The Big Trip Up Yonder

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About this book

The Big Trip Up Yonder is a story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., illustrated by Kossin. It begins with Gramps Ford, chin on his hands, staring at a five-foot television screen and shouting back at a news commentator that it was all done a hundred years ago. The year is 2185 A.D. Emerald and Lou come in from the balcony and take seats in the back row, behind Lou's father and mother, brother and sister-in-law and many more relatives, with Gramps in front of everybody.

Nearly everyone looks to be in their late twenties or early thirties. The text explains that Gramps had reached 70 when anti-gerasone was invented and has not aged in the 102 years since. He talks of getting ready for the Big Trip Up Yonder, a phrase his heirs have heard mentioned about once a day for fifty years.

About the author

Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and held prisoner in Dresden when Allied bombers destroyed the city in February 1945. He and the other prisoners survived inside a meat locker and were then put to work digging bodies out of the rubble. Twenty-three years passed before he could write Slaughterhouse-Five about it.