Slapstick

Lucky book #13 was Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick. The book is vintage Vonnegut and is therefore by definition great. In fact, come to think of it, I don't think I've ever been disappointed by anything the man has ever written.

Slapstick is a novel about Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain (the last and tallest President of the United States) and his sister Eliza (inspired by Vonnegut and his sister Alice who he credits in the prologue as 'the person he has always written for'). Wilbur and Eliza are twin monsters (think giant Neanderthals) born to human parents who grow to resent their hideous offspring when they outlive their 14 year life expectancy. Despite the fact that the twins pretend to have no intelligence when in public it turns out that they are actually both quite intelligent in their own ways and when combined make up the most powerful intelligence force since Einstein.

The book is written in the first person as an autobiography of our hero Wilbur as he looks back and reflects on his life. As you can probably tell, the book is pretty difficult to describe, which isn't super surprising given the amount of territory it covers and the speed in which it does so. Some of the great ideas the book presents include:

• Human Miniaturization - The Chinese have perfected the science of shrinking themselves which allows them to build a much larger society that can subsist on the Earth's limited resources.
• Distributed Brain Processing - The Chinese learn how to harness the power of people's brains as a collective processing system. By breaking down the barrier of the brain as a single processing unit, mankind is able to reach new heights of intellectual achievement.
• Gravity Fluctuation - Vonnegut presents the idea that gravity has not always been a constant and that the pyramids of Egypt were built during a period of light gravity.
• Extended Families - As President, Wilbur rolls out a program which presents every American with a new middle name based on a noun and a number between 1 and 20. Everyone within the same name becomes part of an extended family which is meant to help fight loneliness and build a stronger communities.
• The Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped - Vonnegut introduces a new religion whose believers think that Jesus has been kidnapped by the Forces of Evil and that if we don't do everything we can do to find him in time he will destroy mankind. Followers of the religion are constantly searching for their savior as they go about about their day to day activities, including such activities as searching under their dinner plates, checking behind doors, etc.

Hi ho!