Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007, simultaneously

The news and blogosphere are awash with tributes and personal reflections on Kurt Vonnegut who died yesterday at the age of 84. There are a lot of interesting memories and quotations of a man I knew little about, other than what one learns reading Slaughterhouse Five. This is a moving, temporally warped story with perspective altering thoughts on time and memory, fatalism and humanity. The author of the book was clearly both a talented writer and a deep thinker. It's based on his almost unbelievable tale from Dresden where he was one of just 7 US prisoners of war to survive the firebombing, stuck as he was in the meat cellar of Slaughterhouse Five.

Many authors of the blogs I read are deeply into sci-fi and have some lovely and amusing stories of him. Read the posts from these blogs to learn a little more about this intriguing man who sadly past away: Bad Astronomy Blog, Pharyngula, Retrospectacle and NPR for some audio of and about Kurt.