hey, you screwed up the timeline and that means you now live in Jurassic Park.
In defence of the indefensible, that *is* a legitimate way to read the original story. Bradbury uses the word "thunder" exactly five times in the story. The first four times, it describes the roar of a tyrannosaur. The last time is the last sentence in the story:
Eckels moaned. He dropped to his knees. He scrabbled at the golden butterfly with shaking fingers. "Can't we," he pleaded to the world, to himself, to the officials, to the Machine, "can't we take it back, can't we make it alive again? Can't we start over? Can't we-"
He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in the room; he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon.
There was a sound of thunder.
I suppose you're welcome to believe that Bradbury was careless; that in the last sentence he decided to use "thunder" to describe a rifle shot. Previously in the story, the sound of a rifle shot was described as a "crack", but maybe Bradbury didn't worry about things like that.
Mind you, I'm not saying I find this particular set of future changes remotely plausible -- I'm just saying that I think that's what Bradbury implies. (It is of course far more likely that messing with the Cretaceous will lead to a world without donuts.)
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Sound of Thunder
Date: 2004-09-28 05:19 am (UTC)In defence of the indefensible, that *is* a legitimate way to read the original story. Bradbury uses the word "thunder" exactly five times in the story. The first four times, it describes the roar of a tyrannosaur. The last time is the last sentence in the story:
I suppose you're welcome to believe that Bradbury was careless; that in the last sentence he decided to use "thunder" to describe a rifle shot. Previously in the story, the sound of a rifle shot was described as a "crack", but maybe Bradbury didn't worry about things like that.
Mind you, I'm not saying I find this particular set of future changes remotely plausible -- I'm just saying that I think that's what Bradbury implies. (It is of course far more likely that messing with the Cretaceous will lead to a world without donuts.)