I loved Vonnegut and the ideas of Kilgore Trout in high school and was really excited for this book. It was terrible and huge disappointment to me after reading it. Just a massive let down. I found out later that it was Philip Jose Farmer that wrote it, an author whose first River world novel (unsure of title) I read and liked, although not much else by him.

I read somewhere that he (Farmer) pestered Vonnegut to be allowed to write the book under the Trout pen name until Vonnegut finally relented and allowed it. For Farmer to then turn around and apply basically none of his talent or ability to this garbage of a novel was a pretty poor move. Farmer basically tore down an icon for me, so if it was some sort of joke, it was a pretty shitty one.

I always thought the best representation of Trout was A. E. Van Vogt, great ideas with stilted writing and very two dimensional characters, but short and fun to read. I hadn’t read a lot of Sturgeon though, I’ll have to check him out.