A Sound of Thunder

I was in the 6th or 7th grade when we had a story "The Vacation" by Ray Bradbury in our reading list. I liked it, which did not happened too often to readings from the school program. And my parents put a book with more stories from the author in front of me. The first one was "A Sound of Thunder". I would say this book affected my life in two different ways. First of all it was the first time I heard about "butterfly effect", and the thought that the smallest movement in the past, may make a huge difference in the future - it was incredible. I remember about it since then and it gave me realization that if something bad happened you never can be sure that if such a thing had not occurred, the world would have been any better today. It gives you some kind of additional perspective when you think about historical events or even personal ones.

And the second way this book changed my life was that it was the first truly science fiction story I read. Before it I read fairy tales, some adventures and fantasy, and at that moment I had read a number of detectives. I read quite a lot comparing to other children of my age. But this was right book at the right time and I fell in love with it. I read the rest of the stories within the book, then I read a much larger book by Bradbury: containing "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451". The last one was probably special: I'm sure I did not understand most of it at that age, I remember that I even could not say that I liked it, but it impressed me unequivocally.

My journey to the beautiful world of science fiction started right from that point: there were many other great books read later and many remarkable authors were discovered. And the main problem is that some writers are too good. And when unexpectedly you get to some story which is more of the mystical type (like some Bradbury's ones), or scary tales (like those of Orson Scott Card) it can be too much for vivid imagination.