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About "Venus on the Half-Shell"...
The story goes that in the mid-'70s, Philip Jose Farmer was suffering from writer's block. This is funny when you consider that the guy's written 60-some books or so. Anyway, he had always been a Vonnegut fan, and re-reading one of his books, got the idea to do his own novel as Kilgore Trout. This got rid of Farmer's writer block in a big way, and pretty soon he'd come up with a ton of ideas for various "Kilgore Trout" books.
After a lot of begging, Farmer finally gained approval from Vonnegut. "Venus" was published soon thereafter by Dell, complete with a fake photo of "Trout" on the back -- in reality, Farmer just wearing a goofy beard. Farmer told his friends and associates that he was the true author of the book, but soon enough, people became suspicious. What finally began to irritate Vonnegut was when so many people would write him letters, saying how much they loved the book, thinking he himself had written it. Vonnegut then pulled the plug on the situation -- asking Farmer not to write anymore books, and requesting Dell not to publish anymore.
Farmer was upset, but respected Vonnegut's wishes. Vonnegut comes off as the bad guy -- he would state in interviews that Farmer was probably upset because he'd "made more money" from Venus than any of his other books -- the implied insult being that Farmer was only making this extra money due to the book's connection with Vonnegut himself. Finally, Vonnegut seems to have not only forgotten Farmer's name recently, he also seems to have forgotten that he personally gave approval for the project!
Anyway, Venus is best appreciated as a beaten-up paperback copy, preferrably the Dell original, or even the Laurel/Dell reprint from '81, which has the same cover. Recently there have been hardback reprints, but these totally go against the grain of what a "Kilgore Trout" book should be -- a forgotten, abused paperback lurking in some dank used bookstore.
You can see the various covers HERE.
Also, more detail on the book, how it was published, and the bickering that ensued can be found HERE. |
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