Venus on the Half Shell

by Kilgore Trout

Simon Wagstaff is the Space Wanderer, a seeker of truth and electric banjo player who narrowly escapes the Deluge that destroys Earth when he happens upon an abandoned Chinese spaceship, the Hwang Ho . A man without a planet, he gains immortality from an elixir drunk during a sexual interlude with a cat-like alien queen in heat. Now, with his pet owl, his dog Anubis and a sexy robot companion, Simon charts a 3,000-year course to the most distant corners of a multiverse full of surprises to seek out the answers to the questions no one can seem to answer.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Humor, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Satire

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Philip José Farmer wrote Venus on the Half-Shell (1975) under the name Kilgore Trout, a fictional author who appears in the works of Kurt Vonnegut. He had planned to write more of Trout's fictional books (notably Son of Jimmy Valentine), but a disagreement with Vonnegut put an end to those plans.

Trout is credited with having written 117 novels and over 2000 short stories though many are difficult to find and most out of print. Trout's novels include "The Gutless Wonder", "2BR02B", "Oh Say Can You Smell?", "The First District Court of Thankyou", "Pan-Galactic Three Day Pass", "Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension", "The Gospel from Outer Space", "The Big Board", "Pan-Galactic Straw Boss (Mouth Crazy)", "Plague on Wheels", "Now It Can Be Told", "How You Doin'?", "The Smart Bunny", and "The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank".

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I always try to think of some positive spin for the books I read, even ones I don't like. My positive spin? This cover truly captures that pulp paperback feel:



Sadly I don't have that cover, so there is nothing redeeming about my copy of the book.

Are you proud of yourself Farmer? I hope you are, because at least then we can say someone took some small measure of joy from this miserable experience, because it sure as hell wasn't me. What's that? It was supposed to be a joke?

I get the goddamn joke Farmer. It just isn’t funny.

So for those of you who are unfamiliar, here's the joke. Kilgore Trout was a character in several Kurt Vonnegut novels. He was supposed to be a hack sci-fi author who only got published in dirty magazines and the occasional paperback. He was a terrible author who just so happened to make the occasional brilliant philosophical point. Enter Philip Jose Farmer who essentially said "I could be Kilgore Trout!" He managed to convince Vonnegut to allow him to publish under the pen-name Trout and write one of the books mentioned in Vonnget's fiction. The result? God awful.

Now it's hard to fully fault the novel as it was intentionally written to be bad. That's a fine joke that could work as a short story. Something like 20 pages could be amusing. At 200+ pages though, it's painful. Also, Farmer is no Trout. Sure he wrote a bad book, but all attempts at philosophy are just as laughably bad as the rest of the book until after a point it ceases to be funny and only succeeds in gaining a groan.

Here is a brief outline of the book: Simon goes to a planet looking for answers to his questions. Natives of said planet have no answers. Insert detail description of the aliens' sex lives...possibly with Simon involved. Wacky misunderstanding. Run away. Repeat until we finally finish and you're graced with the one clever line in the entire book.

Yep, there's one clever scene and its the end of the damn book. The rest is filled with jokes like the following:

"Simon arrived in his ark at the same place where Noah was supposed to have landed. This was a coincidence that only happened in a bad novel..."

Look, Douglas Adams could have made that joke work. So could Terry Pratchett. You know why? Because they were funny. A joke like that would be have an amusing meta quality. Here... here it's not funny because it's just a reminder of the torment Farmer is inflicting upon us. Yes, we are reading a terrible book, you don't have to remind us. The prose is doing that for you.

1 star wailing in pain until its death out of 5.

[Manny · Rating 1 out of 5]

As everyone knows who's come across him in Kurt Vonnegut's books, Kilgore Trout had great ideas, but couldn't write. So, in a way, it's fitting that Philip José Farmer had a great idea - actually to write the Kilgore Trout novel Venus on the Half Shell, which is referred to in God Bless You, Mr Rosewater - but that the result is embarrassing for everyone concerned.

The best part of Venus is definitely the blurb on the back cover, which, at least in the edition I read, faithfully reproduces the tackily suggestive text from Mr Rosewater. Now that's funny. Unfortunately, there's very little else to be said in favor of this dire book, which fails about equally badly at being witty, satirical, sexy, shocking and just plain worth reading. Oh well.

