Kilgore Trout Came Alive

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Years ago when looking over the book racks at a newsstand the above book caught my eye: VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL by Kilgore Trout. Interesting! I had to buy it.

If you are a fan of the late writer Kurt Vonnegut and his works you know who Kilgore Trout is. Or, maybe I should say you know what Kilgore Trout isn’t. He isn’t human.

Kilgore Trout is an imaginary science-fiction writer in Kurt Vonnegut’s books.

So, how did an imaginary character actually write a book you can hold in your hands?

The title, VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL is a name like Vonnegut would have had his alter-ego Trout come up with. That was right down the right alley.

However, the text just did not have the bounce of a Vonnegut book. It was evidently written by someone else.

Of course I spent some long hard hours burning the midnight oil to find out who the real writer of VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL was… really, I spent 3 to 5 minutes on Wikipedia-on-encyclopedia. Here is my findings, in a half-shell, opps! I mean nut-shell:

At least one actual published work is attributed to a Kilgore Trout: the novel Venus on the Half-Shell, written by Philip José Farmer but published under the name "Kilgore Trout." For some time it was assumed that Vonnegut must have written it; when the truth of its authorship came out, Vonnegut was reported as being "not amused"; in an issue of the semi-prozine Science Fiction Review, published by Richard E. Geis, Geis claimed to have received an angry, obscenity-laden telephone call from Vonnegut about what Farmer had said about the book in Geis' zine.[1]

So, there you go. Vonnegut wasn’t too happy without someone bringing his character to life and raking in the money – would you?