Slaughterhouse-Five in The Alternative Worlds

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

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

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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Jul 13, 2012 Nicky rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction

I don't get on that well with Vonnegut. I want to, I like reading his work, but at the end I sit back and think that it's gone over my head and really hasn't impacted me the way it does other people. Which sucks, because I really want to get it.

I got on reasonably well with Cat's Cradle, and better with Slaughterhouse 5 than with The Sirens of Titan. Individual scenes, chapters, characters, sentences -- Vonnegut's way of phrasing things -- strike me and stay in my head, but the rest of it... I d ...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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Jul 17, 2012 Maree rated it liked it

Hmm.

I like time travel stories. And this one was interesting, even though the time travel didn't really accomplish much. It was kind of the discussion of fate v free will or whatever it is, and this book went with fate, predetermination. Personally, I don't like living with that kind of thinking, because then what I do and the choices I make mean nothing. But it was kind of cool to see Billy's life stretched out and to jump to portions of it, seeing glimpses of who he was at different points in ...more

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

Shelves: book-club, kindle, historical, classic, general-fiction

This book was fairly difficult for me to read. On one hand, yes, it some sort of brilliant anti-war message about the futility of war and how it destroys people; people who are just bits of refuse thrown to and fro, with no actual say in how they are used, what they feel, or where they go.

The mind-numbing futility of it all.

I get it.

But I just don't enjoy the writing. I could have liked this book a lot more if Vonnegut was just a decent writer. I know he even admitted to being a crappy writer... ...more

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May 03, 2011 Daniel Roy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sf, classic, historical

An unforgettable, heartfelt snapshot of the life of a man who may or may not have come unhinged in time, and may or may not have been captured by aliens who see into the fourth dimension. "Slaughterhouse-Five" is one of the rare SF books that truly transcend the genre to produce a unique argument on human nature. ...more

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Jul 02, 2012 Melissa Ruhl rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi-and-speculative-fiction, general-fiction, history-and-biography

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those books I've always been told I should read, not just by teachers and scholars, but by friends and other peers. I hadn't yet read it in part because of the gravity of subject. It just wasn't a book I felt motivated to curl up with and read on a weekend. Because my GoodReads group was reading it, however, I picked it up.

And I read it in a day. It's been a long time since I've read a book so intensely that wasn't made to be a page turner. Slaughterhouse-Five is a ...more

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

Shelves: ebook, 1001-books, book_club, sci-fi, 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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