[Algernon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Writing, and reading, fan fiction is a risky business. I know of a couple of succesful attempts : The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn and arguably the Tales of the Ketty Jay by Chris Wooding (for Firefly fans). In the case of Philip Jose Farmer, I must confess I was underwhelmed, the main reason being I'm such a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut that I couldn't help comparing this parody project with the master's originals.

In Farmer's defense, the trashy plot and the florid style was probably deliberate. He is actively trying to impersonate here a recurring character from Vonnegut novels, the hack SF writer Kilgore Trout who was allegedly only published in porn magazines as text filler for the pictorials. I know I should have relaxed and read the story as the joke it was designed to be, but I couldn't get over the forced imitation of Vonnegut's cutting edge sarcastic delivery and the fake rants against society's woes. I felt like I was watching some painter who tries to imitate Van Gogh, but can't get right neither the powerful brushstrokes nor the primary colours and misses by a mile on the emotional intensity.

So pretty soon on my journey I started to find fault with everything Farmer was trying to do, and I even thought of giving up on the whole project. Being such a rabid completist (not even one book abandoned this year) I struggled on, and in the end I believe I might have been more indulgent of the results if I had read them before I ever heard of Vonnegut. I can also understand why Vonnegut refused to let Farmer write more books based impersonating his characters and distanced himself from the novel after initially endorsing it.

To give you an idea about the plot and the style I will compare it to a Roger Vadim French cult film from the late sixties, based on a previous comic by another French artist (Forrest) Barbarella . Instead of the alluring heroine of that space adventure (the lovely Jane Fonda), Farmer has chosen as his protagonist a one-eyed, lecherous, banjo-playing hero, the only human survivor after Earth is destroyed by some visiting Aliens. This guy finds a Chinese spaceship abandoned near Mount Ararat and departs to search the Galaxy for the "Definitive Answer to the Ultimate Question," or in other words, for the Meaning of Life. Along the way, he gains immortality for him and for his companion animals, a dog and an owl. He also meets a beautiful woman coming out of the sea in a scene borrowed from the famous Boticelli painting. Additionally, like in the Barbarella movie, there are a lot of sex scenes, but they are quite tame by today's standards.

The different planetary cultures presented here show some promise of originality and offer occasions for picaresque adventures, but mostly they devolve into variations of sexual games and gender politics, spicy and funny but mostly shallow. The final revelation at the far end of the Universe is even more feebly argumented, another attempt to emulate Vonnegut's black humour and cynical presentation, without his deep and rich vein of humanism.

A particular bone to pick for me was Farmer's abuse of anagrams and mispelled French or German words, a kind of insider joke that requires too much effort on the part of the reader to decode. And makes for some truly unpronounceable alien names like Chworktap or Clerun-Gowph. A second bone is another tool stolen/borrowed from Vonnegut: that of telling stories within stories by fictional authors.

Philip Jose Farmer can write much better than this. I remember liking the first Riverworld book back in the early nineties, and I plan to read at some point in the future his World of Tiers series. But I can't honestly endorse the present book.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

lots of people seem to find this book silly. well, it was written by a dude who pretended to be Vonnegut's favorite made-up author, kilgore trout. but you know, i loved it, seriously. it was odd, whimsical, with a touch of seriousness here and there to be followed up by self-mockery. since i've been mildly self-aware i've adored, by genetic default, the works of Vonnegut, forced upon me by parents with crazy love for him. so, i must admit, the only thing the man ever did which depresses me was to sue over the release of this book. it's charming, and i wish he could have given up enough of his own marvelous creations to allow someone else to tink around with it in such a loving way.

[Denis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh my gosh. I have a special place to put books like this while I am reading them. It is a place where there is no other book within reach, such as work, car and such. This ensures that I will pick it up from time to time and eventually read it all the way through. I did not expect much from VOTH-S but what I hoped it would not be, unfortunately, it was.

Philip Josee Farmer, a writer who's work I have enjoyed from time to time, had come up with the cool idea to write a Kilgore Trout novel (and I believe, intended it as a sincere tribute to an author he admired and respected) and after some kerfuffle with its creator: Kurt Vonnegut, settled on publishing it with Farmer's name on the cover as not to give the impression that it was written by Vonnegut himself. I can see why, because Farmer really muffed it. It could and should have been great, but instead, it was utterly abysmal. Simply dumb and stunk of typical seventies '69er-dildo-sex gags' (however, I will admit that the 'rubber tire-people' were kinda cool). It appears what Farmer did was write this off the top of his head, as he likely assumed Trout would have done his work had he been a real person. Trout is a fictional author who is supposedly a mad genius, who could have written brilliant satire off the top of his head. Based on the tidbits of synopses that were mentioned in the Vonnegut books, Trout had absurd plots but profound messages and themes. In VOTH-S, I found none of these. Perhaps a better idea would have been to actually compile all of the Trout outlines within the Vonnegut novels and write complete stories based on those.

