As most of you know by now, the great writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died on Wednesday night. Considering his contributions to the film world (many of his books were adapted to the big screen) I wrote up a little story about him for the news section of TheCinemaSource. It reads as follows:

The news broke yesterday that brilliant writer Kurt Vonnegut died Wednesday night. He was 84.

While Vonnegut was of course principally known for his books, notably modern classics such as Slaughterhouse-5 and Cat's Cradle, he was no stranger to the film world. Many of his novels were adapted into films, most recently 1999's Breakfast of Champions and 1996's Mother Night. 1991's television anthology Monkey House presented adaptations of seven Vonnegut short stories. And he wrote the screenplay for 1971's Happy Birthday, Wanda June (based on his play) and 1972's Between Time and Timbuktu.

The New York Times has a lengthy and extremely well written full obituary here.

In Slaughterhouse-5, which is personally my favorite book of all time, the main character becomes "unstuck" in time thanks to aliens known as Tralfamadorians, and must relive moments of his life over and over again. In it, Vonnegut had this to say about death, which spawned a classic catchphrase:

"When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that someone is dead, I simply shrug and say what Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"