ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Controversial author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. succeeded in writing an entertaining novel whose plot is comprised almost entirely of flashbacks. And director George Roy Hill pulls the same trick on film, telling the story of Billy Pilgrim's bizarre life, a man who is "unstuck in time".

The concept is interesting and fun, even though it doesn't make much sense; Billy's consciousness skips back and forth within his own life, ranging from his boyhood to his elderly years — and yet he can't change anything that happens, just relive it over and over.

He spends the last few years of his life lecturing to audiences on the subject of time and its inflexibility (reliving the lectures, too).

And if that isn't weird enough for you, a middle-aged Billy is kidnapped by aliens and forced to spend a few years on another planet, where millions of invisible aliens observe him and his lover, a soft-core porno movie star named Montana Wildhack (played by the luscious and sometimes semi-nude Valerie Perrine), whom the aliens kidnap to keep Billy company.

They live in a small glass dome which sits on the moon-like surface of the alien world. When Montana has Billy's baby, the invisible aliens cheer and shoot off fireworks in the star-filled sky.

Despite the totally plotless, seemingly pointless structure of the narrative, both the film and the book are highly entertaining. Vonnegut is a man blessed with an abundance of imagination, and he seems to have the deep-seated conviction that the universe is completely mad (read Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions"). Admittedly its a viewpoint no one can refute with complete certainty.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

I loved the book, and I enjoyed the movie, and Valerine Perrin is luscious. I haven't seen this in years, but I can remember it as if it was yesterday.

That's . . . strangely ironic, in view of the story in the book and the movie.

_______________
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)