(hb; 1997)
From
the inside flap
“Kurt
Vonnegut caps his mind-bending career of unconventional attitudes and fiction
and lectures with this new book. . . The three protagonists are the author, the
unappreciated, long-out-of-print science fiction Kilgore Trout, who is the
author’s second self, and a seriously dysfunctional universe.
“On
February 13, 2001, according to Vonnegut, the universe will tire momentarily of
expanding forever. What’s the point? Maybe it would be more fun to shrink for a
change and have a reunion of all the stuff back where it began. Then it could
make a big BANG again.
“It
will shrink back to February 17th, 1991, but will then decide that
expansion is the way to go, after all. As time marches on once more to 2001,
though, Vonnegut and Trout and everybody else will have to do exactly what they
did the first time through the decade, for good or ill: marry the wrong person,
bet on the wrong horse. Whatever! Ten years of déjà vu all over again! At least
déjà vu doesn’t cause physical injury and property damage.
“But
all hell cuts loose when the rerun is over and fee will kicks in again.
Everybody is so used to being a robot of the past that almost nobody is
prepared to think of new things to do and then do them, in order to avoid
accidents or whatever. Off-balance pedestrians will fall down and not get back
up. Unsteered motor vehicles will slay them by the millions. Factory workers
will allow themselves to be gobbled up by their own machinery!”
Review
The
first half of Timequake is classic
Vonnegut: audacious, ironic, sly, funny, science fiction-ish and
distinctive. The first half is a joyous, occasionally chatterbox read. It is
during the second half that Timequake
becomes overlong, with chapters that seem to do little more than elongate this
fractured and barely-plotted meta-tale.
Bottom
line: Timequake is rambling and
flawed, but memorable and worth reading if borrowed from the library or bought
for cheap─not Vonnegut’s best work, but not a waste of time, either.
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