Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922–2007) was an iconic US writer best known for his surreal, nonchronological science fiction novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). With its juxtaposition of a man unstuck from time who has weird adventures in alien zoos and suffers internment in brutal POW camps in Nazi Germany, Slaughterhouse-Five captured the imagination of the American counterculture era.
Other important novels include The Sirens of Titan (1959), Mother Night (1962), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1990). However, Vonnegut’s later work is also excellent, and perhaps underrated—evidence for which is provided by the recent multivolume Library of America reissues of all his fiction. Vonnegut’s works have, at various times, been labeled science fiction, satire, and postmodern. He has been thought of in certain circles as a successor to Mark Twain, but in fact Vonnegut’s surreal approaches are much closer to William S. Burroughs, even if their styles are different. Perhaps if Twain and Burroughs had had a love child it would have been Vonnegut.
Although Vonnegut resisted the science fiction label, his work did appear in Galaxy (“Unready to Wear,” April 1953) and he often imagined alien societies and civilizations. In his essay “Science Fiction,” for The New York Times Book Review in 1965 (reprinted in Vonnegut: Novels and Stories 1950–1962, Library of America, 2002), Vonnegut wrote that when his novel Player Piano was published he “learned from the reviewers that [he] was a science-fiction writer.” Ever since, Vonnegut noted, he had been a “soreheaded occupant of [that] file drawer,” making the point that “many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.” As he put it, one became a science fiction writer if one had the chutzpah to “notice technology,” but he also had astutely noticed that among those who “adore being classified as science-fiction writers” many are “happy with the status quo” because it allows them to be part of a club. For Vonnegut, science fiction wasn’t just a genre—it was a genre of “joiners,” which, for a noted loner-curmudgeon, wasn’t a plus.
Vonnegut may have been wise to distance himself from genre, in part because he reached a far wider audience in doing so. However, he also used science fiction tropes for purposes far different than most science fiction—including his absurdism, exaggeration, and gift for satire. Writers like William Tenn and Stepan Chapman—who never really got out of the genre field and share certain qualities with Vonnegut—suffered career-wise not just because they produced few novels, but also because their less-than-earnest stance rubbed some science fiction editors the wrong way. In the end, though, genre got Vonnegut: he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2015.
Vonnegut wrote relatively little short fiction, but it was always deeply reflective of the themes and style of his novels. “2 B R 0 2 B” (IF, 1962) is a satirical story about assisted suicide and population control. It is also a pointed commentary on the idea of immortality. It appeared in the same year as Mother Night, released by Fawcett Gold Medal in a first print run of 175,000 copies.