Venus on the Half-Shell

This interstellar picaresque novel by Philip José Farmer was written under a pseudonym taken from a fictional author described by Kurt Vonnegut. To pile Pelion upon Ossa, "Trout" has his main character refer often to the life and works of an imaginary 20th-century American science fiction writer named Jonathan Swift Somers III.

Many 21st-century readers will compare this book to Douglas Adams' later Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Both begin with the destruction of terrestrial humanity, aside from the protagonist who then becomes a wanderer in outer space. The book is full of allusions to The Wizard of Oz, but I think that The Phantom Tollbooth is also a likely influence. The prose style reminds me of no one so much as R. A. Lafferty, show more for the sake of qualities I find difficult to describe. The humor in "Trout's" book is a little more broad that what I usually find in Lafferty, the atmosphere decidedly less mystical.

The book recounts the adventures of the banjo-playing Simon Wagstaff, a character who was promptly animated in my mind by the ghost of Duane Adam Rostoker. Following the calamity that visits the Earth during Simon's visit to the Sphinx at Giza, he quickly acquires animal companions after the manner of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, but Simon's are a dog and an owl, perhaps figuring his "lower" and "higher" awarenesses.

The proper names in the story are a raft of anagrams, from the randy cat planet Shaltoon that is a hot Salon, to the planet Longalor of nomadic wheel-creatures who roll aLong. The beautiful android Chwortkap is a patChwork of the optimized DNA of hundreds of donors. These and many others put me in mind of James Branch Cabell, whose Jurgen may also have been a model for Farmer here.

Although replete with frank sexual content, Venus on the Half-Shell is not really erotic at all. It merely refuses to repress the importance of sex in the dilemma of life. It contains a variety of episodes with different intelligent species that demonstrate the illusions and falsehoods that enslave societies and individuals ("yet therein is the mystery of redemption" --Liber B). The whole thing reads quite quickly and can be written off as a farce, serve as a puzzle, or even inspire serious reflection. show less

Finally got around to reading this. For those who don't know Kilgore Trout is the fictional scifi writer who appears and whose work is often cited in Kurt Vonnegut's novels. Phillip Jose Farmer got permission to write a novel as if he really existed, and here it is. More info can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_on_the_Half-Shell

Some funny stuff,some effective satiric punch, more inventive than I would have expected. As a pastiche of Vonnegut's writing, it only succeeds in the most periperal of ways: he has a scifi writer cited in this book -Johnathan Swift Somers the 3rd, and there are moments of doggeral verse and bawdy song lyrics. But the satiric tone is less Swift and more Voltaire, and not enough Twain, which is show more where Vonnegut get's his satiric tone from. Still there are moments that make it worth reading. At about page 160 it gets a little wearying, but picks up for the end, but I really think it should have been more like 150 -175 pages as opposed to 204.
The real punchline is this:
somewhere in the middle I started to think "you know this is very similar to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, to the point where it's obvious someone is copying someone.
Well...Hitchhikers Guide,was first broadcast in 1978. This was written in 1974.

*With best Jerry Seinfeld sneer voice, as if he's talking to Newman*
So, Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy...not even original as a parody...a rip off of Venus on the Half-Shell...I might -have -known...

And if you don't believe it, just sit down and read it when it comes back out in print in February:

http://www.amazon.com/Venus-Half-Shell-Others-Philip-Farmer/dp/1596061421/ref=pd... show less

"Kilgore Trout"'s only published novel is like a cross between The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Oz books, except 20 times dirtier. Simon Wagstaff is on a quest for the answers to his questions, namely, "Why are we here?" and..."Who created all these weird candy-heart shaped indestructible towers on most of the planets in the universe -- but not Earth's galaxy?" Simon gets one of his questions answered, and meets some very interesting aliens along the way. Except for the long, involved descriptions of the aliens' sexual practices (and there are is a lot of sex in this book) it wouldn't be surprising at all to find creatures of this description in Oz.
Despite the aforementioned vulgarity and somewhat heavy-handed use of show more simile: "Dawn broke like a window hit by a gold brick. Si­mon entered the spaceship. A human doughnut dunked in weariness, satiety, and cat-in-mating-season pungency, he slopped in.", Venus on the Half Shell is quite pleasurable to read. At times, it almost seems to be poking fun at itself, as possibly a send-up of bad science fiction...so bad, it's good. show less

This book is perfect. In the sense that it reads exactly as a novel written by the fictional Kilgore Trout would read. It has shadows of Vonnegut especially his wit and penchant for random irrelevant historical details, and shadows of his semi-biographical counterpart the unknown author who wrote dozens of profound novels designed to be serialized in porn magazines. Definitely worth reading for any fan of Vonnegut.

If you like Hitchhiker's Guide, then you should check out this space odyssey of a more sexually explicit nature. I was given a dog-eared, nicotine stained pages copy from an old era stranger of questionable background, which is oddly appropriate. So, you've been warned...

All right, it's been at least 20 years since I've read this, but I did read it several times, back in the day. I have two copies, both of which nudge/wink each other on the shelf, and when they catch my eye, I take them down to smile and flip their pages.

The details of the story now escape me, aside from the amusing names and the Chinese spaceship. I've honestly never actually read a book by Vonnegut (believe it or not), so I had no idea who Kilgore Trout was at the time I first read this. It was only later that I learned it was written by Farmer, whom I had also not read at that time (and who has never made it onto my read-at-all-costs list).

So I was a humorous sci-fi virgin when I first read this, and it tickled my fancy well. So it show more gets five stars for haunting my brain long-term. It is an amusing novel, pretty breezy, and if nothing else it instilled in me an insatiable desire to pursue the proverbial "lurid cover". show less

E' un romanzo di fantascienza abbastanza particolare sia per i temi trattati (anni '70) sia per il gioco di riferimenti che Farmer voleva creare (il libro era inizialmente stato presentato come scritto da Kilgore Trout).
I riferimenti tra autori veri - autori finti e storie da loro scritti ha evidentemente divertito Farmer, però è molto difficile da cogliere se non si è dotati di una Introduzione chiara al romanzo.
Il viaggio fantascientifico è il mezzo che consente di parlare di sesso e religione da cui si evidenzia che in fondo tutti i popoli hanno le loro personali fissazioni.
La ricerca di Simon alle sue risposte non mi ha lasciato molto, anche perchè so già che è 42.
Complessivamente il romanzo è carino, anche se in alcuni show more punti l'ho trovato un po' pesante show less