Butterfly Effect in Popular Culture - Literature and Print

Literature and Print

Charles Fort, wrote about the interconnectedness of nature and the butterfly effect before the term was coined in his books New Lands (1932) and Wild Talents (1941). In "New Lands" he makes reference to a migration of birds in New York that could cause a storm in China.

In the 1952 short story by Ray Bradbury, "A Sound of Thunder", the killing of a butterfly during the time of dinosaurs causes the future to change in subtle but meaningful ways: e.g., the spelling of English and the outcome of a political election.

The butterfly effect was invoked by fictional chaotician Ian Malcolm in both the novel Jurassic Park and subsequent film adaptation. He used it to explain the inherent instability of (among other things) an amusement park with dinosaurs as the attraction.

In Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times, the magical "Quantum Weather Butterfly", whose wings have finite area but infinite length, has the ability to manipulate weather patterns. These microclimates, which the butterfly uses to attract mates and fend off predators, play an important role in the resolution of the plot.

In the 1632 series of time-travel science fiction by Eric Flint and David Weber et al., speculation about the butterfly effect that happens when the West Virginia town of Grantville is instantaneously dropped into 1632 Germany. The speculation is that the events which lead the genetic makeup of a human are so sensitive to chance that every human born in the world changed by the "Ring of Fire" event would be genetically different than they otherwise would have been within a very small period of time, depending on the distance from Germany, but in all cases within a year. Specifically, thousands of sperm vying for entry into an egg would be very sensitive to very small differences in position or timing that would assuredly result in a different sperm winning out, and a different person (a brother or sister, but no closer related than that) being born. The speculation centers especially on the birth of Baruch de Spinoza in Amsterdam a few months following the Ring event.

The (practical) applications are explored in Greg Egan's Permutation City. The premise is that if the details of the chaotic system can be determined with sufficient accuracy, then the butterfly effect could be used to leverage small actions into much larger desired consequences. E.g., deliberately flap the butterfly in just the place and time so as to end a drought, or prevent a hurricane from forming.

A variant is introduced in the 1993 short story "The Mosquito's Choice" by Henry Cowper, describing two alternate history timelines diverging radically due solely to a choice made by a mosquito. On a hot summer evening during the First World War, a French artillery officer is making calculations for the offensive on the German positions due to be launched the next day, while his orderly is preparing coffee. The mosquito, hovering inside the tent, needs to choose which of the sweating men - from its point of view, equally tempting sources of nourishment - it would sting. In one timeline it had stung the officer - making him lose concentration and transpose figures in his calculations, and leading to the next day's artillery bombardment falling off target. This resulted in the history we know. In the divergent timeline the mosquito stung the orderly while the officer made the correct calculations - with the result that on the following day a French artillery shell came down directly on Corporal Adolf Hitler and blew him to bits. This resulted in a history where the Nazi Party remained an insignificant splinter group in Munich, while Germany underwent a restoration of the Kaiser in 1934 and won the Second World War in 1944 due to a nuclear bomb developed by Einstein and other Jewish scientists.

Still another variant on the theme of a seemingly trivial change having drastic results is explored in Cathleen Ward's story "Boy or Girl". The entire future of the world depends on whether or not an unimportant lower middle class New Yorker would make a completely trivial short phone call to a friend on an evening in 2003. His making the call would delay by some three minutes the moment of the friend getting into bed, making love to his wife and impregnating her - and would effect which of the friend's multitude of sperm cells would fuse with the wife's egg cell. As a result, there are two diverging timelines with (as the title implies) a male baby being born in one timeline and a female one in the other. In both timelines, the child is an exceptionally gifted mathematical genius. In the timeline where it is a boy, he is very early recognized, encouraged and gets effortlessly into academic prominence, developing a complacent and conformist personality. In the 2030's he becomes the willing servant of a harsh religious-nationalist dictatorship seizing power over North America, and helps develop a terrible super-weapon for the regime - with the ultimate result of a cataclysmic war sweeping the globe, destroying all of humanity except for a few enclaves of survivors thrown back into the stone Age. Conversely, in the timeline where the genius is a girl, she is denied recognition and has to wage a bitter struggle against a hostile male environment, developing a rebellious and highly independent character. In the 2030's she joins the underground, and plays a crucial role in overthrowing the dictatorial regime and instituting a libertarian utopia.