"... a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time."

A great short story! Damn Eckels, you had one job to do - STAY ON THE PATH!!! Idiot.

"There was a sound of thunder." ( )

The classic example of the Butterfly Effect involving a prehistoric butterfly. ( )

Il est bien difficile de faire une note de lecture après l’écoute d’une seule nouvelle d’un auteur. C’est bien trop court pour prendre la mesure du talent d’un écrivain. Pourtant, cette nouvelle se suffit à elle-même. Malgré le titre, c’est de voyage dans le temps qu’il est question ici. Et pas la peine de chercher les grandes aberrations temporelles qui font la joie habituelle des auteurs de science-fiction, on est ici dans la subtilité, le rien.
Et tout cela est décrit avec une très belle maitrise, un style tout en délicatesse et en retenue. J’ai passé un très bon moment, redécouvrant après bien des années un auteur découvert pendant mon adolescence (et qui m’avait alors peu intéressée). On peut se laisser bercer par la langue, on peut méditer sur la contingence de la vie. Et avoir envie d’ouvrir un livre de Bradbury, pour redécouvrir un auteur à côté duquel j’ai bien failli passer.

I am writing this review more than twenty-five years after reading the story - so long ago that I didn't remember the title or the author. Someone else had to identify it for me by the description.

However, I have remembered the plot of this short story for more than twenty-five years. That alone should tell you something.


I was young enough when I read this to find it really scary, in a sort of world-more-fragile-than-I-thought way. Now, looking back at it, the meaning has changed for me.

When I was eleven, the thought of the world disappearing and being remade because some idiot stepped on a butterfly was deeply scary. Now I'm older, I find myself wondering whether there is a different interpretation. We can never go back to the past to change the present, but our present is someone else's past. If we act today, we can change the future, make it better than if we did not act.

Or, as someone else said, in even fewer words, "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now."


I can't say I actually enjoyed this story. It wasn't what I would call fun. Now that I know which story it is, I don't have any real desire to read it again. But I would definitely recommend that you - whoever you are - read it for the first time. I hope that you do, and I hope it sticks with you as long as it did with me, and that you find it as rewarding. ( )