The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic

Strand (Killer on the Road) beautifully illustrates the lives of the Vonnegut brothers, Bernard and Kurt, and explores their contributions to their respective fields. During the firebombing of Dresden in World War II, while Kurt was hunkered down beneath a slaughterhouse (an experience upon which he later based Slaughterhouse-Five), his brother Bernard, a scientist, was testing out cloud seeding and ways of producing rain. The brothers led vastly different lives, but both worked for General Electric, which back then was lovingly referred to as the "house of magic." While there, Bernard experimented with weather control and Kurt reveled in all the fantastic things he saw and heard, many of which become the impetus for his later novels and short stories. Strand breaks down Bernard's science and Kurt's stories and produces a fascinating look at two different yet very similar brothers.