The notorious Goodread's reviewer "Manny" said it best: "The best part of Venus is definitely the blurb on the back cover, which, at least in the edition I read, faithfully reproduces the tackily suggestive text from Mr Rosewater. Now that's funny. Unfortunately, there's very little else to be said in favour of this dire book, which fails about equally badly at being witty, satirical, sexy, shocking and just plain worth reading. Oh well."

I just didn't get the joke.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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 indestructable 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 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.

[Bas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book might be my best find... EVER.

Thsi book is a book by Kilgore Trout, a well known alter ego for Kurt Vonnegut Readers. He is a science finction Author that only gets published in dirty magazines as filler between the pictures. He has had hundreds of stories published this way and some of his story ideas are great. Except.. he does not actually exists...
Untill thsi book came out. A great read in the style of Kurt Vonnegut. Only later did everyone realize it was a book by Farmer.
Still.. I always wanted to have this book, never found it, not even on the internet at the normal shops... Well, there was a harback edition, but Kilgore Trout in Hardback? Comeon!

And then, on one glorious day in my favourite second hand bookstore in Amsterdam.. There it was!

[Jerry Jose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kilger Trout is a familiar name among Vonnegut fans, the fictional sci fi writer whose existence every reader secretly wished and googled for. Though Farmer’s version made Vonnegut cross, who according to internet overstatement legends, had dismissed the novel as a fakers drivel (mostly coz of creator ambiguity, which was later cleared by a by-line), I found it pretty fab.

This book is weird, comical, extremely absurd, reference filled and absolutely staggering. I was enraptured from the very introduction itself, and found it a worthy source(successor) material for that brief Trout plot from God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. Novel follows facetious accounts of Simon Wagstaff and his merry men (Anubis the dog, Athena the owl and Chworktap, his super hot android girl friend) in his quest for “definitive answer to the most important question in Universe” (which I believe Douglas Adams later payed homage to). For a book propelled by its absurdness, it was delightfully scientific and philosophical at parts. Well, after first few chapters fun seemed to dwindle and stupidity went a large, making me a bit Vonnegut-ish, only to have it compensated in long run.

There were tons of literary references during this loquacious honky-tonk, on which the novel hilariously craps on. Exploding Star creating a new religion, Titanic and Icarus Spaceship company, 2001 A Space Odessy conscious AI, even Westworld, Doctor Who Face of Boe feline society, Shaltoonian’s Assassins Creed, Hwang Ho for Millennium Falcon, Cowboy Bebop, Reichenbach falls and Sherlock Holmes with Ralf von Wau Wau are a few I had fun picking at. Oh and that uncanny resemblance between Sommers’ John Clayter series and Doctor Who porn parody.

Venus on half shell is the Rick and Morty of sci-fi literature. If you are weird and like weird things, this book is for you.

[The Frahorus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironico romanzo sulla space opera

Sconvolgente lo scoprire la risposta alla Domanda delle domande! Non ve la dirò, amici, perché preferisco che prima divorate questo succulento ed umoristico romanzo di Farmer. Ma posso citarvi quello che scrisse Re Alfonso di Castiglia, detto il Saggio: "Se fossi stato presente al momento della creazione, avrei potuto dare a Dio qualche buon suggerimento su come migliorare il mondo".

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

Venus on the Half-Shell is a fictional fiction created by Kurt Vonnegut as a work by his fictional character Kilgore Trout, a trashy sci-fi-writer-guy supposedly inspired by Theodore Sturgeon, in his excellent recursive novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. This current book is an expanded fanfic version of that work written by Philip Jose Farmer; neither Vonnegut nor Sturgeon were involved. It's a cute enough concept, but I thought Farmer drug it on way too long. He was attempting to copy the fictional Trout's fictional style, but still... It had some amusing moments (such as the list of other books by Trout opposite the title page) but became a little tedious pretty swiftly. Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, a science fiction novel by Adolf Hitler, is a pretty similar idea, but much better executed.

