Vonnegut's novels are science fiction, will he or nil he. Listen, Slapstick is about a pair of telepathic twins whose intelligences synergize into super-genius when they're in close proximity but deteriorate to bright-normal when they're farther apart. They pretend to be idiots, however, as a form of protective coloration. Nice old science fiction device, first used by Olaf Stapledon around 1935, I believe. It also involves a scheme to relieve population pressures by breeding miniature humans—Bob Bloch did this in the 1960s. And there's a future plague which reduces most of the world to a state of neo-barbarism-in-the-ruins. Cf. Jack London, 1915. (pp. 52-3)

[Slapstick is] a science fiction novel if ever there was one….

As for whether Slapstick is a good science fiction novel or not, that's another matter. It has all of the trademarks of Vonnegut's novels, since the first few: a bitter zaniness, a deceptively simple style relying on commonplace vocabulary, short sentences, scenes and chapters, and a many-times-repeated key phrase. (Back in Slaughterhouse Five it was "So it goes"; in Slapstick it's "Hi ho." It's stupid and irritating.)

Unfortunately, since writing Slaughterhouse-Five …, Vonnegut has obviously lost heart. He's done only two novels since then. Breakfast of Champions … was announced as Vonnegut's last novel. It was a pitiful wail of despair at the human condition. Slapstick is a bit better, but once again, Vonnegut lacks the courage, energy and dedication to carry his scheme through to completion. The book starts promisingly, wanders off on a variety of tangents, and finally fizzles into nothingness at the end. It isn't Vonnegut's worst performance, but it's a poor one….

I resonate with this guy. But I can't forgive him for putting out these defeated, sloppy, unsatisfactory and unsatisfying books. If he was written out after Slaughterhouse-Five, by damn he should have quit writing….

Slapstick? A better title might have been Slapdash. (p. 53)