phil@rice.ARPA (10/18/85)
From: William LeFebvre <phil@rice.ARPA> "pugh jon%b.mfenet"@LLL-MFE.ARPA: > That story where everyone must be equal, so they dropped everyone to > the worst case was Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. No, as has already been pointed out, it is called "Harrison Bergeron". It can be found in a collection of Vonnegut short stories called "Welcome to the Monkey House" -- a book well worth reading. It shows an amazingly diverse collection of writing styles. Vonnegut's story writing talent really shines in this book! > I saw a show on PBS years { & years } ago that had all this as seen > by a time traveling space fellow. I think he was bopping from story > to story, but, as I said, it was a long time ago. Anyone else > remember this show/movie? Yes, this was a production of Vonnegut's play called "Between Time and Timbuktu" (spelling?). This play is basically a collage of many of his stories. Harrison Bergeron is in it, as is Wanda June (from the play "Happy Birthday, Wanda June"). The main character experiences all these "glimpses" when he gets put in a rocket and flown into a "Chrono Synclastic Infudibulum" (a funny name taken from "The Sirens of Titan"; it's been a long time since I've had to spell that -- I'm sure it's wrong). I was rather young when I saw this show. I wish they would show it again, now that I've read more Vonnegut. michael sclafani @ cmu-psy-a: > [Harrison Bergeron] is the sort of short story that high school > english teachers like to use. It IS a short story that high school english teachers use (or is that what you meant?). I think it was made a reading assignment on two separate occasions in high school english courses I had to take. I know we had to read it at least once. But that's okay -- it's a very good story. William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.arpa> or, for the daring: <phil@Rice.edu>