A Gun for Dinosaur

Plot summary

The story takes the form of a first-person narrative by the protagonist, time-traveling hunter Reginald Rivers told to Mr. Seligman, a prospective client of his time safari business; Seligman's contributions to the conversation are omitted, and must be inferred from those of Rivers. Rivers informs the client he is not big enough to hunt the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, illustrating his point with an extended anecdote from a previous expedition, which forms the main portion of the tale.

On the occasion in question, Rivers and his partner Chandra Aiyar conduct two other clients to the past. One of them, Courtney James (based on Jack Parsons), is a vain, arrogant and spoiled playboy; the other, August Holtzinger, is a small, timid man recently come into wealth (time safaris are not cheap). Before the journey, they test-fire some guns on the firing range to settle on weapons for each of them. Holtzinger's small size makes him incapable of effectively handling a heavy-caliber weapon (the recoil knocks him over) and, against his better judgment, Rivers lets Holtzinger travel on the safari with a lighter caliber weapon.

James proves unmanageable, shooting at every creature in sight and spoiling Holtzinger's shots. Ultimately James' foolishness gets him in real trouble, when he inadvertently empties his rifle over a slumbering Tyrannosaurus, which consequently wakes and makes for him. Holtzinger defends James by shooting the dinosaur, but his gun is not powerful enough to kill it, and his act only attracts it toward the shooter. Despite the best efforts of Rivers and Aiyar to save Holtzinger, the Tyrannosaurus snaps him up and makes off with him. A furious quarrel with James ensues, he and the guides each blaming the other for their companion's death. James tries to kill Rivers, but is knocked out by Aiyar. Afterwards he swears revenge.

Later, after the expedition has returned to the present, James bribes Professor Prochaska, the scientist operating the time chamber, to send him back to the Cretaceous again—but at a point just prior to the emergence of the safari's earlier visit. His plan is to shoot Rivers the moment the latter originally came out of the time machine. Since that obviously had not happened, however, the space-time continuum avoids the paradox by spontaneously snapping James back to the present, the forces involved instantly killing him.

Concluding his tale, Rivers makes his point with Seligman by emphasizing Holtzinger's fate.

Revision and continuations

De Camp revised the story slightly for its inclusion in Rivers of Time to update obsolete paleontological terms and dated references. In one instance the result was unfortunate; in the original version of the story, Rivers estimates Seligman's weight in both pounds and stone; in the revised version both measures are rendered as kilograms, resulting in Rivers appearing to make the same calculation twice.

Many years after writing the story, de Camp penned eight more tales of its protagonist, time-traveling hunter Reginald Rivers; all nine stories were then collected as Rivers of Time (1993). A tenth tale of Rivers, "Gun, Not for Dinosaur", authored by Chris Bunch, later appeared in Harry Turtledove's 2005 tribute anthology honoring L. Sprague de Camp, The Enchanter Completed.

Reception

P. Schuyler Miller singles out the story as "one of the classic time-travel stories invading the years of the dinosaurs."

S. E. Cotts calls it "one of my favorites," noting that "[i]ts subject, about a safari into the past, has been successfully tackled by other writers, but this version has solid merit."

Sam Moskowitz, who felt de Camp's ... plots less incisive" during this period, cited this story as an "outstanding exception" discussing "with an air of quiet authority the problem of what type of gun and what methodology were best suited to shooting dinosaurs."

Don D'Ammassa calls it "an undeniably classic story of the dangers of time travel."

Harry Turtledove deems the piece a "classic, ... at the same time a fine character study, a meditation on time-travel paradoxes (here treated as something the continuum seeks to avoid rather than a likely result of voyaging into the past), and a splendid re-creation of a vanished world. De Camp makes the reader feel the heat and humidity of the world to which Reginald Rivers and his band of hunters are transported--and feel the bites from insects with mouthparts evolved to pierce dinosaur hide. He does a masterful job of discussing the difficulties inherent in hunting extinct behemoths with weapons small enough for one man to handle. When troubles arise, they do so as a natural consequence of the characters' personalities, and are more moving and convincing because of that." He feels the story "has also aged very well, despite the vast increase in paleontological knowledge in the past half-century."

Influence and literary responses

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