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Kurt Vonnegut died

One of the directors/producers of the Larry David Show...I can't remember which one... was, in theory, working on a screen version of Sirens of Titan.
 
Piscivore said:
Overman said:
Kilgore Trout once wrote a science fiction novel about an alien world that was obsessed with accomplishments. The aliens held progress and production in the highest regard. The alien media would report all kinds of stories on new works of art and inventions, and everyone would read about this progress and feel accomplished and happy. After many years the aliens had invented just about everything they needed, and the artists were getting repetitive, so the media began heralding even the smallest accomplishments. Once a female alien was on the front page for many days simply for being blond, fat, and naked. The aliens became used to this type of garbage media that they began to accept these things as genuine stories, and accomplishments. Soon the aliens only wanted to read about the blond, fat, and naked, so when one of the major revolutionary artists died, it was little surprise that it did not get the attention it deserved, for he was quiet, skinny, and clothed.

So it goes.
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You need to send this to the newspapers.

No chance in hell they will publish it, but man. Right on target.
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Actually, that's a direct quote from Vonnegut, from Breakfast of Champions, I believe. Kilgore Trout was his "author within an author".
 
If somebody asked me yesterday what living person I respected the most, I would have said "Kurt Vonnegut". (In death, he has to share a room with Mark Twain.) When I read Slaughterhouse Five, I had a cathartic experience. After that, I read everything by Vonnegut I could put my hands on. Many of his stories have profoundly changed my beliefs. One verse or Bokanon from Cat's Cradle embodies the reason I am a skeptic, yet I understand why there are believers:

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
 
^nope.

Thats one I wrote, in his vein... But thank you for the compliement!!!
 
Interesting that no one has yet mentioned Player Piano (also published as Utopia 14). I think this was maybe the second Vonnegut I read after Sirens of Titan. It should not be left of the list of his works and established the tone of much of his later work.

Amusingly enough, I did not originally but Sirens because of its cover and the blurb on the back cover, but SF was scarce in 1959 and I ended up buying it anyway.

"Turn the ship upside down"

Only the good die young. :D
 
I picked up Breakfast of Champions on a whim at a garage sale when I was a teenager because the seller called it science fiction. Reading it was mind altering at the time, and I went on to devour almost everything he has written.

I almost feel like Vonnegut is a part of my internal landscape. In that sense, he is still here.
 
got this in my e-mail today and it included a quote many of us can relate to:

Dear American Humanist Association Member,

Kurt Vonnegut, who died just yesterday in New York, was the 1992 Humanist of the Year and honorary president of the American Humanist Association. "I am a humanist," he wrote in a letter to AHA members, "which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead."

By those who knew him, Kurt will be remembered for his direct personal approach; he will also be remembered for his acerbic wit and humor and his unflagging support for humanist concerns.

Sincerely,

Roy Speckhardt
Executive Director
American Humanist Association
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In another case of art imitating... well... art, Christopher Buckley has written a satire called Boomsday in which one Swiftian solution suggested the heroine, Cassandra Devine, is:
Offer senior citizens a reprieve from estate taxes in return for their voluntary suicide at retirement—a publicity ploy that she terms a “meta-political device.”
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Why does this sound familiar? Well of course because Vonnegut thought of it first in his classic short story, Welcome to the Monkey House.
Vonnegut said:
All serious diseases had been conquered. So death was voluntary, and the government, to encourage volunteers for death, set up a purple-roofed Ethical Suicide Parlor at every major intersection, right next door to an orange-roofed Howard Johnson's. There were pretty hostesses in the parlor, and Barca-Loungers, and Muzak, and a choice of fourteen painless ways to die. The suicide parlors were busy places, because so many people felt silly and pointless, and because it was supposed to be an unselfish, patriotic thing to do, to die. The suicides also got free last meals next door.
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[sigh] I never got as much pure enjoyment from a book than from Cat's Cradle and I've read it I don't know how many times. My permanent lexicon includes granfalloon (truly a useful word), and of course no damn cat, no damn cradle, my sig.

Vonnegut via Bokonon said:
If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.
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Vonnegut via Newt Hoenikker said:
No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . . No damn cat, no damn cradle.
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And a reminder:

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. (Bokonon, in Cat's Cradle)
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varwoche said:
[sigh] I never got as much pure enjoyment from a book than from Cat's Cradle and I've read it I don't know how many times. My permanent lexicon includes granfalloon (truly a useful word), and of course no damn cat, no damn cradle, my sig.
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I also use granfalloon. But the most common Vonnegutism I use is, "Go take a flying f*** at a rolling donut." (from Slapstick)

A friend sent me a quote from Slaughterhouse ...

As Billy explains, "on Tralfamadore you learn that the world is just a collection of moments all strung together in beautiful random order. And if we're going to survive, we have to concentrate on the good moments, and ignore the bad."
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Reading the headline and his obituary in this morning's newspaper opened a floodgate of memories. Vonnegut's stories, novels and essays have become so intertwined with my life. I have always felt a personal connection with him in a way that I have connected with only a few other authors and artists.

Episdoes in my life have always conjured up images that he first planted in my brain. Images of the dystopia of Ilium, NY (in Player Piano) and the deer in the works. Images of the caves of Mercury and the Harmoniums that lived there, ecstatic about their very existence and killed by the beauty of Tchaikovsky. Of Harrison and the ballerina breaking the chains of socially-imposed handicaps and kissing the ceiling.

And the basic concepts of the wampeter and the karass, and an understanding of propaganda. He was a humanist who had such a gift for embracing and sharing the core of what it means to be a humanist. And he was a socialist who in many ways taught me how politics and morality and humanism and skepticism were all pieces of the same thing.
 
Harrison Bergeron was done as a TV movie in 1995. A selection of three other stories from Welcome to the Monkey House was also done as Monkey House (made for TV, 1991). They're both at least tolerably well done. There's also a separate movie of "Who am I This Time?" made for TV in 1982, starring Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon, directed by Jonathan Demme, which is not bad at all.
 
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