Criticizing the Present through the Future or How Kurt Vonnegut Turned Science Fiction into an Art

Abstract

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most known figures of the late 20th century and beginnings of the 21st century. He is one of the most prolific writers of American literature of those days. His novels are known for a usage of a wide range of subjects, starting with science and ending with environmental issues, like that of global warming.But, different from some of his well-known contemporaries, Kurt Vonnegut started writing science-fiction in paperback in order to make ends meet, as he was in a very difficult economical situation. Influenced by writers as Aldous Huxley, with “Brave New World” and also by the studies of chemistry he attended when he was at university, he used in his novels machines, super-computers, aliens, lives in other planets, etc. However, he was not just a science-fiction writer. Instead, science-fiction became a means for him to better express the ideas he had about the world. He creates other5 planets to show us what goes wrong in ours, he writes about machines that have substituted the man, he writes about scientists that are not responsible at all about the effects of their inventions. The world is not saved by scientists, but it ends because of them. That is the aim of this presentation: to show how science becomes an art in Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n10p722