Slaughterhouse-Five in The Alternative Worlds

Jan 27, 2012 Kara Babcock rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, 2012-read, hugo-nominee, own, time-travel, nebula-nominee

I have often lamented our slavery to linear time. It is a peculiar form of universal injustice, this fact that we can never revisit moments once they become “the past”, that the present is continuously slipping through our hands and solidifying into something we cannot change, except through the careful or careless manipulations of memory and history. What would lives be like if we could experience every moment simultaneously? What if we were conscious of time not as a line but as a point, all p ...more

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Nov 11, 2010 Sandi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, e-books, literature

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those books I've heard described as "great" my whole life. When I heard Luke Burrage review it on his Science Fiction Book Review podcast, I decided to download it to my Nook and finally give it a read.

I will say straight off that I didn't think it was particularly "great". However, I will concede that it has been extremely influential. The first thing that stands out to me is the non-lineal plot. Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an ordinary guy Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those books I've heard described as "great" my whole life. When I heard Luke Burrage review it on his Science Fiction Book Review podcast, I decided to download it to my Nook and finally give it a read.

I will say straight off that I didn't think it was particularly "great". However, I will concede that it has been extremely influential. The first thing that stands out to me is the non-lineal plot. Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an ordinary guy to whom extraordinary things have happened. He's been a WWII POW and survived the firebombing of Dresden. He's also been the sole survivor of an airline crash. He thinks he's been a zoo exhibit on an alien planet. You're told fairly early on that all this happens, but it unfolds in quite a surreal manner. You see, Billy Pilgrim is a time traveler. He'll be in one place/time and suddenly find he finds himself transported to another. Let's be quite clear though that Billy isn't actually time-traveling. I suspect that he's near the end of his life and re-experiencing it non-chronologically. No, I take that back. This story is being told by someone named Yon Yonson who already knows everything that's happened and just chooses to make Billy a time traveler so the story doesn't have to be chronological.

For such a short book, it took me a long time to wade through. I just didn't find it very compelling. However, sometime after I started it, I read Journal of a UFO Investigator, a new release that reminded me very much of Slaughterhouse-Five with it's blurring of the real and the imaginary. Another recent release I've read that owes a lot to Vonnegut's classic is How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. And, even the movie Pulp Fiction owes it's non-lineal narrative to Slaughterhouse-Five.

Even though I wasn't totally thrilled and enamored with Vonnegut's novel, I do have to give it an extra star because of the influence it still has 40+ years after it's original publication. ...more

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Dec 08, 2011 Simon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

Some books you just know are five stars when you finish them. They leave you feeling slightly dazed, awe-struck and your head is buzzing with thoughts as you begin to process the implications of what you have just read. This describes exactly the way I felt when I finished this book.

The story is about the absurdity of life and man's inhumanity to man, framed by the narrative of the time travelling protagonist Billy Pilgrim but refrains from being overly depressing by being offset by Vonnegut's a Some books you just know are five stars when you finish them. They leave you feeling slightly dazed, awe-struck and your head is buzzing with thoughts as you begin to process the implications of what you have just read. This describes exactly the way I felt when I finished this book.

The story is about the absurdity of life and man's inhumanity to man, framed by the narrative of the time travelling protagonist Billy Pilgrim but refrains from being overly depressing by being offset by Vonnegut's astute and wry humour.

Billy does not travel through time in the conventional sense, only his awareness moves through different stages of his life, seemingly at random, yet he is convinced of his powerlessness to effect or change the course of events in his life. He cruises through a life doomed to experience many tragic events and despite having little will to survive, seems to somehow avoid death. He is apathetic in the extreme, accepting the good and the bad with equal ambivalence.

The story is steeped in irony. In Vonnegut's universe, one finds it everywhere one looks. For example, the title of the book is the place where Billy and his fellow prisoners of war shelter from the Dresden fire storm, a disused abattoir, in which they manage to avoid the death that most of the other inhabitants of Dresden, hiding elsewhere, suffer.

One can talk about this book freely without fear of spoilers. The fragmented style of the narrative works well here because it is not only the reader that flashes back to past events, we experience his past precisely as the protagonist does. There are no big surprises in store for Billy or the reader because he's already experienced it all and we join the narrative at a point near the end of his life.

I can't say much more other than that this is a great book that I would recommend to all. I'll just leave you with a quote from the book:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always tell the difference." ...more

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Sep 21, 2007 Jackie "the Librarian" rated it really liked it

Shelves: classicsworthreading, adultfiction, timetravel

I read this after hearing about the bombing of Dresden, and how the ground is mixed with bone dust. But I don't remember much of it. I would like to read more Vonnegut some day, when I have more freedom to read what I like, instead of what I need to read to do my job. ...more

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Sep 08, 2010 Paula rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, read_in_2010

I discussed something with this book - I'm not a fan of Kurt Vonnegut. The book was very different than what I normally read, which is good, but was so deeply disturbing that I had a hard time working through it. It was one of those books that made me keep looking at the bottom of my Kindle wondering how far along I was.

The book is about one man, primarily, who was in WWII and was deeply traumatized by it. He has flashbacks to the war, and flash-forwards (I guess you'd call it) to different poi ...more

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May 07, 2009 Sarah rated it it was amazing

This was on my list of books I was ashamed to admit I'd never read. I love Vonnegut, so I didn't have any excuse at all.
I love his phrasing, and his bizarre insights into humanity. ...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Michelle rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 1001-books, book_club, ebook, time-travel, war_is_hell

billy pilgrim has "come unstuck in time," we are told. his experience of his own life floats without warning or reason back and forth to any moment in his personal timeline, between birth and death, or marriage, or optometry school, or a far-off planet, or the WW2 bombing of dresden. it's earthy and occasionally funny and deeply strange, it straddles that fascinating neither sci fi nor fantasy stretch of "speculative fiction," and very literally meanders all over the place...and ultimately lost ...more

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