Ray Bradbury: The Consequences Of Time Travel

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Ray Bradbury was very interested in science fiction and the possibility of time travel. One of his favorite interests was what it would be like to time travel. His book “A Sound of Thunder” explains the consequences of time travel. Ray Bradbury based this short story on the idea of the butterfly effect. The characters in his books seem to get in unusual and dangerous situations. His stories sometimes told about humanity being affected by advances in technology and science. He warned about humanity being affected in a negative way with these advancements. What influenced Ray Bradbury’s writings of time travel? His stories were about average people and situations they got into in life. He put his knowledge of time travel and trials in life into his books. Ray Bradbury was influenced by many poets and writers. Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, and Thomas Wolfe were his favorite writers and poets. One of his earliest influences was Edger Allen Poe.
Raymond Douglas Bradbury was born to a middle class family in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920 (Mogen 2). His middle name Douglas was given to him, after the actor Douglas Fairbanks. His father, Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, worked as a power and telephone lineman for the Bureau of Power and Light in Waukegan. (Reid 1). Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant, was his mother. He had a younger sister, Elizabeth, born in 1926, and older twin brothers, Leonard and Samuel, who were born in 1916. His brother Samuel died in 1918, and his sister Elizabeth died of pneumonia in 1927 (Reid 1).
He grew up in Waukegan, a small midwestern town in Illinois. His experiences from his childhood would influence many of his writin...

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... the future, life as we know it will be greatly changed. Past mistakes can be corrected, unpleasant situations can be avoided, and future knowledge can be gained at a present time. Will we find that changing the past, like what happened in Bradbury’s story “A Sound of Thunder,” will change our present life? Will going to the future bring great devastation to our present life? The idea of time travel seems very inviting and exciting, but can anyone really know if time travel will bring destruction to the present life? Will reliving the past and correcting mistakes leave men unable to learn from their mistakes? The idea of going into the future may seem like a good idea, but will it leave men with no desire to explore and experiment their ideas? Though time travel is an interesting idea, like it was to Ray Bradbury, it has the potential to destroy life as we know it.

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