Originally published in 1975 under the psuedonym Kilgore Trout.
I read the 2013 edition published by Titan Books.
While suffering a bit of writer's block, Philip José Farmer (1918-2009) was inspired to write a book as Kilgore Trout. If you are not familiar with Trout, he is a fictional science fiction author in several of Kurt Vonnegut's (1922-2007) books.
Vonnegut often changes the details about Trout's life but one constant is that Trout is a prolific, but not well-known author because his books are often published by publishers of pornographic novels because he can't ever seem to make a breakthrough with mainstream publishing houses. The porn publisher put racy covers on Trout's books and then sell them with the rest of their books in porn shops.
A popular assumption is that Vonnegut meant Kilgore Trout to be a stand-in for himself and his early struggles to get published and make a breakthrough as a mainstream author. By using Trout in his books, Vonnegut was putting a rather pathetic version of himself in his own books.
Farmer took that little bit of information and wrote Venus on the Half-Shell. At the beginning of the edition that I read, Farmer explains that he sought permission from Vonnegut to write a novel in the voice of Kilgore Trout and received a rather vague permission to do so. Farmer proceeded on a "better to ask forgiveness than really clarify that you had permission" basis and Vonnegut got pretty irritated about the whole thing when the novel first appeared.
I really like Vonnegut, but he really only had himself to blame for this. This is why you hire lawyers and work out the details in a contract, even among sci-fi colleagues.
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| The original cover |
The cover is perfect, by the way, for a Kilgore Trout novel. Doesn't it look like a sci-fi book that a porn publisher would publish?
I remember my friends and cousins and I passing this book around, eagerly reading it (and in my case, re-reading it two or three times.) I might have all of those details wrong, though. It was more than 40 years ago.
I have been systematically reading my way through every Kurt Vonnegut book and I decided that a re-read of Venus on the Half-Shell was in order since it is a) sort of a Vonnegut book and b) the first Vonnegut-related book of any sort that I actually read.
So, how was it? I remember loving it when I was a kid. Was it everything that I remembered?
It was decent, but not great. I remembered that it was very racy. It was racy at times, but not in any great detail. I think my teenaged mind I am glad I re-read it, but I'm not planning on doing it again.
The book does have a Vonnegut feel to it. It is not a hard sci-fi book. It has a simple writing style, has sex in it, and there is a definite cost to the science and technolgy. In typical Vonnegut style, the price might not be paid by the people who benefit.
I rate this novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Venus on the Half-Shell by Philip José Farmer.
Note: Douglas Adams' much better known novel Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy shares several plot points with this novel. I have no idea if that was intentional or an accident.
