Venus on the Half-Shell

Posted on Feb 27, 2010 in sastra | 2 comments

Kilgore Trout
New York: Dell, 1975

Of this edition that I have right now, the back cover’s last line says: “Available
for the first time without lurid covers!” The cover itself is an illustration of a
muscular man in tight short pants (and a glass helmet shielding his head), and a
barely clothed woman (only with some glittering fabric concealing her nipples and a
heart-shaped area between the legs). The man is holding the woman’s right shoulder,
both standing on a half-shell floating on the space. Well, not lurid, definitely,
only a little nauseous. It still looks like a supposedly sensational x-rated film
cover; porn spaceship troopers, like one of Mills and Boon’s at its best. I don’t
dare imagine what the lurid version looks like.
Anyway, the ‘biographical sketch’ from the publisher inside says that Kilgore Trout
didn’t give much attention to the production and distribution aspects of his
ingenious books. There were times when his works, with horrid covers, were sold
along real porn stuff. Fortunately, many readers worldwide have recognized his
works’ true quality. Today, he belongs to the ‘literary mainstream’, no more odious
covers.
So this is it. The ultimate journey to find the ultimate answer. This question has
been the central, perpetual quest of many individuals over centuries of
civilizations. People have been torn into theists, atheists, agnostics, sceptics,
fatalists, nihilists, perhaps extremists, and so on because of it. And Simon
Wagstaff, the Space Wanderer, accompanied by his dog Anubis, his owl Hermes, and his
sophisticatedly programmed female robot Chworktap, was the only one–earthman–who
had the guts to confront the painful truth in the end, after decades full of wild
space adventures asking this: why are we created to suffer and die?
Why are we created to suffer and die? Our lives are constantly overflowed with
absurdities. People keep waging war at each other and on and on destroying the only
place we live in. Everyone knows doing those things are bad, yet they keep
doing them anyway. And somehow, along the way we all have to experience unsatiable
longing for something that we never really know, to suffer from alienation, to
witness the atrocities around us, to let babies born in this rotten, polluted,
life-crushing world, to let ourselves carried away doing nothing but surviving. Why
are we created at all?
Simon Wagstaff, towards the end of his journey learnt that he was to meet a very
ancient creature who assisted the Creator itself (because It was not He nor She)
creating this universe. Thus, he would pop the question and get the answer.
It’s amazing how this book turns out to be a very entertaining and inspiring
reading—judging by its bootilicious cover. Many important subjects are raised;
ethics, politics, law, environment, and gender are among them, free will most of
all. And Trout attends to those issues in a highly amusing way. Trout says, “This
book is dedicated to the beasts and the stars, they don’t care about immortality and
free will”. I wish I were one. Life would’ve been easier I guess.

ninus ardi

noesardi@yahoo.com