in the dark. What about the trip itself? The trip brings exactly as much delight as it does horror.

When I was three years old, my mother took me to the cinema two or three times a week. The first film I saw was The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney. On that distant day in 1923, I suffered a severe curvature of the spine... and imagination. Since then, at first sight, I recognize a blood relative, a fellow countryman in the stunningly creepy freak from the dark. I watched all of Cheney's films many times. I wanted to experience this delicious horror. The Phantom of the Opera in a crimson cloak began to accompany me everywhere. And when the Phantom disappeared, I saw the sinister hand from The Cat and the Canary, a hand that poked out from behind the bookcase and beckoned me to look for new horrors in the books.

In those years, I was in love with monsters and skeletons, with circuses and amusement towns, with dinosaurs and, finally, with the Red Planet - Mars.

These are the bricks I built my life and career from. Out of an enduring love for all these beautiful things, the best things that have happened to me.

In other words, I was never embarrassed to go to the circus. Some are shy. Circuses are noisy, vulgar and stinky when it's hot. Most people, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, one after another expel from their hearts the objects of their childhood love, the first naive passions, and as a result, when they become adults, there is no place for joy in their lives, there is no taste, no relish, no aroma. Looking at others, they scold themselves for childishness and are ashamed of it. And when a circus rolls into town on a dark, cold morning at five o'clock in the morning, these people, hearing the howling of the calliope, do not jump up and run out into the street. They continue to toss and turn in their beds, while life passes by.

I jumped up and ran. I was nine years old when I realized that I was right and everyone else was wrong. That year Buck Rogers appeared on the scene and I fell in love with him at first sight. I made newspaper clippings and I was maddened by them. Friends didn't approve. Friends laughed. I tore up my clippings with Buck Rogers. I went to fourth grade for a month, lost and devastated. One day I burst into tears and asked myself why I was so empty inside? And I realized: it’s all about Buck Rogers. He disappeared and life lost its meaning. My next thought was: what kind of friends are they to me if they forced me to tear the clippings to shreds, and with them my own life in half? They are not my friends, they are my enemies.

I started collecting Buck Rogers again. And since then I have lived happily. Because this was my first step in my career as a science fiction writer. Since then, I have not listened to those who mocked my love for space flight, circus performances and gorillas. If someone started scolding them, I took my dinosaurs and left the room.

Because all this is humus, fertile soil. Because if I hadn’t filled my head with the aforementioned “nonsense” since childhood, then when it came to finding words and expressing myself on paper, I would have been born with a cartload of zeros and a small cart of donut holes.

The story “The Veld,” included in this collection, is a vivid example of what happens in a head full of images, fairy tales, and toys. One day, about thirty years ago, I sat down at a typewriter and typed: “Children’s room.” Where is this nursery? In past? No. Present? Hardly. In future? Yes! Okay, then what does she look like? What does it look like? I tapped the keys, selecting words for the Room by association, stringing them one after another. In such a nursery there should be televisions on every wall, from floor to ceiling. The child will enter it and shout: “Nile! Sphinx! Pyramids! - and they will appear around him, colorful, bright, sounding like in life, and even - why not? - exuding a rich hot smell, aroma, fragrance (underline as appropriate).

All this was born in a few seconds of work. Now I had a Room, all that remained was to populate it with heroes. I typed out a character named George and placed him in the kitchen of the future. In the kitchen his wife said to him:

George, please look at the children's room. I think she's broken.

George and his wife walked out into the hall. I followed them, furiously pounding the keys and having no idea what would happen next. They opened the door and crossed the threshold of the nursery.

Africa. Hot sun. Vultures. Carrion. Lions.

Two hours later, lions jumped from the walls of the nursery and tore to pieces George and his wife while their TV-enslaved children sipped tea.

The words are strung together. The story has been written. All together, from the explosive birth of an idea to the point of a story almost ready to be sent to the publisher, it took something like one hundred and twenty minutes.

Where did those lions in the nursery come from?

Their ancestors were lions, which I read about in books from the city library when I was ten. The lions I saw firsthand at the circus when I was five. The lion stalking his intended victim in the 1924 Lon Chaney film He Who Gets Slapped.

