Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut survived the fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II: this is the novel that was filtered out of that experience. Like J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, in which Ballard creates a novel of his childhood experience of being interred in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, Slaughterhouse-5 took a number of years to emerge from its author’s heart and brain, both authors clearly needing time and mastery of their art to do justice to such significant experiences in their lives. In Slaughterhouse-5, Billy Pilgrim has come ‘unstuck’ in time. Abducted by aliens who see all time at once, simultaneously, instead of in consecutive, ...

For those who believe in destiny time is but a bug stuck in amber; just a single moment that will be that moment and has been that moment forever. Time is but one more demension in our world filled with space. Like space, one is capable of navigating and moving about within time to different blobs of amber. In this way, if a member of a family were pass away they would not be dead. Instead they are simply stuck in another distinct moment of time. They have always died and will always die in the exact same moment. Most people retain only the capability to focus on the single moment they find themselves within. Others, however, find themselves traveling ...