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The first publication date is now no longer under question.
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Colliers-1952jun28 shows the index of Collier's magazin, http://www.unz.org/Pub/Colliers-1952jun28-00020 has a copy as does http://64.62.200.70/PERIODICAL/PDF/Colliers-1952jun28/20-22/
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Ray_Bradbury.htm points to 1952 but does not list where it was published.
http://www.oldsfbooks.com/pst5401.html (Google cache http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:Ai39JLYPTpkJ:www.oldsfbooks.com/pst5401.html+pulp+%22A+sound+of+thunder%22&hl=en) gives 1954, a later year, but includes an actual magazine.
http://users.ev1.net/~homeville/fictionmag/t477.htm is a little confusing, as it lists the July 1954 edition of Planet Stories, but after it, it says "ss Colliers Jun 28 ’52". Looking around the site, "ss" seems to refer to a contributor of this information, but Colliers is another pulp. Does this mean it's a reprint fron 1952?
http://www.hycyber.com/SF/planet_stories.html points to the 1954 date, January no less.
I once saw a wonderful pulp fiction index, with a nifty search engine, but I'm now unable to find it. Any help in sorting this out would be nice
lunaverse 00:06, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm sorry, guys, but the story doesn't really make sense. OK, a human kills a butterfly with his shoe somewhere in the past, and everything changes. Now the funny part. If a human kills a "specially designated" dinosaur, the dying creature may kill tons of butterflies or other living things with its weight when it hits the ground. And nothing changes in the future after that? Am I being too critical or the story is just underdeveloped? Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy reading most of Bradbury's stories. KNewman 04:54, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
2001:558:6011:1:1CA0:8880:2F90:A2F5 ( talk) 12:16, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
This article is being edited unconstructively several times a week. Does anyone know why this fairly low-profile article would be the subject of such attention? BreathingMeat ( talk) 03:10, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
"He pleads to Travis to take him back into the past to undo the damage, but Travis refuses".
This isn't actually true, Eckels sees the crushed boot and started to babble; he doesn't actually ask Travis if they can go back, because he knows they would have to somehow bring the butterfly back to life in order to undo the damage. Since they can't bring the butterfly back to life, they both know there isn't anything they can do to fix it. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
199.88.143.1 (
talk) 21:57, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm not the creator of this section, but my conjecture as to the meaning of "a sound of thunder" (beyond its diagetic role in the story) is that it is a reference to H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine,"
[1] in which the time traveller begins communication with the Eloi in this manner:
A sound of thunder is the noise that heralds the time traveller's entry into the future:
DOOZ ( talk) 15:10, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
Well, the first editions of the story read:
A Tyrannosaurus rex. The Thunder Lizard, the damnedest monster in history. Sign this release.
Clearly Bradbury was thinking on a wrong etymology, perhaps misled by Spanish "trueno", that sounds like "tyrannos" (he should have chosen Brontosaurus instead, that does mean "Thunder Lizard"). This was later corrected, rendering the title meaningless, to A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history. Sign this release.. Now, in spite of popular belief, "Tyrannos" does not mean "tyrant" either, but just "king", as in Latin "rex". Compare Sophocles' Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, translated to Latin as "Oedipus Rex" (and not Oedipus Tyrannus), and to English as "King Oedipus" (and not Tyrant Oedipus). Perhaps this should be noted in the main article for the story. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trucoto ( talk • contribs) 14:17, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
References
There's a song called "Sound Of Thunder" on Duran Duran's 1981 eponymous debut album. It's at least partially inspired by Bradbury's story, and includes the lyric "I'm the man who stepped off the path". 68.160.31.144 ( talk) 08:47, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
"The first year mentioned is 2055, but before this it has already gone back a year and a decade, so it takes place in 2066." This sentence makes no sense to me. I would try to correct it if I had any idea what it means. 69.40.24.245 ( talk) 17:35, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Changed in this section "Often misscredited as source..." To "Often credited". This is actually the reason I am here, to check a book reference. To say is misscredited, needs proof, and no proof was presented.
A Sound of Thunder was a widely discussed story and the term "Butterfly effect" was used before Lorenz to mean that a small change can compound over time to a huge effect. The meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz used the phrase to explain part of Chaos theory - choosing to use space instead of time in his example.
Chaos Theory also proves that it is highly probable that minor perturbations (changes) cancel each other. The system returns to conditions near the pre-perturbation (pre-butterfly) state. However, there are critical points where a small perturbation causes a system to jump to a very different state.
The example is based on two stars with fixed positions in space and a planet circling one of the stars, the normal perturbations caused by other objects in space change the orbit slightly, but usually the changes cancel each other out over time and the planet's orbit is close to its original orbit. However, at the right location in the orbit, a small perturbation of the planet's orbit could cause the planet to jump to orbiting the other star. The stronger the perturbation, the more points (larger locus) at which the planet will jump.
There is a joke among Chaos theoreticians that if the planet jumps back and forth several times, the path of planet looks like a sketch of a butterfly. This is only funny because the "Butterfly effect" is so well known. This example is a very constrained (and physically impossible) situation. In a real physical situation, the two stars would be orbiting each other and the butterfly-like image would not appear. The behavior of the planet would be similar to the simplified example. Drbits ( talk) 23:43, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
A Sound of Thunder article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
The first publication date is now no longer under question.