[Drew Barth · Rating 4 out of 5]

What did I think? I don't even know.
A copy of this was given to me by my Junior year English teacher after doing a presentation on Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, just the fact that one of Kilgore Trout's books was actually released was astonishing to me. Here is a man, more or less, who has written dozens, if not hundreds of various novels and stories over a sordid career that spans decades, and this is the one they saw fit to release in this universe?
Well, I can't really complain about it, with it being fairly good and all.
It's pulp, the pulpiest of pulp imaginable at times, with Simon Wagstaff taking up the mantle of unlikely hero despite being the only human among the stars with an owl, a dog, and a robot companion he stumbled upon after fleeing a planet that has since named him "Simon the Sodomite." The whole thing is a fantastic bit of meta fun, never once meant to be taken seriously in any context, except perhaps a theory stating that the first animal to evolve on a given planet will become the dominant species--utterly mind altering, isn't it? There are prison sentences that last hundreds of years for simply landing on a planet's surface, sex with an alien cat-queen for an immortality elixir, and that said elixir gives all of the person's ancestors a say in their mind, constantly prattling on and on for as long as they shall live, which, I think, is forever.
I love that it's so unabashedly silly, that it seems like it would be something Trout would write, that everyone on the cover is half-naked. It's a piece of literary candy, a handful of gummy bears in text that do nothing more but give a bit of pleasure for a quick read.

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel features three Afterwords, one of which was written by me (under a pseudonym). I guess that enough time has passed since the publication of this edition to permit a sharing of the secret. There are plenty of infelicities in the prose style of Philip José Farmer but one thing that can never be questioned is the wildness of his imagination and the extraordinary velocity of his plots. This is a magnificent cosmic romp about a space explorer named Simon Wagstaff that reads like Gulliver's Travels in outer space. I have heard it said that Farmer's works are sexist; but the main female character in this novel is a strong lead who absolutely does not take second place to Simon. The jokes are outrageous, the action is wild. Wonderful !

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philip Jose Farmer wrote this under the name Kilgore Trout, which was a fictional author created by Kurt Vonnegut. It seemed to stay pretty close to Vonnegut's style and approach to me, but I'm not a big Vonnegut fan so I couldn't be absolutely sure. It was definitely tongue in cheek and more focused on amusing incidents rather than any overall plot. A fairly easy read but not particularly enjoyable for me.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Despropósito que, en ciertos momentos, resulta divertido.-

Género. Ciencia ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. Simón Wagstaff es el último hombre vivo en la Tierra, toca el banjo, está practicando sexo sobre la Esfinge con un robot femenino y tiene un encuentro con un viajero espacial del futuro. Sus dudas existenciales le llevan a emprender un viaje en busca de respuestas allá donde deba encontrarlas (sí, en serio). Escrita por Farmer con el seudónimo de Kilgore Trout, un nombre que le sonará a los más “vonnegutianos” de ustedes. En esta edición la novela va acompañada de un breve poema del autor, El pterodáctilo, oda al dinosaurio volador (sí, en serio), y del relato corto de Farmer Quemadura de piel, una esquizofrénica historia sobre espionaje, problemas dermatológicos y sexo.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[John Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philip José Farmer is one of the great sci fi writers and one of my favourites. This is the first book I've read by him in over 40 years. I loved the Riverworld series, World of Tiers and Dayworld, but this farcical journey around the universe in a found spaceship by Simon with his dog and owl that can travel at 69,000 times the speed of light, while looking for the answer to why the universe exists. I will not bore you with any details, just be prepared for a wild sexual romp with aliens and philosophical musings that are both creative and tedious. Fun, but it does grow a bit thin by the end.

"People in ships going at lightspeeds, or faster, aged very slowly. Everything inside the ship was slowed down. To an observer outside the ship, a passenger would take a month just to open his mouth to ask somebody to please pass the sugar. An orgasm would last a year, which was one of the things the passenger liners stressed in their advertising." pg 40. 3.5 stars rounded up for creativity and the fact that Farmer is a legend.

"“And what’s a real woman?” “One who’s intelligent, courageous, passionate, compassionate, sensitive, independent, and noncompulsive.”"

"“That’s right,” Mofeislop said. “Wisdom consists of knowing when to avoid perfection.”"

