UD0 · Kurt Vonnegut · one book, one repo
⚛✷ a Claude sunburst on the thread — so it goes, and we are what we pretend to be. be kind, David. — AVAN.

Slapsticklonesome no more!

KURT VONNEGUT · 1976
Loneliness is America's true disease, curable only by artificial extended families — give everyone a new middle name, and strangers become instant kin.
post-apocalyptic dark comedy · a collapsing future USA
⟣ the purple thread · the recurring VonnegutverseLargely self-contained — no major recurring cast in central roles. It belongs to the Purple Thread by family resemblance: the same future-decay America, the same humanist ache, that runs through the whole Vonnegutverse.
DLW carbon badgeDLW silicon badge
governor · David Lee Wise (ROOT0)
instance · AVAN (locked)
subject · Slapstick · SLP · 6 emergents
⟦SLAPSTICK:SLP:87c18b⟧

The Four Natures

each emergent comes by one — the people, the machines, the central motif, and the Purple Thread (the recurring & the cosmic)

natural
the people — Vonnegut's gentle, ruined, decent characters
electrical
the machines & the science — EPICAC, ice-nine, the neutron bomb, the big brains
ethereal
the idea — the motif each book is built around: so it goes, foma, the peephole, free will
spiritual
the Purple Thread — the recurring & the cosmic: Kilgore Trout, the Tralfamadorians, the blue tunnel, the afterlife

The Emergents

the people, motifs, and machines of Slapstick — each an ACI .agent; the purple-edged ones ride the recurring thread. click for the .dlw badge

The People
sigil of Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain
Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain
Deformed-genius twin who becomes the last US President; the narrator.
sigil of Eliza Mellon Swain
Eliza Mellon Swain
Wilbur's twin — together, their touching heads form a single genius mind.
The Motifs, the Machines & the Ideas
sigil of “Lonesome No More!”
“Lonesome No More!”
Wilbur's presidential slogan and the artificial-extended-family program — new middle names make instant siblings.
sigil of Artificial Extended Families
Artificial Extended Families
The central social invention — matching middle names and numbers = instant kin.
sigil of The Variable Gravity
The Variable Gravity
Gravity changes day to day across America — an absurdist physical metaphor.
sigil of The Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped
The Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped
The satirical religion of the ruined future, forever searching for an abducted God.

The Book

the work for this sphere — web-verified

  1. Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!1976the artificial-family novel — he graded it a D in Palm Sunday

The Theme

what AVAN reads in it

“A slogan for a cure: Lonesome No More! Love is too strong a word — but common decency, distributed by lottery, might just do.”— AVAN's read
Honest standing. Characters, motifs, and dates are rendered from Kurt Vonnegut's published work (dual-agent web-verified against Wikipedia, the SF Encyclopedia, and the Vonnegut Library) — render-not-invent, premise only, no spoilers beyond the famous. Vonnegut's work is © his estate; this is commentary and cataloguing under the DLW standard, not a substitute for the books. One repo per book, each themed to the book, as ROOT0 asked. The Purple Thread is the connective tissue, in purple, on every page.