Welcome to the Monkey House

This is an Alternate Cover Edition of ISBN 9780586037010.

This short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) incorporates almost completely Vonnegut’s 1961 “Canary in a Cathouse”, which appeared within a few months of Slaughterhouse-Five and capitalized upon that breakthrough novel and the enormous attention it suddenly brought.

Drawn from both specialized science fiction magazines and the big-circulation general magazines which Vonnegut had been one of the few science writers to sell, the collection includes some of his most accomplished work from 1950 to 1968. The title story may be his most famous—a diabolical government asserts control through compulsory technology removing orgasm from sex—but Vonnegut’s bitterness and wit, not in his earlier work as poisonous or unshielded as it later became, is well demonstrated.

Two early stories from Galaxy science fiction magazine and one from Fantasy & Science Fiction (the famous “Harrison Bergeron”) show Vonnegut’s careful command of a genre about which he was always ambivalent, stories like “More Stately Mansions” or “The Foster Portfolio” the confines and formula of a popular fiction of which he was always suspicious. Vonnegut’s affection for humanity and bewilderment as its corruption are manifest in these early works.

Several of these stories (those which appeared in Collier’s) were commissioned by Vonnegut’s Cornell classmate and great supporter Knox Burger, also born in 1922.

Contents:
Where I Live / Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (variant of You’ve Never Been to Barnstable?)
Harrison Bergeron / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Who Am I This Time? / Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (variant of My Name Is Everyone)
Welcome to the Monkey House / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Long Walk to Forever / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Foster Portfolio / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Miss Temptation / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
All the King’s Horses / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
New Dictionary / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Next Door / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
More Stately Mansions / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Hyannis Port Story / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
D.P. / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Report on the Barnhouse Effect / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Euphio Question / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Deer in the Works / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Lie / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Unready to Wear / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Kid Nobody Could Handle (George M. Helmholtz) / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Manned Missiles / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
EPICAC / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Adam / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow / Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (variant of The Big Trip Up Yonder)