“In nineteen twenty-four?” - you whistle incredulously. Yes, in 1924. The next time I saw a Cheney movie was last year. From the very first shots I realized: this is where my lions in “Veld” came from! All these years they have been waiting in the wings, hiding in a secret lair somewhere in my subconscious.

You see, I am such a special freak: a person who has a child inside and who does not forget anything. I remember the day and hour when I was born. I remember being circumcised the day after I was born. I remember sucking my mother’s breast. A few years later I asked my mother a question about circumcision. I knew something that no one could tell me - they didn’t tell children about this, especially in those almost Victorian times. Where was I circumcised - in the hospital where I was born or somewhere else? In a different. My father took me to the doctor. I remember the doctor. I remember the scalpel.

I wrote “Killer Baby” twenty-six years later. This is a story about a child who sees everything, hears everything, feels everything no worse than an adult. He is terrified that he was pushed into a cold and alien world, and takes revenge on his parents: he crawls around the house, plots and eventually kills his father and mother.

Ray Bradbury

A Sound of Thunder

JSC SAFARI IN TIME

WE ORGANIZE A SAFARI ANY YEAR IN THE PAST

YOU CHOOSE YOUR PLAY

WE TAKE YOU TO YOUR PLACE

YOU ARE KILLING HER

– Do you guarantee that I will return from the safari alive?

“We don’t guarantee anything,” the employee answered, “except dinosaurs.” - He turned around. - Here is Mr. Travis, he will be your guide to the Past. He will tell you where and when to shoot. If he says “don’t shoot,” it means don’t shoot. Do not follow his orders, upon return you will pay a fine - another ten thousand, in addition, expect trouble from the government.

“Damn it,” Eckels breathed; glares of light from the Machine flashed on his thin face - a Real Time Machine! – He shook his head. - Just think about it. If the elections had ended differently yesterday, I might have come here today to flee. Thank God Keith won. The United States will have a good president.

“Exactly,” responded the man behind the desk. - We were lucky. If Deutscher had been elected, we would not have escaped the most brutal dictatorship. This guy is against everything in the world - against the world, against faith, against humanity, against reason. People called us and asked - jokingly, of course, but by the way... They say, if Deutscher is president, is it possible to move to 1492? But it’s not our business to organize escapes. We organize safari. One way or another, Kate is the president, and now you have one concern...

“...kill my dinosaur,” Eckels finished his sentence.

– Tyrannosaurus rex. Loud Lizard, the most disgusting monster in the history of the planet. Sign this. Whatever happens to you, we are not responsible. These dinosaurs have a voracious appetite.

Eckels flushed with indignation.

-Are you trying to scare me?

Mr. Eckels looked at the check for a long time. His fingers were trembling.

“No fluff, no feather,” said the man behind the desk. - Mr. Travis, take care of the client.

Carrying guns in their hands, they walked silently across the room towards the Machine, towards the silvery metal and rumbling light.

First day, then night, again day, again night; then day - night, day - night, day. Week, month, year, decade! 2055 2019, 1999! 1957! Past! The car roared.

They put on oxygen helmets and checked their headphones.

– Can this gun kill a dinosaur? - Eckels' lips said.

The car howled. Time was like a film in reverse. The suns flew backwards, followed by tens of millions of moons.

“Oh my God,” Eckels said. “All the hunters who have ever lived in the world would envy us today.” Here Africa itself will seem like Illinois to you.

The car slowed down, the howl was replaced by an even roar. The car stopped.

The sun stopped in the sky.

The darkness that surrounded the Machine dissipated, they were in ancient times, deep, deep antiquity, three hunters and two leaders, each with a gun on his knees - a blued blued barrel.

They nodded.

“Here,” Mr. Travis pointed with his finger, “here is the jungle sixty million two thousand fifty-five years before President Keith.”

He pointed to a metal path that went through a steaming swamp into green thickets, meandering between huge ferns and palm trees.

- Why? – asked Eckels.

They sat among the ancient thickets. The wind carried the distant cries of birds, carried the smell of resin and the ancient salt sea, the smell of wet grass and blood-red flowers.

“I don’t understand something,” Eckels said.

“Well, listen,” Travis continued. – Let’s say we accidentally killed a mouse here. This means that all future descendants of this mouse will no longer exist - right?

“Okay, they died,” Eckels agreed. - So what?