Kurt Vonnegut and his brother Bernard grew up believing in the utopia science would create. Kurt studied chemistry until World War II military service cut short his college days; when war came, Bernard went to work at General Electric’s Research Laboratory.
By the time he returned home after being taken prisoner by the Germans and witnessing the Allied terror bombing of Dresden, Kurt’s perspective had darkened. When he read of the atom bombs dropped on Japan, he lost faith in the bromides of progress and the promise of science. Bernard continued his research to develop “cloud seeding” to bring rain to parched regions. He eventually became disillusioned upon learning that the military planned to use cloud seeding as a weapon.
Out soon in paperback, The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) looks at the parallel paths taken by Bernard and Kurt, who became one of America’s outstanding novelists in the 1960s. Pulling together much obscure information, author Ginger Strand sheds light on a forgotten program whose possibilities remain promising and alarming, and one novelist who turned his dismay over human nature into Slaughterhouse-Five.
