Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (3 stars)

Slaughterhouse Five is a Sci-Fi classic: it was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula and often appears on top 100 novels lists. Its plot is non-linear. Billy Pilgrim has 'come unstuck in time' and jumps randomly around in his own lifetime. Vonnegut draws on his own personal experience of the Dresden bombings to write an absurdist, satirical account from Pigrim's point of view as an American POW in Dresden at the time of the bombings.

So you might be thinking that apart from the time travel, this doesn't sound very sci-fi. But don't worry, Billy is kidnapped by aliens from Tralfamadore and spends his days having sex with a similarly-kidnapped porn star, which is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds. The sex seems to be the most commonly cited reason for it being in the top 100 banned and challenged novels of the 20th century.

Is it funny? It actually is, and there are a lot of quotable quotes. Stylistically it felt a lot like Catch-22, but not as clever, and not as razor sharp with the satire. It's a short novel, written in simple language but touching on complex ideas, which means it is a part of the syllabus for many high-schools.

Honestly I was fairly underwhelmed. Perhaps the non-linear timeline was revolutionary in 1969, but there are plenty of modern novels that have used this device in more compelling ways. Vonnegut may have been trying to use Billy's inability to control his place in time as allegory for our ability to avoid all wars:

Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

So definitely some credit for making me think. I'd place Slaughterhouse Five somewhere between Catch-22 and a Gene Wolfe novel. Not clearly anti-war, not clearly batshit insane.

I also watched the movie, which I'm frankly amazed got made in the first place.  I think some of the abrupt time flips work better in the movie than they do in the book, but I think almost all of the comedic value was lost in translation.  I bet most people watching the movie didn't even realise it was supposed to be a comedy.

I'll leave you with some of the great lines from the book.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

...

All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet.

...

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

And so it goes. 3 stars.