Kurt Vonnegut Jr, celebrated satirist and science-fiction writer, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and over a dozen other novels, many of them best-sellers, died on Wednesday, April 11. Unlike the false death report in January 11, 2000, when Vonnegut fell asleep with a lit cigarette, setting his bed and house on fire, this time, the author really ‘destroyed the universe’, to paraphrase ‘The Book of Bokonon’ from his Cat’s Cradle. His passing was caused by irreversible brain injuries, which he suffered from a fall a few wees ago, tho the details of the fall remain obscure. A counterculture hero, Vonnegut was a humanist, and even served as honorary president of the American Humanist Association, replacing Isaac Asimov, in what he called a "totally functionless capacity". He did not support the current American president, in his last novel, A Man Without a Country, writing that "George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography." Nor did he think anything would change in the 2004 election: "Both candidates were and still are members of the exclusive secret society at Yale, called ‘Skull and Bones.’ That means that, no matter which one wins, we will have a Skull and Bones President at a time when entire vertebrate species, because of how we have poisoned the topsoil, the waters and the atmosphere, are becoming, hey presto, nothing but skulls and bones." Of course, we know better than to suggest any kind of conspiracy surrounding the writer’s death. So it goes.

For those interested in a good Vonnegut novel, the author rated many of his own works in chapter 18 of Palm Sunday:

Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat’s Cradle: A+
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A+
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C

Kurt Vonnegut dies at age 84, NBC.com
The end is near, InTheseTimes.com