When the first ship equipped with the drive, the Golden Goose, had been revved up to top speed, those aboard had been frightened by a high screaming noise. At least, that is what he secretly believes. As Eliot Rosewater says, the mainstream writers, narrators of the mundane, are “sparrowfarts.” But the science fiction writer is a god. His stories are his weapons, and, poor as they may be, they are better than none. But he has an untrammeled imagination, and while his spark is still glowing, he can defeat time and space. Millions may admire him, but he knows that the universe is totally unconscious of him and that he is a spark fading out in the blackness of eternity and infinity. He may be rich and famous (and some science fiction authors are), but he is essentially that person described in the previous sentence. He’s miserable, he wrestles with concepts and themes that only a genius could pin to the mat (and very few are geniuses), he feels that he is ignored and despised, he knows that the society in which he is forced to live could be a much better one, and, no matter how gregarious he seems to be, he is a loner, a monad. If I did not know that Trout was a living person, I’d think he was an archetype plucked by Vonnegut out of his unconscious or the collective unconscious of science fiction writers. In fact, there is a lot of Kilgore Trout in science fiction writers, including Vonnegut. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions). (Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, “Welcome to the Monkey House,” Mother Night, God Bless You, Mr. This state has produced many writers: Edward Eggleston (The Hoosier Schoolmaster), George Ade (Fables in Slang), Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy, The Genius), George Barr McCutcheon (Graustark, Brewster’s Millions), Gene Stratton Porter (A Girl of the Limberlost), William Vaughn Moody ( The Great Divide), Booth Tarkington ( Penrod, The Magnificent Ambersons), Lew Wallace (Ben Hur), James Whitcomb Riley (The Old Swimmin’ Hole, When the Frost is on the Punkin’), Ross Lockridge (Raintree County), Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor (Osiris on Crutches, The Vaccinators from Vega), Rex Stout (author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries), and, last but far from least, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. His character smells strongly of certain Hoosier elements, and it is in Indianapolis, Indiana, that we first meet him. Though Trout was born in Bermuda, he was probably conceived in Indiana. MORE REAL THAN LIFE ITSELF: PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER’S FICTIONAL-AUTHOR PERIOD NOW IT CAN BE TOLD DIFFERENTLY-THE TRUTH ABOUT TROUT JONATHAN SWIFT SOMERS III: COSMIC TRAVELLER IN A WHEELCHAIRĪ SHORT BIOGRAPHY BY PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER (HONORARY CHIEF KENNEL KEEPER) THE OBSCURE LIFE AND HARD TIMES OF KILGORE TROUT “Fun to read, and very interesting from the perspective of the history of science fiction.” - Pop Mythology
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