Kilgore Trout Biography (Greatest Science Fiction Writer Of All Time)

Kilgore Trout ^

[PJ-Comix]

Kilgore Trout was bom in 1907 of American parents on the British island of Bermuda. Trout attended grammar school there until his father's job with the Royal Ornithological Society terminated. The family moved to Dayton, Ohio, where Trout graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1924. Thereafter, he wandered around the country, workng at menial low-paying jobs and writing science-fiction in his spare time. His only known residences during, this period are Hyannis, Mass., Indianapolis, Ind., and Ilium and Cohoes, N.Y.

He has been married and divorced three times and has one child, Leo, a veteran of Vietnam.

As of 1974, Trout has written one hundred seventeen novels and two thousand short stories. Yet until recently he was little known. This regrettable situation is due to Trout's extreme reclusivity and his indifference to the publication of his stories. He was ill-advised in his choice of publishers, the chief one, World Classics Library, being a firm specializing pornographic novels and magazines. This ensured that his works would be distributed only to stores specializing in this genre. Yet Trout's work, with one exception,* contained no explicitly erotic content. Without Trout's permission or knowledge, World Classics Library put lurid covers on his novels and used his short stories as fillers in ''girlie'' magazines.

In the past few years, however, his fiction has come to the attention of some notable critics and writers in both mainstream and science-fiction. It has been praised for its high imagination and Swiftean satire. Professor Pierre Versins, for instance, in his massive study, Encyclopgdie de l'Utopie, des Voyages Extraordinaires, et de la Science Fiction, Editions l'Age d'Homme, S.A., Lausanne, Switzerland, 1973, says of Trout, ''A thesis on the too neglected works of this author would be most welcome.''

This is true, but the task of collecting his entire corpus of works is formidable. Even the wealthiest and most indefatigable of collectors cannot boast that they have all of Trout's stories. Venus on the Half-Shell is so rare that its only known possessor required payment of several thousand dollars for its purchase by Dell Publishing Company.

However, as one prominent writer has predicted, Trout's career is on the upswing. Dell is proud to be the first to launch Kilgore Trout into the literary-mainstream. That the author is no longer indifferent ,to his brain-children is shown by his insistence on rewriting Venus on the Half-Shell, updating it somewhat, and expanding the character of Chworktap.

[Jen]

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[drjimmy]

I haven't read Kilgore Trout's books, but he gave a great college commencement speech a couple of years ago.

[PJ-Comix]

Anybody here who has read Kilgore Trout can tell you that his books have MUCH MORE depth than any of Heinlein's books. My best advice is to suggest you read "Venus On The Half-Shell" and find out for yourself. I rank Trout even above Tolstoy.

[stanz]

Casteneda was on a "higher" floor?

[RightWhale]

Trout wrote Venus on the Half-Shell in one sitting while subsisting on a diet of chocolate and tobacco and skipping classes at Berkeley.

[toenail]

Trout is one of the most underrated sci-fi authors of all time, and one of my favorites.

[RightWhale]

In a garret under the eaves. No plumbing.

[PJ-Comix]

SPG: The "Black Sheep" of FreeRepublic? P.J. O'Rourke's kind of Republican.

Sniff! Does this mean I'm a Black Sheep of the Free Republic. BTW, I object to the OTHER PJ's name used with mine. It is sacreligious to use our names on the same thread.

[Samwise]

the greatest science fiction writer of all time, Robert A. Heinlein.

Agreed.

[PJ-Comix]

Apparently you haven't read "Venus On The Half-Shell." BTW, I read a little known auto-biographical book by Heinlein called "Tramp Steamer." Interesting but he's not in the same league as Kilgore Trout.

[Cliff Dweller]

Kilgore trout, his work is truly the "Breakfast of Champions"

[Britton J Wingfield]

Kilgore Trout, aka Philip Jose Farmer.

[saminfl]

Kilgore Trout aka Kurt Vonnegut.

I remember reading Slaughterhouse Five on flight from New York in the early 1970's. In that book, Vonnegut said he would not let his children play with the children of anyone working for the defense industry. I have not read anything by him since.

[john in orinda]

I was under the impression that Kilgore Trout was Kurt Vonnegut's dog.

If you look carefully at the picture on the back of "Venus on the Half Shell", you might imagine that it's a dog, not a person.
Regards,

[JenB]

Master Samwise, you have excellent taste!

[Britton J Wingfield]

Venus on the Half Shell was written by Philip Jose Farmer, under the name Kilgore Trout. Trout is, of course, a fictional character created by Kurt Vonnegut.

[PJ-Comix]

I remember reading Slaughterhouse Five on flight from New York in the early 1970's.

The movie made from that book wasn't bad. BTW, the first Vonnegut book I read was "Sirens Of Titan" which I checked out of the school library when I was in the fourth grade. Some of the words I didn't understand and when I asked my mother about them, she became upset and had the book pulled from the library. I've hated censorship ever since. (And I still learned what those nasty little words meant)

[Britton J Wingfield]

Heinlein is the all-time master. The two best contemporary scifi authors are (imho) WIlliam Gibson and Neil Stephenson. I haven't seen a new Larry Niven book in a long time, so he doesn't count.

[harpseal]

A Venus on the Half Shell bump. "Anyone without a prehensile tail is clearly deformed."

Stay well - Stay safe- Stay armed - Yorktown

[JenB]

Hmm... sounds like you like hard scifi/cyberpunk. Personally I don't care for either of the authors you mentioned. I think Orson Scott Card has some brilliant stuff (Ender's Game) and Connie Willis is fairly unknown but absolutely great. Her works sometimes resemble Heinlein's and she is clearly a fan, one of her books is dedicated to him! She wrote Doomsday Book, a time travel story, and To Say Nothing of the Dog, a time travelling romance Victorian mystery with a side trip to the Blitz. Absolutely a hilarious novel, and well written to boot. Her latest book was Passage, another brilliant work. Other than that... well, Heinlein's dead and most new stuff is trash.