- The time jumping aspect of the book reminds me of Everything Everywhere All At Once. I guess not so much the time jumping, but the idea of being unstuck in time and experiencing multiple timelines. EEAAO is like that but for multiverses as well as time.
- This reminds me of when I watched The Northman and how Shashank was saying it was pretty much Hamlet, and how all stories are just versions of older stories (Carey said the same thing). This makes me wonder, is it possible to create an entirely original story?
- Also the aliens in this book, the Tralfamadorians (not sure if that’s how it’s spelled since I listen to the audiobook) are like the aliens in arrival, in that they can move through time. Crazy how stories are just new versions of older ones huh.
- The Tralfamadorians (apparently this name gets reused in different books by Vonnegut, and the aliens are different each time) don’t have concept of free will, they believe in Causal Determinism. Everything that has been, and will be, just is. They’ve seen the beginning and end of the universe, and they’re ok with everything, they just experience it moment to moment.
- To that topic of moments, their written language’s individual symbols are each an entire message/scene. These symbols/scenes, when organized into a book, might not have anything really connecting them together, other than the fact that the author chose them. When read and the scenes are taken together all at once, they produce an image of a beautiful/surprising/deep story of a life. What they look for in their books is the “depths of many marvelous moments seen at one time.”
- There’s an interesting part of book where it mentions another sci-fi author’s (Kilgore trout, who is a fake author used by Vonnegut in multiple books) interpretation of Christianity, that the gospel doesn’t teach kindness, but rather teaches people to make sure that who they kill isn’t well connected.
- E.g Jesus was the wrong guy to crucify because he’s the son of God and retribution is incoming, and thus implied there are ok people to kill (those without connections). A different story would be where Jesus is really a nobody, and only adopted as the son of God moments before death, and God says he will punish anyone who abuses nobodies. This would actually teach people to be kind to everyone (but this also is a gospel based on fear, is that a message Vonnegut is trying to make, or is that just a fact for him, that religion requires reward/consequence?).
- The Tralfamadorians had 5 sexes; they all looked the same but the differences were in 4th dimension. They said they found 7 sexes of humans, but 5 of them are in the 4th dimension so we’re unaware of them (e.g. 7 people are required to make a baby, but they may not directly provide the genetic material, perhaps this is another result of Causal Determinism).
- A question that came up for me, how does time work for 4th dimensional beings? I know that they can move through it like we move through the 3rd dimension, but consider that we can only be in one spot at a time. Yes, we can move through space at will but can’t be everywhere all at once. If time is the same for such beings, then must they not also have some version of time, some relativism, to have an ordering? I guess our movement throughout space wouldn’t have an ordering without time, so I what I’m asking here is would the 5th dimension provide ordering to the 4th?
- Kilgore Trout seems to satirize religion a lot, does Vonnegut do that in all his books?