No Cat, No Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut is dead.

I read Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman before I read Vonnegut. All of their jacket covers compared them to him. It was inevitable.

What made me start reading Vonnegut was the movie "The Recruit," in which they invented a virus that would have the same effect on the Internet that Vonnegut's Ice-9 would have on the Earth. So I read "Cat's Cradle."

For two solid weeks I read nothing but Vonnegut's work, about eight novels. I thank the Bookend in Boulder for stocking his work ad infinitum. And it affected me in thought, etc., and I wrote a story that hasn't and won't be published. Maybe he changed the way I viewed the world, that someone could come out of Indianapolis, write fiction with so many parallels to his own life, and be known for it. Because as unreal as his books were, they connected so tightly to this world.

Well. That's my Vonnegut story. I wish he was still alive and writing, so when I go on another binge I'll have new material.

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.