The Big Trip Up Yonder, by Kurt Vonnegut

For many years I read as much Kurt Vonnegut as I could find. I started reading him after I had read other young adult SF and had matured a bit in taste. I read Cat's Cradle with much pleasure, as a required novel in a high school English class, while others suffered. My first Vonnegut novel was Breakfast of Champions, which I unearthed in a junior high school library, of all places. Imagine that happening now (if you haven't read it, just go browse the introduction. But then go ahead and read it.).

So it was with much pleasure that I saw Free SF Online had picked up a story of his from Project Gutenberg called The Big Trip Up Yonder. It's a neat little study of immortality. Vonnegut's short fiction is very different from his novels--he gets right to the point, and you know what it is. This one is no different, and one could see where it might put your average mid-1950's reader's back up. Good stuff, go read it.