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Colliers-1952jun28 shows the index of Collier's magazin, http://www.unz.org/Pub/Colliers-1952jun28-00020 has a copy as does http://64.62.200.70/PERIODICAL/PDF/Colliers-1952jun28/20-22/
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Ray_Bradbury.htm points to 1952 but does not list where it was published.
http://www.oldsfbooks.com/pst5401.html (Google cache http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:Ai39JLYPTpkJ:www.oldsfbooks.com/pst5401.html+pulp+%22A+sound+of+thunder%22&hl=en) gives 1954, a later year, but includes an actual magazine.
http://users.ev1.net/~homeville/fictionmag/t477.htm is a little confusing, as it lists the July 1954 edition of Planet Stories, but after it, it says "ss Colliers Jun 28 ’52". Looking around the site, "ss" seems to refer to a contributor of this information, but Colliers is another pulp. Does this mean it's a reprint fron 1952?
http://www.hycyber.com/SF/planet_stories.html points to the 1954 date, January no less.
I once saw a wonderful pulp fiction index, with a nifty search engine, but I'm now unable to find it. Any help in sorting this out would be nice
lunaverse 00:06, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm sorry, guys, but the story doesn't really make sense. OK, a human kills a butterfly with his shoe somewhere in the past, and everything changes. Now the funny part. If a human kills a "specially designated" dinosaur, the dying creature may kill tons of butterflies or other living things with its weight when it hits the ground. And nothing changes in the future after that? Am I being too critical or the story is just underdeveloped? Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy reading most of Bradbury's stories. KNewman 04:54, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
2001:558:6011:1:1CA0:8880:2F90:A2F5 ( talk) 12:16, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
This article is being edited unconstructively several times a week. Does anyone know why this fairly low-profile article would be the subject of such attention? BreathingMeat ( talk) 03:10, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
"He pleads to Travis to take him back into the past to undo the damage, but Travis refuses".
This isn't actually true, Eckels sees the crushed boot and started to babble; he doesn't actually ask Travis if they can go back, because he knows they would have to somehow bring the butterfly back to life in order to undo the damage. Since they can't bring the butterfly back to life, they both know there isn't anything they can do to fix it. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
199.88.143.1 (
talk) 21:57, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm not the creator of this section, but my conjecture as to the meaning of "a sound of thunder" (beyond its diagetic role in the story) is that it is a reference to H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine,"
[1] in which the time traveller begins communication with the Eloi in this manner:
A sound of thunder is the noise that heralds the time traveller's entry into the future:
DOOZ ( talk) 15:10, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
Well, the first editions of the story read:
A Tyrannosaurus rex. The Thunder Lizard, the damnedest monster in history. Sign this release.
Clearly Bradbury was thinking on a wrong etymology, perhaps misled by Spanish "trueno", that sounds like "tyrannos" (he should have chosen Brontosaurus instead, that does mean "Thunder Lizard"). This was later corrected, rendering the title meaningless, to A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history. Sign this release.. Now, in spite of popular belief, "Tyrannos" does not mean "tyrant" either, but just "king", as in Latin "rex". Compare Sophocles' Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, translated to Latin as "Oedipus Rex" (and not Oedipus Tyrannus), and to English as "King Oedipus" (and not Tyrant Oedipus). Perhaps this should be noted in the main article for the story. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trucoto ( talk • contribs) 14:17, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
References
There's a song called "Sound Of Thunder" on Duran Duran's 1981 eponymous debut album. It's at least partially inspired by Bradbury's story, and includes the lyric "I'm the man who stepped off the path". 68.160.31.144 ( talk) 08:47, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
"The first year mentioned is 2055, but before this it has already gone back a year and a decade, so it takes place in 2066." This sentence makes no sense to me. I would try to correct it if I had any idea what it means. 69.40.24.245 ( talk) 17:35, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Changed in this section "Often misscredited as source..." To "Often credited". This is actually the reason I am here, to check a book reference. To say is misscredited, needs proof, and no proof was presented.
A Sound of Thunder was a widely discussed story and the term "Butterfly effect" was used before Lorenz to mean that a small change can compound over time to a huge effect. The meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz used the phrase to explain part of Chaos theory - choosing to use space instead of time in his example.
Chaos Theory also proves that it is highly probable that minor perturbations (changes) cancel each other. The system returns to conditions near the pre-perturbation (pre-butterfly) state. However, there are critical points where a small perturbation causes a system to jump to a very different state.
The example is based on two stars with fixed positions in space and a planet circling one of the stars, the normal perturbations caused by other objects in space change the orbit slightly, but usually the changes cancel each other out over time and the planet's orbit is close to its original orbit. However, at the right location in the orbit, a small perturbation of the planet's orbit could cause the planet to jump to orbiting the other star. The stronger the perturbation, the more points (larger locus) at which the planet will jump.
There is a joke among Chaos theoreticians that if the planet jumps back and forth several times, the path of planet looks like a sketch of a butterfly. This is only funny because the "Butterfly effect" is so well known. This example is a very constrained (and physically impossible) situation. In a real physical situation, the two stars would be orbiting each other and the butterfly-like image would not appear. The behavior of the planet would be similar to the simplified example. Drbits ( talk) 23:43, 3 April 2016 (UTC)