Why I picked it up

Watching Severance these days and found out this is part of the inspirational foundation. Decided to read it. Also, have tried to read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five in the past, gave up for unknown reasons. Also, many people on the Severance subreddit raved about this book.

I’m about halfway through the book and I have some things to say.

This reads very much like Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy. In setup as well as writing style. I love that it’s silly, outrageously silly. I previously didn’t associate this kind of writing with Vonnegut.

To prematurely summarise the plot :

A man stuck in a chrono synclastic infundibula seeks to cause chaos across the solar system.

A few fumbled thoughts

  1. Each character is characterised by a certain SIMPLE emotion.
  2. The plot evokes a sense of grandeur about the universe and the subsequent meanninglessness of human desires.
  3. Since the man exists across time and space, he knows the future - so there is a sense of despair in that all is predetermined.

There is a clear parallel bewtween this and Severance. Mars recruits soldiers from Earth and does a kind of memory wiping without wiping off how to access normal bodily functions. There is an antenna installed in their heads.

There is talk about why Lumon is developing the Severance procedure at all - one of the theories is they’re doing it to have severed armies. Armies so deeply indoctrinated, they know nothing else. If this is the case, I will be disappointed. We are at S2E7. Let’s see.

Yours In No Way
NJ