Ray Bradbury - A Sound of Thunder

The Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury About the author (2005) Ray Bradbury, author of more than 500 stories, poems, essays, plays, films, television plays, radio, music, and comic books, was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois. Twice during his childhood, Bradbury moved with his family to Arizona, returning to the midwest both times before settling permanently in Los Angeles in 1934. At the age of fifteen, Bradbury began submitting short stories to national magazines, beginning his career as one of the best known science-fiction writers of all time. After his graduation from Los Angeles High School in 1938, Bradbury worked his way up from selling newspapers on street corners and publishing short stories in amateur fan magazines to writing the best-selling classics The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950, and Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. Bradbury has won numerous awards for his works. His Sun and Shadow won the Benjamin Franklin Award of 1953-54 for Best Story in an American Magazine.

In 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal and Bradbury received an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters for contribution to American literature. Switch on the Night earned the Boys Club of America Junior Book Award in 1956. Icarus Montgolfier Wright in 1963 garnered an Academy Award nomination for short film. He was honored in 1977 with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and in 1977 with the Balrog Award for Best Poet. In addition to his writing achievements, Bradbury was the idea consultant and wrote the basic scenario for the United States pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair, as well as being an imagineer for Walt Disney Enterprises, where he designed the Spaceship Earth exhibition at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center. Bradbury lives in Los Angeles.

Bibliographic information TitleA Sound of Thunder and Other Stories AuthorRay Bradbury PublisherHarper Perennial, 2005 ISBN0060785691, 9780060785697 SubjectsFiction / GeneralFiction / Media Tie-InFiction / Science Fiction / GeneralScience fiction, AmericanShort stories The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water, Eckels felt his eyelids blink over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary darkness: TIME SAFARI, INC. SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST. YOU NAME THE ANIMAL. WE TAKE YOU THERE. YOU SHOOT IT. A warm phlegm gathered in Eckels' throat; he swallowed and pushed it down.

The muscles around his mouth formed a smile as he put his hand slowly out upon the air, and in that hand waved a check for ten thousand dollars to the man behind the desk. "Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?" "We guarantee nothing," said the official, "except the dinosaurs." He turned. "This is Mr. Travis, your Safari Guide in the Past. He'll tell you what and where to shoot. If he says no shooting, no shooting.

If you disobey instructions, there's a stiff penalty of another ten thousand dollars, plus possible government action, on your return." Eckels glanced across the vast office at a mass and tangle, a snaking and humming of wires and steel boxes, at an aurora that flickered now orange, now silver, now blue. There was a sound like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time, all the years and all the parchment calendars, all the hours piled high and set aflame. A touch of the hand and this burning would, on the instant, beautifully reverse itself. Eckels remembered the wording in the advertisements to the letter. Out of chars and ashes, out of dust and coals, like golden salamanders, the old years, the green years, might leap; roses sweeten the air, white hair turn Irish-black, wrinkles vanish; all, everything fly back to seed, flee death, rush down to their beginnings, suns rise in western skies and set in glorious easts, moons eat themselves opposite to the custom, all and everything cupping one in another like Chinese boxes, rabbits in hats, all and everything returning to the fresh death, the seed death, the green death, to the time before the beginning. "Hell and damn," Eckels breathed, the light of the Machine on his thin face. "A real Time Machine." He shook his head. "Makes you think. "Makes you think.

If the election had gone badly yesterday, I might be here now running away from the results. Thank God Keith won. He'll make a fine President of the United States." "Yes," said the man behind the desk. "Were lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we'd have the worst kind of dictatorship. There's an anti-everything man for you, a militarist, anti-Christ, anti-human, anti-intellectual.

People called us up, you know, joking but not joking. Said if Deutscher became President they wanted to go live in 1492. Of course it's not our business to conduct Escapes, but to form Safaris. Anyway, Keith's President now. All you got to worry about is" "Shooting my dinosaur," Eckels finished it for him. "A Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Thunder Lizard, the damnedest monster in history. Sign this release. Anything happens to you, we're not responsible. Those dinosaurs are hungry." Eckels flushed angrily. "Trying to scare me!" "Frankly, yes. We don't want anyone going who'll panic at the first shot.

Six Safari leaders were killed last year, and a dozen hunters. We're here to give you the damnedest thrill a real hunter ever asked for. Travelling you back sixty million years to bag the biggest damned game in all Time. Your personal check's still there. Tear it up." Mr. Eckels looked at the check for a long time.

His fingers twitched. "Good luck," said the man behind the desk. "Mr. Travis, he's all yours." They moved silently across the room, taking their guns with them, toward the Machine, toward the silver metal and the roaring light. First a day and then a night and then a day and then a night, then it was day-night-day-night-day. 2055. A.D. zoic). 1999! 1957! Gone! The Machine roared. 1999! 1957! Gone! The Machine roared.

They put on their oxygen helmets and tested the intercoms. Eckels swayed on the padded seat, his face pale, his jaws stiff. He felt the trembling in his arms and he looked down and found his hands tight on the new rifle. There were four other men in the Machine. Travis, the Safari Leader, his assistant, Lesperance, and two other hunters, Billings and Kramer. "Can these guns get a dinosaur cold?" Eckels felt his mouth saying. "If you hit them right," said Travis on the helmet radio. "Some dinosaurs have two brains, one in the head, another far down the spinal column. "Some dinosaurs have two brains, one in the head, another far down the spinal column.

We stay away from those. That's stretching luck. Put your first two shots into the eyes, if you can, blind them, and go back into the brain." The Machine howled. Time was a film run backward. Suns fled and ten million moons fled after them. "Every hunter that ever lived would envy us today. "Every hunter that ever lived would envy us today.

This makes Africa seem like Illinois." The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur. The Machine stopped. The sun stopped in the sky. The fog that had enveloped the Machine blew away and they were in an old time, a very old time indeed, three hunters and two Safari Heads with their blue metal guns across their knees. "Christ isn't born yet," said Travis. "Moses has not gone to the mountain to talk with God.

The Pyramids are still in the earth, waiting to be cut out and put up. Remember that, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, none of them exists." The men nodded. "That" Mr. Travis pointed" is the jungle of sixty million two thousand and fifty-five years before President Keith." He indicated a metal path that struck off into green wilderness, over steaming swamp, among giant ferns and palms. "And that," he said, "is the Path, laid by Time Safari for your use. It floats six inches above the earth.

Doesn't touch so much as one grass blade, flower, or tree. It's an anti gravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from touching this world of the past in any way. Stay on the Path. Don't go off it. I repeat.