The only flaw is just how out of date Bradbury’s description of T.Rex is in the original novel, which can’t be helped due to it being written in the 50’s
Thanks for posting this. This has always been my favorite Ray Bradbury short story. (For the record, I think this episode was better done than the movie)
With 99% of American youth able to use computers, cell phones, credit cards and most importantly "THE REMOTE", it never ceases to amaze me that, with hundreds of channels to "SURF", some have managed to hone their skills of sarcasm and skepticism into such a fine art ! Table manners like hungry hyenas, survival skills based on how much they can borrow off of their credit cards, and that ability to call a very famous author that was WAY ahead of his time - NAIVE ? Grab remote - change channels !
One theory is that in the 'timeline' where you make a time machine and go back, you already had appeared back then and so you're not altering anything, just sorta... fulfilling a prophecy. Like, say I get the idea for a time machine from a future self, on the one condition that the first thing I do is go back in time to the conversation and give myself the idea. Everything I do remains in line with the original past, and so I do not create an 'alpha' past timeline.
Nice to see Kiel Martin from Hill Street Blues. He died young from lung cancer. As this is one of my all time favourite time travel stories, it's a double bonus! I didn't rate the film much.
One of my all time favorite short stories of any genre that I have read maybe a dozen times or more. A perfect story with a terrific ending that set the original standard for the alternate timelines concept. The feature film was such a disappointment though there were a few good things in it. Replacing the Tyrannosaurus with an Allosaurus was a major mistake; the latter is pretty wimpy compared to a T. rex. Had the honor of briefly meeting and chatting with Bradbury when he came to my university in 1970. We talked about steam trains and John Wayne.
LOL! i read this in english...special this is like the only clip i know that says the story practically word for word:P better than the little plays we did =) if anybody else in my english is reading this then we should watch this in class instead of BMW adds...
One maddening thing about physics is 'duality', where most things seem to have alternate and complementary yet seemingly contradictory representations. Relativity vs Quantum Mechanics etc. is the ultimate example. I would not doubt some day we learn that time can run backwards and forwards, or that it runs both ways simultaneously, or that the universe cycles between distant end points by reversing spacetime every time it cycles between big bang and big crunch, but still following known rules.
The movie 'Paycheck' is an attempt to 'fix' the science by proposing a time machine that is destroyed before it can cause prohibitive damage to the future, but the fact is that during the time the machine is in use it is creating time intervals in the universe where energy is not conserved because foreign travelers coexist with the rest of the universe, increasing the energy. Besides, the 'restored' timeline is not truly restored unless/till the time machine is prevented from being used at all.
Out of char and ashes like golden salamanders, the old years, the green years, will leap. Roses sweeten the air, white hair turns black, wrinkles vanish. All, everything flies back to seed, flee death...(How brilliant was that?) :)
If a time machine can be built, it may fail to work, it may fail to work well (short jumps only), it may fail to jump into the past, or it may be rendered nonfunctional or destroyed before it is used. No time machine that travels long jumps into the past is possible because anyone using it will alter the future so radically that the time machine itself will be rendered nonexistent, thus preventing its use in the first place and creating a paradox.
@zvermilyer3 i agree. Who is to say that the dinosaur won't fall on a tree sapling that otherwise would be the descendent of a bunch of trees, one of which contains a bee colony millenia later. A bee from that would-be descendent tree would sting a little girl who is allergic to bee stings. She dies. But if she lived because that sapling got crushed millenia ago, then she grows up to create a virus that kills everyone! sometimes you just gotta go with the story and not ask too many questions!
They only kill animals that would have died within seconds of being shot anyway. Therefore the dinosaur was always going to die here and crush a mouse whether it was shot or not.
Well that is the logical argument anyway. The scientific argument takes some physics to understand. Conservation of energy and entropy are violated by time travel into the past, along with all the other known laws of physics. Einstein proposed time travel into the future (via time dilation at velocity) but taking prohibitive energy to accomplish, and remote viewing of the past (via 'looking around the curvature of the universe') but impossibly blurred by distance and fogged by obstructions.
How could you go into the past AT ALL without altering the future or creating a parallel universe? Simply by altering a breeze, something sent into the past could alter the position of an atom and change everything. I pose the question: how is it possible for anything sent into the past to not alter the future/create a different future?
thak you so much!! i have been dieing to see this again. I love the concept of it. Who would have though that a simple dragon fly would alter the future? There is one loop hole though why would'nt killing the dinosaurs also alter the future?
Stephanie, it is a short story so there is not much to read, and Bradbury's stories play WAY better in your mind then these cheap old epjsodes of "R.B. Theater" ever can. Give it a try!
Comment What response that shows how Bradbury uses foreshadowing to create a sense of suspense. Refer to the Writing Rubric to compose your response.??? help Please
P.S. It proves that your ability for tolerance that you preach can be put to useless banter, do you see what I have just done to you? All of the tasteful ramifications have been made low and your true colors have been brought forth - I have taken you and changed you right before all that read these comments. Pretty good at reverse psychology, aren't I ? Gotcha !!
You were way too easy, and thank you for an amusing time! Mocking New Yorkers ? Lived there for years. LIRR was my taxi. Taiwanese? My buddy here is from Taiwan, he enjoys your little air-bag threats immensely ! Jews? My huntin' buddy's last name is Goldstein ! And you, I just feel sorry for. Bet you have never threatened anybody to their face because you can only make them over the net, with great distances between, and hoping nobody will ever catch you. What a coward. Wish you were close !
You defeat your purpose when telling someone that everybody has an opinion and you welcome the various points of view. Apparently you chose to tell me that I should not have one of my own? Making a statement such as the one you made toward mine is fairly self-defeating, 'NO'? I am betting that it would not be a pretty sight to sit at a table and dine with you...........
hey, teh new version of this short story just sucks, and i mean it, it just simply sucks, Ray Bradbury is a genius, why he let them made that piece of...man, i'm so dissapointed, they had a very good story and just wasted the opportunity. Peter Hyams and Thomas Dean Donnelly deserve to burn in hell!!!
Enough with all your comments about book reports and not reading them. Understand how to appreciate literature. PLEASE. And if you can't, don't go posting about it.
You still don't get it, do you? "Probability" is that you do not practice what you preach. but a continued argument with you makes me think that you are a woman. Men here in the west know better than to argue with a woman, because there is a "Probability" that the argument will continue over months and years. Say "Happiness" in Taiwan?