Slaughterhouse-Five

by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Release: March 1969
Format: Novel
Genres: Science Fiction, Satire
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran and sometimes zoo occupant on a far-off planet, lives one moment of his life, then he’s thrown back to another, then forward again, and so on amidst the sadness of what men do to each other in this deterministic and fatalistic universe.

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn’t his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on.

DEBUT

Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children’s Crusade (Delacorte Press, March 1969).

VARIANTS

1 English variant

DERIVATIVE WORKS

Slaughterhouse-Five by Stephen Geller, directed by George Roy Hill, (at movie theaters, USA, 15 March 1972).

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Groupings

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY: We haven’t yet mapped out the time travel itinerary.