Thursday, April 12, 2007

So it goes.


UPDATE
I've moved my Vonnegut post to the top again because I caught shit for moving it before and I'm an impressionable sort. I also want to address Sour Grapes' comment regarding KV not writing solely in the SF genre: He's absolutely right, and it's an important point to be made. While his SF was what brought me to him in the first place, it was his writinig that kept me with him regardless of genre.

ORIGINAL POST
One of my very favoritest authors ever, Kurt Vonnegut, died at the young age of 84. When I was a boy, I was scifi geek through and through. As I got older and more sofisticated, Vonnegut introduced me to thinking SF. I started with the standard Slaughterhouse Five, then moved on to Deadeye Dick, Timequake, Slapstick, Cat's Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, Jailbird and Player Piano. I also really enjoyed Like Shaking Hands with God, a transcript of a couple conversations between Vonnegut and Lee Stringer. He's definitely not for everyone, but he was most definitely for me.

15 comments:

O' Tim said...

I knew you (among many thousands of subversive blogger types) would have a post up for Kurt.

God Bless You, Kilgore Trout. R.I.P.

Paula said...

I need to read some of this stuff.

Anonymous said...

I still love the "chronosynclastic infundibulum", whatever the hell that was!

Natsthename said...

I knew we'd sell some Vonnegut today, and the customers did not let me down.

I need to reread SF, since it's been such a long time. I read it after I saw the film and feeling much more satisfied by the book, even though George Roy Hill's take was respectable.

Anonymous said...

I loved Vonnegut as well. He was brilliant and wickedly funny!

Sour Grapes said...

There was some Vonnegut for absolutely everyone. If people are thinking, eww sci-fi yuk, think again. Slaughterhouse Five is the obvious one. The obits will be full of non-geek titles.

No offence to the SF fans, but they're not the only ones who lost a great writer today.

throckey said...

Vonnegut was a writer, not an SF geek. Not that there's anything wrong with being an SF geek (that maturity won't fix) I must get some Vonnegut for my collection.

Cheezy said...

At the risk of 'boohooing' that he was my favourite author in the whole 'existentialsphere'... erm... I'm not. And he wasn't. But his was a truly unique voice.

Joe: I'm reading 'The Sirens of Titan' at the moment, and I can tell you that the "chronosynclastic infundibulum" is a place where two people who are always right can say two totally contradictory things... and yet both still be right!

Hmmm - sounds like the blogosphere to me! (and that novel was written in the 50s!

Unknown said...

Even if he wasn't for everyone, his message was so important. It is sad to lose his voice.

Anonymous said...

You know, now that I take a second view, I think it looked better down there.

Paula said...

I think it should have its own column.

Kos said...

Ooh, maybe I'll go to 4 columns!

O' Tim said...

Great, now there's TWO blog posts with the same title. Nice going, Mr. Copycat.

Andy Phillips said...

I never thought of Vonnegut as a SciFi writer, myself.

Which is the one where the guy has to train as a soldier on Mars, preparing to invade Earth, and they had to take oxygen tablets and learn not to breathe? To me that's just an increidble metaphor.

Kos said...

No, he wasn't SciFi at all. He wrote SF, which is an entirely different level of geekiness.