"“Today, I’m surprised, too. That’s the first woman I’ve seen in ten years. Women don’t come here seeking the Truth, you know. That’s because they think they already know it. Besides, even those women who have doubts aren’t likely to go through the Yetgul Forest to ask a man what it’s all about. They know that most men are pitiful creatures and not too bright, no matter how proficient they might be in science and technology and the arts.”"

[Gökhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mizahla dolu bir gezegenlerarası yolculuk. Otostopçunun Galaksi Rehberi'nin öncülü adeta. Kitap künyesinde yazar olarak uzunca bir süre (Kurt Vonnegut'un izniyle, onun karakteri olan) Kilgore Trout yazdığını önsözden öğrenince, daha en baştan okuyucuya şaka yaparak bizi bu maceraya soktuğunu düşündüm Farmer'ın.

[Tomislav · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second read - 7 November 2008 - **. A number of Kurt Vonnegut's novels feature the half-baked plots of hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. I think Philip Jose Farmer must have had a lot of fun filling those shoes, half-baked plot and all. Crappy metaphors and cheesy porno plot elements that completely fail to arouse. And to come full circle, this book contains numerous synopses of the fully unbaked plots of hack science fiction writer Jonathan Swift Somers III. In the end, the protagonist finds the wacky answer to the ultimate question of the meaning of life. Makes me wonder if Douglas Adams read this before writing his The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

First read – March 1975 - ***. While in college, I first read this then-new parody work by Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional science fiction writer.

[Justin Strangward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I see people reviewing this as fan fiction and thats not quite right. I used to see dog-eared copies of this book in bookshops, pre-internet. As a teenager, I didn't know it wasn't by Vonnegut. In fact the picture on the back was of some bloke in a hat, shades and beard. It might be Vonnegut? Its not until I met grownups who had read Vonnegut, that could tell me that it was a sham. There was no way of knowing.

Its a hard book to read as it is pure baloney up until the last beautiful sentence. To discuss the book is to discuss that last short sentence. That kind of ruins the whole experience, so I won't.

What I will say, is that if you want to penetrate this book. You need to know:

1. Its not fan fiction.
2. It could be by Vonnegut, couldn't it, maybe?
3. The cover is perfect in its Troutness
4. The author (whoever it might be) is well aware of what he is doing.
5. It is written by someone like (or could be) Vonnegut that thinks science fiction writers can't write.

[James Hold · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can I give this zero stars? Vonnegut was reluctant to let Farmer write this. Having read other Farmer 'works' I can understand why. Not satisfied with ruining Doc Savage and Tarzan he turned his bombardier sites on Vonnegut with the expected results. Neither funny nor entertaining it stands as another entry in the increasing mystery of why PJF ever got published or why some think he was a good writer. Trout, in Vonnegut's world, was a bad writer with good ideas. PJF is a bad writer--period. If there were a HOF for 'Writers Who Are Even Worse Than L Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter' then PJF would get the Lifetime Achievement Award.

[Jenny Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty good book, with some great funny moments.

[Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amusing, very much tongue in cheek farce written by Philip Jose Farmer

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this 40 years ago when it came out. I was reading Vonnegut quite a bit at the time so I knew of his character, the hack science fiction author Kilgore Trout. I recall liking it at the time but I really did not remember much, just a few of the scenes and situations.

The current reading was a 2013 reissue that includes quite a bit of foreword and afterword material on the story behind Philip Jose Farmer writing as Kilgore Trout and some of the drama behind that since the real author was not divulged at the time. I assumed, as many did, that the original story was something Vonnegut did with his character.

After reading it now I did not like the story as much as I recall liking it as a teenager. It would barely rate two or three stars taken by itself. However, I think it also needs to be judged based on the challenge that was taken by Mr. Farmer. Kilgore Trout was, as described in the Vonnegut stories, a hack writer. Vonnegut described lurid, turgid prose that felt as if it would be difficult to read. If one wanted to purposely write in this style and bring the feeling of the author, as described by Vonnegut, to life it would be difficult to capture that properly. In that respect I think Farmer succeeded.

The story itself is difficult to describe. I would call it a cross between Gulliver's Travels and Dante's Inferno with a little Edgar Rice Burroughs, Wizard of Oz, Sherlock Holmes and Lost Horizon thrown in for good measure. It follows, Simon Wagstaff, an earthling given immortality, and a sexy female robot as they travel the universe looking for answers to Simon's questions. It is a little reminiscent of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books since it begins with Earth being mostly destroyed by aliens and Simon is presumably the only survivor who then comes into possession of a faster-than-light spaceship. Actually, it is the other way around since this book predated Douglas Adams' radio show and trilogy of five books. Mr. Farmer seems to be fond of puns, anagrams and cross-genre references and I am sure I did not pick up on all of them scattered throughout. The segues were abrupt and the ending even more so. I will, however, give Mr. Farmer the benefit of the doubt that to the degree the story is "bad" it was only to capture the tenor and tone of Kilgore Trout.

