Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, 1969. (205 pgs.)

This is the third book I've read for the LOST Books Challenge. It's one of those books that I've heard people mention for years, but I'd never read it. In fact, I really didn't know anything about it at all until I got it from the library. I knew it had something to do with the firebombing of Dresden during World War II, but knowing that Vonnegut is the author should have clued me in that it would be more Sci-Fi.

It is the story of Billy Pilgrim, who has "come unstuck in time." This is why the book finds its way onto the LOST Books Challenge list. Although it is a story about WWII, it is also largely a story about time travel. And aliens. Yeah...see, Billy was once kidnapped by a spaceship full of aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. Billy learns a lot from the Tralfamadorians, and I'm wondering if the writers of LOST learned a lot from them, too. These aliens can see in four dimensions, and they explain to Billy that: "when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past.... All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one...and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."

So if you're a fan of LOST, think of what this means for the show/story/characters. Many of the characters have obviously "come unstuck in time." This is how some of the characters can be in 1977 while others are in "the present." This also would explain what Farraday said...that nothing you do in the past can change the future. Those things in "the future" have already happened. That also means that no one who has died on the show is truly dead...those characters are still alive somewhere in the past.

I know...it makes my head spin. If you've gotten this far in the post and you're not a watcher of LOST...well, then I applaud you. And I tell you, you've got to start watching the show. Just don't try to jump in now...go back to Season One. :)

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Total number of books read in 2009: 16

Total number of pages read in 2009: 6329