Day of the Hunters is a science-fiction short story by Isaac Asimov.
It was first published in the November 1950 issue of Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories. It was later collected in 1975's Buy Jupiter and Other Stories, 1992's The Complete Stories Volume 2, and 1995's Dinosaurs II, edited by Jack Dann, Ace.
Summary[]
In a bar, a group of technicians encounters a disheveled, seemingly intoxicated man who claims to be a former university professor. As they engage with him, he reveals an incredible story: he invented a time machine and traveled back to the Mesozoic era to witness the truth behind the extinction of the dinosaurs.
His tale takes a dark turn. He explains that by the time he arrived, the great dinosaurs were already nearly gone. They had been systematically hunted to extinction by small, intelligent, bipedal lizards armed with advanced weapons. These lizards were not hunting the dinosaurs for food or survival, but were engaged in a relentless, genocidal campaign against their own larger kind, driven by an unexplained motive until no large creatures remained.
The professor becomes increasingly agitated, and the story ends with the implication that this horrifying vision of a self-inflicted apocalypse witnessed firsthand is the cause of his current broken state.
See Also[]
List of short stories by Isaac Asimov