Ray Bradbury helped me to notice small things.
I was enjoying the long holiday before starting high school. The heat was sweltering, air conditioning was not in vogue and I picked up a book of science fiction tales. There was a short story called A Sound of Thunder.
It had all the elements of a classic fantasy including time travel, wealthy men on a quest for dinosaurs and strict rules as a careless step could change the future. I was yet to discover words like “dystopian”.
Of course, someone stumbled off the beaten path. When the hunters returned, their world looked almost the same, but there were awful changes in language, politics and atmosphere.
Then came the small, horrific discovery: a butterfly crushed beneath a boot. The dinosaur was magnificent before the era of Jurassic Park. The ending was quintessentially nasty. Of course, I loved it. The author suggested that catastrophe might begin with something tiny and overlooked.
Years later, in diabetes clinics, some consultants at our medical school began asking patients an odd question:
“Have you ever lost your slipper while walking and not realised it?”
Some patients described a slipper coming off without being aware. The problem was the nerve-damaged diabetic foot that had lost awareness. The “slipping slipper sign” was associated with serious complications and became a prompt to look more carefully at sensation, gait, footwear, the eyes and the kidneys. This simple clinical question is the butterfly beneath the boot and such a foot could lead to ulceration, deformity and amputation. It is a grim reminder not to dismiss minute details in a consultation.
My mother taught English Language and Literature so she was always borrowing books from her school’s library for us. Soon after reading the story, my father travelled to the United States and returned with three of Bradbury’s yarns at my request.
In those days, that felt like treasure arriving in an overloaded suitcase. There was no instant download or home delivery. A book from abroad had been sought in a shop, bought, packed and carried across an ocean.
I inspected the amazing covers and turned the pages slowly. New books always smelt of somewhere else. I have never acquired a taste for digital copies or kindles. My father may not have known that he was beginning a lifelong affair. Perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing.
I read an entry on Bradbury in the New Age Encyclopaedia at home. He had humble origins in small-town Illinois but would become synonymous with the best in the genre.
After A Sound of Thunder came The Martian Chronicles. I expected rockets and Martians but found loneliness, conquest, prejudice, homesickness and human beings carrying their worst habits to another planet.
That lesson followed me into medicine too. A doctor also enters another person’s world carrying a language and the confidence of training.
Someone says “pressure,” “gas” or “my heart jumping.” We translate these into hypertension, dyspepsia or arrhythmia. Patients bring family, work, fear, money, faith, memory and their own understanding of what is happening.
Then, there was Fahrenheit 451. Some schools abroad had banned it so, of course, it became irresistible. Tell a teenager that a book is dangerous and you have done most of the advertising. People still ask me about The Emperor’s New Hospital and the subsequent attempt at censorship.
The firemen in the novel burn books but the warning was deeper. People grew to enjoy noise, distraction and enormous screens. It’s mind-boggling that he wrote this before smartphones and social media. Unfortunately, the modern generation has almost been persuaded to stop reading.
The Veldt offers another warning in Baby Daniel’s generation. In that story, neglected children become so absorbed in a fascinating virtual reality nursery of predators. In a nasty twist, the technology begins to replace their hapless parents, brains and finally their moral restraint.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, I read another tale, The Pedestrian. The protagonist walks alone at night through a deafening silence. Everyone else is indoors, watching television. His simple decision to take a walk is treated as suspicious. An automated police car stops him and, finding no acceptable reason for his behaviour, takes him away as he must be prone to “regressive tendencies”.
Roads once crowded with traffic became deserted in 2020. Families communicated through screen while older people became isolated. Children stopped playing together. Walking outside suddenly became a criminal offence.
In the 1980s, The Ray Bradbury Theater brought his stories to television. Some people may find the special effects to be outdated with slow-burn suspense. Bradbury appeared at the beginning of each episode in a room crowded with objects: toys, curiosities and items that ensured he was never starved of ideas. It looked like the inside of a child’s unfettered imagination. Surprisingly, the television series aired locally and sent me back to the books.
Imagination is part of clinical responsibility. A doctor must be able to imagine what it is like to receive a diagnosis, to live with pain, to fear growing dependent, to choose between a prescription and groceries or to hear relatives discuss your future when you can no longer speak.
Today, the books my father once brought home in a suitcase can be summoned in seconds. We scroll more, eat indiscriminately, get eye strain and read summaries of books we never open. We become impatient with stories, relatives, friends and, sometimes, even our own thoughts.
I began that holiday as a boy looking for dinosaurs.
I found Mars, burning libraries, odd carnivals, a crushed butterfly, dandelion wine and a writer who quietly understood boyhood ideas.
Years later, in a crowded clinic, I still try to ponder over the small detail that would be easier to dismiss: the downcast eyes, the unfinished sentence or the slipper left behind.
Sometimes, if we are paying attention, we can hear the body whispering before it screams.
Or the thunder before it arrives.
