Venus on the Half-Shell

A Kilgore Trout novel that escaped the way Trout's stories usually do not: another writer finished it, put Trout's name on the cover, and sold it.

Trout’s books are usually safe from this library’s “escaped into reality” shelf, because nobody prints them. That was the joke: the wisest man in American science fiction, remaindered between the shrinkwrap. Farmer ruined the joke by being helpful.

He wrote Venus on the Half-Shell in Trout’s voice, put Trout’s name on it, and for a moment bookshops contained a novel by a man who does not exist. Vonnegut’s objection was not legal so much as metaphysical. Trout is a character. Characters do not have a bibliography you can order from Dell. Once they do, something in the satire goes slack: the unread genius has been read, and the reader is Farmer.

So the rating follows The Joye of Snacks, not Fantastic Beasts. You can buy a book with this title. It is not Vonnegut’s Trout, and it is not not Trout either. The Simon Necronomicon borrowed a title and wrote a different grimoire. Farmer borrowed a title, a voice, and the job. Both are real objects wearing fictional names. Only one of them was trying to be kind. Neither is the thing the host work imagined.

On the readability rating. Quoted, of the book as it exists in Breakfast of Champions — a title, a reputation, a few reported plots. The usual Trout ration, which is almost nothing. Farmer’s novel is filed under editions in our world, with the distinction spelled out. It does not put this volume on the homepage among books that escaped.

In-world history

Trout, in Vonnegut, is the author of dozens of novels sold in porn shops, unread by the people they would have helped. Venus on the Half-Shell is one of the titles. In 1975 Philip José Farmer, with permission that Vonnegut later regretted, published a full novel under Trout's name. It has been reprinted as Farmer, as Trout, and as a problem.

Why it matters

The catalogue's most awkward became-real. Vonnegut invented an underpublished science-fiction writer whose ideas leak into other people's lives. Farmer took the leaking literally. The result is a real book whose authorship is a disagreement.

Appearances

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) — Kurt Vonnegut Trout is already prolific; the title is among those in circulation
Breakfast of Champions (1973) — Kurt Vonnegut Trout's career and voice are given at length
Venus on the Half-Shell (1975) — Philip José Farmer A novel published as by Kilgore Trout; Vonnegut was not pleased

Editions in our world

Venus on the Half-Shell, "Kilgore Trout" (Dell, 1975) Written by Philip José Farmer. It is a Kilgore Trout novel in the sense that Farmer committed to the bit, and it is not one in the sense that Vonnegut did not write it. Adjacent, like Nanny Ogg's Cookbook; unlike that book, it stole the title as well as the voice.

Connected volumes

Related to The Joye of Snacks · Discworld
Related to Necronomicon · The Cthulhu Mythos

Catalogue record

Category: Science fiction novel
World: The Fictions of Vonnegut
Imagined by: Kurt Vonnegut , Philip José Farmer
First appearance: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965 — as a title; as a book you can hold, 1975
Readability: Quoted