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Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut's 1952 satire about automation and the working stiff, was premature. Cat's Cradle (1963), an end-of-the-world scenario, fared better in the wake of Khrushchev's shoe banging and the Cuban missile crisis. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) was, in the expression of the day, right on. The novel was based on the author's experience as an American POW in Dresden when Allied bombers killed 135,000 civilians. This reminder of total war coincided with the mayhem of Viet Nam, and Vonnegut the cult writer became a popular voice of generalized disenchantment. His refrain "So it goes" and Olympian reprimands like "Goddamn it,...
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