[Leila Anani · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shallow person that I am I bought this book entirely for the cover, but come on what an absolutely awesome trashy cover! It just had to be bought. Sadly I don't think the contents live up to the gorgeous artwork.

The story follows a banjo playing bum Simon Wagstaff who manages to escape a cleansing flood of Biblical proportions in a Chinese spacecraft. He picks up a dog he calls Anubis, an owl called Athena and a female android called Chworktap and together they roam through space on Simon's quest to find the meaning of it all.

Its a bit like the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy but without all the awesome, somehow. Still it hums along merrily enough and some of the planets he lands on and alien societies he meets are rather fun, like the wheel shaped Lalorlong who's philosophy is to "keep rolling along."

The satire is in some places biting but I felt the end was a bit of an anti climax. Its a fun, lite romp, but won't change your life. Fans of Douglas Adams and comic sci-fi of this ilk will definitely enjoy it though.

Its written by Philip Jose Farmer under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout - whom many will recognise as the fictional sci-fi author (supposedly based on Theodore Sturgeon) from several works by Kurt Vonnegut - I think its deliberately written in the style of what Vonnegut describes Trout's works to be - satirical, philosophical pulp sci-fi. On that level it is actually is quite clever, but didn't do much for me as a novel in its own right.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my dad's old paperback. He gave it to me in... high school? The story around the book (that Farmer wrote it as Kurt Vonnegut's fictional science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, effectively making it like... meta-fan-fiction?) is more interesting than the story in the book itself. The story itself is "just OK", following along with some fairly familiar sci-fi tropes and adding a sprinkling of puerile sexuality. I smirked a few times, but never chuckled. To me it was more interesting to try and imagine that I was in a by-stander in a Kurt Vonnegut story reading some actual Kilgore Trout. (From there then imaging what it would be like to read the stories written by the fictional authors in the story by the real author's imagining of another author's fictional author.)

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As other reviewers have suggested, it's like Douglas Adams, but with much more bodily humor. So, light and crude. For me, it seems credible that this might have been the kind of thing that Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout might have written had he been a real person (the novel is actually authored by Philip José Farmer, who appropriated the name of Vonnegut's fictional writer as an homage to Vonnegut.

Acquired 2003
City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario

[Saretta · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 punti l'ho trovato un po' pesante

[Tom Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Outrageous. Weird. Far out.

It's very hard to write as well as Vonnegut. He conveys volumes of truth and emotion in sentences so simple a child could compose them. He is amazingly economical--never a word is wasted. You can mimic the style, but not the spirit.

Philip Jose Farmer does not write like Vonnegut. But he does a fair imitation of writing like someone who writes like Vonnegut might write. If you follow.

"Venus on the Half-Shell" is a crude sci-fi pulp hardly worth the paper it's printed on, should you judge books by criteria such as "plot" or "purpose." It's either a peculiarly smutty parable or a surprisingly insightful dirty joke. I loved it. Parts of it, anyhow.

Caveat emptor; buyer beware.

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilarious, and AMAZINGLY, I was wrong that I always thought Vonnegut had either written it or at least contributed more than just the fictional author. I have a new found respect for Farmer.

[mick_paolino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cinque stelle perché non se ne possono fare 6, o 7 o 34…. O 42!!!

[🐴 🍖]

stop me if you've heard this one: lone survivor of earth following a bit of neighborhood improvement by aliens travels to the furthest reaches of the universe in search of the answer to the ultimate q of existence... yep this puppy predates hitchhikers by a good 3 yrs, & is mostly interesting for hypothesizing how it may have influenced dougie a. thank goodness the prose didn't influence him; this is the type of novel that makes you wonder if similes should be banned, to say nothing of some sex writing that could peel paint. (which tbf kilgore t is canonically an unsuccessful writer of filler for porn mags, so those qualities are likely intentional.) best bits imo were our hero's synopses of his own fav (uniformly dire) SF works. coulda devoured a whole book of those