 First edition | |
| Author | Kurt Vonnegut |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Speculative fiction |
| Publisher | Seven Stories Press |
Publication date | 1999 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a collection of short fictional interviews written by Vonnegut and first broadcast on WNYC. The title parodies that of Vonnegut's 1965 novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater . It was published in book form in 1999.
The premise of the collection is that Vonnegut employs Dr. Jack Kevorkian to give him near-death experiences, allowing Vonnegut access to heaven and those in it for a limited time. While in the afterlife Vonnegut interviews a range of people including Adolf Hitler, William Shakespeare, Eugene V. Debs, Isaac Asimov, Isaac Newton [1] and the ever-present Kilgore Trout (a fictional character created by Vonnegut in his earlier works).
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Kurt Vonnegut was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.
Theodore Sturgeon was an American fiction author of primarily fantasy, science fiction, and horror, as well as a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 short stories, 11 novels, and several scripts for Star Trek: The Original Series.
Cat's Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published on March 18, 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of morbid humor.
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years. Throughout the novel, Billy frequently travels back and forth through time. The protagonist deals with a temporal crisis as a result of his post-war psychological trauma. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience that Vonnegut endured as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity" and "one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time".
Murad Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian was an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote, "Dying is not a crime". Kevorkian said that he assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He was convicted of murder in 1999 and was often portrayed in the media with the name of "Dr. Death".
Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city, and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author. Breakfast of Champions deals with themes of free will, suicide, and race relations, among others. The novel is full of drawings by the author, substituting descriptive language with depictions requiring no translation.
Player Piano is the debut novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr., published in 1952. The novel depicts a dystopia of automation partly inspired by the author's time working at General Electric, describing the negative impact technology can have on quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. The widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class, the engineers and managers, who keep society running, and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in Vonnegut's later works.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, Kurt Vonnegut's fifth novel, was published in 1965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston and as a Dell mass-market paperback in 1970. A piece of postmodern satire, it gave context to Vonnegut's following novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, and shared in its success.
A granfalloon, in the fictional religion of Bokononism, is defined as a "false karass". That is, it is a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless.
Tralfamadore is the name of a fictional planet appearing in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut in inconsistently described variations. It is variously depicted as being located outside of the Milky Way galaxy or being fictional within the fiction itself.
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007). Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
Jailbird is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1979 by Delacorte Press. The novel is often described as Vonnegut's "Watergate novel," as it explores themes related to the Watergate scandal, the American labor movement, and the political landscape of the United States during the mid-20th century.
Ilium is a fictional town in eastern New York state, used as a setting for many of Kurt Vonnegut's novels and stories, including Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and the stories "Deer in the Works", "Poor Little Rich Town", and "Ed Luby's Key Club". The town is dominated by its major industry leader, the Ilium Works, which produces scientific marvels to assist, or possibly harm, human life. The Ilium Works is Vonnegut's symbol for the "impersonal corporate giant" with the power to alter humankind's destiny. The town has been compared to Zenith, the fictional setting in Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt.
Eliot Rosewater is a recurring character in the novels of American author Kurt Vonnegut. He appears throughout various novels as an alcoholic, and a philanthropist who claims to be a volunteer fireman. He runs the Rosewater Foundation, an organization created to keep the family's money in the family. He is among the few fans of the novels of Kilgore Trout.
Venus on the Half-Shell is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip José Farmer, writing pseudonymously as "Kilgore Trout", a fictional recurring character in many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. This book first appeared as a fictitious "excerpt"—attributed to Trout —in the ninth chapter of Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965). With Vonnegut's permission, Farmer expanded the fragment into an entire standalone novel. Farmer's story was first published in two parts beginning in the December 1974 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The plot, in which Earth is destroyed by cosmic bureaucrats doing routine maintenance and the sole human survivor goes on a quest to find the "Definitive Answer to the Ultimate Question", was an inspiration for the plot of the later Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.
Cheese Nips were a small cheese-flavored cracker manufactured by Mondelez International under its brand, Nabisco, they were originally used to compete against Sunshine Biscuit's Cheez-It crackers.
Palm Sunday is a 1981 collection of short stories, speeches, essays, letters, and other previously unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut. The collection provides insight into Vonnegut's thoughts on various subjects, including writing, war, and his own literary career. The book is known for its eclectic mix of genres and personal reflections.
Walter James Miller was an American literary critic, playwright, poet, translator and publisher. The author, co-author, editor and/or translator of more than sixty books, including four landmark annotated translations of novels by Jules Verne, Miller taught at Hofstra University, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Colorado State University, and for over 40 years at New York University, where he created and taught a popular "Great Books" course. In 1980, he received the NYU Alumni Great Teacher Award. For fifteen years in the 1960s and 1970s, his Peabody Award-winning show Reader's Almanac was a fixture on WNYC, public radio in New York City, and broadcast interviews with many established and rising authors and poets, including Nadine Gordimer, Andrew Glaze, Allen Ginsberg, James Kirkwood Jr., William Packard, Sidney Offit, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut Jr and Steven Kunes. The author of two published collections of poetry, Miller's verse drama Joseph in the Pit was produced off-Broadway in 1993 and 2002.
Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a 1979 musical that marked the first collaboration of composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman. Based on Kurt Vonnegut's 1965 novel of the same name, the musical tells the story of Eliot Rosewater, a millionaire who develops a social conscience and creates a foundation to improve the lives of the citizens of an impoverished Indiana town.
Fredric King is an American film producer and director. He has directed and produced documentaries such as Haiti Redux and Swoon: fearless, a film about the artist Caledonia Curry, also known as Swoon.