Originally posted by TOC:
When I read generic science fiction about thirty years ago, I remember reading a short story about an expedition that had gone back in time about 600 million years to look at dinosaurs. They were not allowed to touch anything in the past, so they walked on some kind of planks suspended a foot or so off the ground. But one of the guys stumbled and put his foot down on the ground. Guess what? When they came back to their own time again, humanity was gone and the Earth was ruled by a race of intelligent, purplish blobs! And when the guy who had stumbled looked under his boot, he saw that he had squished a butterfly when he had stepped on the Earth of the past! By killing the butterfly he had eliminated humanity and replaced it with intelligent blobs!!!!
I think I read the same story. There are two I am thinking about:
"The Sound Of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury
and
"Brooklyn Project" by William Tenn.
The former, I think, has the butterfly bit. And I think it's the latter that has everyone turning into purple blobs. The former is scary and ominous; the latter is mordantly funny in a horrifying way.
Does anyone else remember these stories?
