Armageddon in Retrospect

Armageddon in Retrospect is an interesting collection of stories and articles about war and conquest and the like. The audio book of Kurt Vonnegut’s Armageddon in Retrospect is read by Rip Torn, the gravel voiced actor from Men in Black. This is a clear case of a well known film actor getting a bit of Voice Over work when almost anyone else on Earth would have been a better choice. Rip Torn has an extremely unpleasant voice and not surprisingly, he has a hard time doing voices for women and children. The stories are standard issue Kurt Vonnegut. Great stuff.…

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Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye Blue Monday is a rather depressing bit of business. It is the story of a writer and the trouble he causes all his creations, apparently to entertain himself. Though it is never really clear if the Creator is entertained or not. He seems as sad and pathetic as the characters whose strings he pulls. There is madness and mayhem and a lot of talk about bad chemicals and so on. The book is written in an odd style, even for the great and odd Kurt Vonnegut. Breakfast of Champions is about a number…

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Welcome to The Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors, his writing is both highly intelligent and totally silly. Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of short stories. Kurt Vonnegut’s sci-fi stories are often shocking in their premise and more shocking in their solutions. They are written in the such plain and straight forward style that the sci fi elements often sneak up on you. Welcome to the Monkey House is the story of a world which is overpopulated, so the World Government comes up with an Ethical Solution to the problem. Birth Control is bad, so they just devise…

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