I’ve been asked a couple of times over the last day or so, presumably because people know I write science fiction, about my thoughts on the death of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Fact is, I don’t have any. I think I hit Vonnegut at the wrong point in my reading life–maybe tried to read him too early, or started with the wrong thing–and never went back to him. Didn’t seem to me, at that time, that he wrote “real” science fiction (of course, since he distanced himself from the field pretty vigorously, he probably would agree with me).
I think my older brothers read and liked him, and I had friends in university who were crazy about his stuff, but me…nah.
But I liked this quote of his, which I found over at The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.:
“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
In any event, R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I can honestly say, “I hardly knew ye.”
