The Last of the Great American Straight-Shooters

When I was a teenager I was science-fiction junkie. If it had the word “Worlds,” “Space” or “Future” in the title, I read it. My friends and I traded dog-eared paperbacks by Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke and were always on the lookout for new authors to consume.

We were the serious sort of sci-fi fans who preferred the movies Silent Running and 2001: A Space Odyssey over the swashbuckling nonsense of Star Wars and Star Trek.

Kurt Vonnegut, author of Breakfast of Champions, Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse Five and other great novels passed away last week at the age of 84.

Some of my favorite science-fiction novels have been brought the silver screen, but many have not. I’m still waiting for an ambitious director (such as Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson) to transform Asimov’s epic series The Foundation Trilogy into a cinematic gem. I also think Clarke’s Childhood’s End, a classic of the genre, would make a fantastic film, even though several of its main ideas have already been plundered for Independence Day.

Another book that would make a great sci-fi film is Brian Aldiss’ Barefoot in the Head. It takes place in the future when a Geneva Convention-like edict has forbidden countries to use any sort of weapon of mass destruction. Instead, warring countries dose each other with bombs filled with hallucinogenic gases. Although it sounds like a hippie’s dream, the book describes the aftermath of such a war as chaotic nightmare on earth as the survivors try to get their heads on straight.

If I had to pick a favorite sci-fi book of all time it would probably be Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz. Like many of my faves, it takes place in the future after mankind has royally screwed things up. In the aftermath of WWIII, society takes a bit of nosedive intellectually and blames science and other institutions of learning as being the source of the trouble. Universities, libraries and laboratories are burned to the ground and the only manuscripts that are saved are those hidden in Catholic monasteries. After a few hundred years, when society has rebounded technologically and is ready to once again explore space, earth’s population has a decidedly Catholic form of government.

A Canticle for Liebowitz is about a lot of things, but mostly it is about the will to survive that is inherent in all God’s creatures.

Like a lot of my fellow teenage sci-fi junkies, I made the transition to other genres of fiction by reading the books of Kurt Vonnegut. Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, and The Sirens of Titan, all have that sci-fi, fantastical feel to them, although I doubt if any of them are categorized as such at your local library or bookstore.

Vonnegut’s style was aloof, humorous, and filled with a childlike wonder for the majesty of the universe while at the same time thumbing its nose at mankind’s role in it. Decidedly anti-authoritarian, Vonnegut’s books are the literary equivalent of the kid who dared tell the king he was wearing no clothes.

Vonnegut died this past week several weeks after suffering head injuries in a fall at his home. He was 84 years old, and from all accounts, just as irascible in his last days as he was in the 1960s and 70s.

A World War II veteran who took part the firebombing of the German city of Dresden (read Slaughterhouse Five), Vonnegut felt as if he earned the right to be an outspoken opponent of the War in Iraq.

In a 2005 interview with David Brancaccio on PBS, Vonnegut said of today’s troops, “They’re being sent on fools errands, and there aren’t enough of them. They go on patrols and they’re in awful danger. And the patrols accomplish almost nothing. That’s a nonsensical war. That isn’t how you fight.”

In the same interview, Vonnegut stated about President Bush, “He is what in my grade school, we would’ve called a twit. I am now an elder in this, the greatest democracy in the history of the world. I am a member of what has been called the Greatest Generation. I am a combat infantry veteran with a Purple Heart and a Battle Star. And now I want to put my president on notice. And I am talking about impeachment.”

Not that Vonnegut believed that Republicans were the sole reason for America’s troubles. In his latter days he complained that the 2004 election featured not one, but “two C students from Yale.”

“Two members of Skull and Bones at Yale, for God’s sake,” said Vonnegut. “I mean, what a charade the combat between the Republicans and the Democrats is. It’s rich kids. Winners on both sides. So the winners can’t lose. And, of course, the losers have no representation in Congress.”

For his stance against the War in Iraq and for publicly stating that he respected the bravery and beliefs of someone willing to become a suicide bomber, many newspaper columnists and political pundits stated that Vonnegut supported terrorism.

Vonnegut was never one to be browbeaten into apologizing for his words, so it was left to his son, pediatrician Dr. Mark Vonnegut, to take up his case when the media was having a feeding frenzy over his father’s words.

In an editorial in The Boston Globe, Mark Vonnegut wrote, “My father cares not a fig for the Middle East. At no point did he say that blowing yourself up in a crowd of people was a good thing to do.

"What most outraged his interviewer was Kurt’s disinclination to dismiss the terrorists as mentally ill. He said that suicide bombers believed that they were dying for a just cause and that he imagined they were probably brave people. It was all speculation.

“Nowhere in the interview did he say anything in support of terrorism, though I’m quite sure he enjoyed horrifying his interviewer by skating around it.

"What Kurt can do better than most people is reframe things and turn them around in a way that creates a new perspective. Even if you disagree with that perspective, the plausibility and novelty of his vision are enough to make you think. We need to think a little more, not less.”

Amen to that, Mark. RIP Kurt.