Trying to find the author, and the title, of a story that I read many, many years ago - and yet it’s stuck with me ever since. I’d appreciate any suggestions.
As I recall Time tourists were taken into the past where they could walk through various periods in history. The only proviso was that they had to stick to the path that had been laid out ahead of time (!). Of course one person stepped off the path and squashed a butterfly. When they returned there was relief when it was discovered that all was well and nothing appeared to have changed. Then they saw a sign on an office door …
Ahh, no kidding. I rarely hear the phrase used in reference to the main idea of this particular story. I seem to always hear it related to chaos theory now, e.g. A butterfly flaps its wings in China causes a hurricane to form over the Atlantic, blah blah blah, the butterfly effect.
Sort of the same idea, but not really.
Yes it was. In fact there’s a thread about it in Cafe Society right now. It’s also named aptly, considering the nature of the plot being a riff of the core idea in A Sound Of Thunder.
That sound you hear is my husband, Andy L (a/k/a “Ask the Guy Who’s Pretty Good at Identifying SF stories”) going “Arrgh!” that he didn’t get to post the answer first.
Perhaps in an alternate timeline, he did get to post it first, but was distracted this time.
Thanks all. Funnily enough as I was writing my query ‘The Butterfly Effect’ came to mind but, when I checked up on that and got references to a group and the film neither seemed to bear any relationship to the story. Thinking about it perhaps the group more than the film!
This first timer is that impressed with the responses that were forthcoming that I’m going to rack my brains to see if I can come up with another book/story!
