A Moment of Silence

Valerie was devastated to hear that the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at age 84. She still remembers when her uncle gave her several enormous boxes of books that he didn't have room for anymore, and among those boxes was a vast selection by Vonnegut.

Like the methodical person she is, she started reading his work chronologically, with Player Piano. This was right about the time that she was really getting into science fiction and dystopic writing and satire, the likes of Voltaire and Orwell, movies like Fahrenheit 451 and Soylent Green. Thanks to her uncle, she also dabbled in things like Dune and Foundation, but she was always partial to "soft" science fiction, which focused more on people than science.

Cat's Cradle; God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; Slaughterhouse-Five; Bluebeard... Kurt Vonnegut didn't write a lot of novels, and Valerie didn't read them all, but she treasured the ones she did. And who can forget short stories like "Harrison Bergeron" and "Welcome to the Monkey House"? She once got the opportunity to see him read, but things got in the way, as they are wont to do. Now she'll never get to see him, and it breaks her heart. But the good thing about authors is you can always hang out with them by picking up one of their books, and thanks to her uncle, Valerie can do that anytime.

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.