Greg L. (gregl) - , reviewed on 3/22/2013

I became curious about Kurt Vonnegut after reading the urban legend about a commencement speech he supposedly gave at MIT. It turned out that he never gave such a speech. The speech was not actually given to anyone, but rather a column writer's envision of a speech she would give, if someone were to ask her to give a speech.

After reading the speech I began to wonder why would someone think the speech came from Kurt Vonnegut? Who is the Kurt Vonnegut anyway? I searched a bit and found that he is a science fiction author who doesn't like to be classified as a science fiction author. My next objective was to read something he wrote an see if it's as amusing as the commencement speech that was mistakenly credited to him. A trip to Barnes and Nobel produced many possible titles. I chose the one that a critic said was "his first landmark work".

In this story, a man is caught in a strange time continuum that makes him exist in an orbit of the sun which causes him to materialize on different planets at regular intervals. He can also see the future, but is powerless to change it. After many years, he causes a small piece of metal to be delivered to an extra-terrestrial robot with a greeting message to the unknown sections of the universe. The small piece of metal is a replacement part for his crippled space ship.

The book was good enough to finish. At the end I asked myself, so what is all this fuss about Vonnegut about? I still don't get it. I was disappointed because if it had turned out good, this Vonnegut guy has plenty of other books and I could read them all. Now I don't plan to get another.

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