Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer and humorist known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after 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.
Philip José Farmer was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.
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 in 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of morbid humor.
Motherfucker, sometimes abbreviated as mofo, mf, or mf'er, is an English-language vulgarism. It is a form of the profanity fuck. The word is usually considered highly offensive. In common usage, however, it is rarely used in a literal way, which, under a standard reading, would mean an incestuous relationship with one's own mother. Rather, the word usually refers to a mean, despicable, or vicious person; or any particularly difficult or frustrating situation. Conversely, it can be used positively, as a term of admiration, as in the term badass motherfucker (BAMF), meaning a fearless and confident person.
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 and 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, with Billy occasionally traveling through time. 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 which Vonnegut himself lived through 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".
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.
The Sirens of Titan is a comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history. Much of the story revolves around a Martian invasion of Earth.
Player Piano is the first 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.
Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. Written in 1976, it depicts Vonnegut's views of loneliness, both on an individual and social scale.
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
Jailbird is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1979. The book is regarded as Kurt Vonnegut's "Watergate novel."
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.
Palm Sunday is a 1981 collection of short stories, speeches, essays, letters, and other previously unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut.
Fates Worse than Death, subtitled An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980s, is a 1991 collection of essays, speeches, and other previously uncollected writings by author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. In the introduction to the book, Vonnegut acknowledges that the book is similar to an earlier book, Palm Sunday. In it he discusses his attempted suicide.
Dan Wakefield is an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter.
The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library is dedicated to championing the literary, artistic, and cultural contributions of the late writer, artist, and Indianapolis native Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It opened in January 2011 and was located in The Emelie, a structure on the National Register of Historic Places at 340 North Senate Avenue in Indianapolis, Indiana, until January 2019. Funding for a new building at 543 Indiana Avenue was secured, and the library reopened to the public on November 9, 2019.
The idea of a fourth dimension has been a factor in the evolution of modern art, but use of concepts relating to higher dimensions has been little discussed by academics in the literary world. From the late 19th century onwards, many writers began to make use of possibilities opened up by the exploration of such concepts as hypercube geometry. While many writers took the fourth dimension to be one of time, others preferred to think of it in spatial terms, and some associated the new mathematics with wider changes in modern culture.
