As A Sound of Thunder progresses, Travis has many concerns about the trip to the past. He is nervous that changes they make in the past will drastically transform their well-known present. He also has an obligation to report all the actions they make to the authorities (Bradburry, 1952). Travis is afraid they might revoke Time Safari’s license to travel because of their irresponsible conduct on the trip (Bradburry, 1952).
According to Lewis’s “The Bootstrap Paradox” and “The Grandfather Paradox,” a person traveling back in time cannot change the present by interfering with the past since there would be no time traveler if there were a change in his or her current time (Sfetsu, 2019). For example, imagine that I am a great scientist who has discovered a life-saving vaccine with the sample I found in the ceiling of my house. Then, I become one of those lucky expeditors who need to check the time travel machine and go to the past, five years ago. As I go to the past, I realize I can help my past self discover the vaccine and secretly leave the sample on my house’s ceiling. In this case, all the actions I did during the travel did not affect my present but led the events according to the course as they were supposed to happen.
Therefore, Travis’s worries can be said as groundless because the travelers’ actions during their ‘trip’ should not divert the present they are having now. In the continual time loop, all the events occur in all time frames, and the results we have in the present are somewhat interconnected with all the decisions we made in the past including the time travel.
References
Bradburry, R. (1952). The sound of thunder. The Crowell–Collier Publishing Company.
Sfetsu, N. (2019). Paradoxes of causal loops in spacetime. MultiMedia Publishing. Web.