Venus on the Half-Shell
Venus on the Half-Shell is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip José Farmer, writing pseudonymously as "Kilgore Trout", a fictional recurring character in many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. This book first appeared as a fictitious "excerpt"—attributed to Trout (though written by Vonnegut)—in the ninth chapter of Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965). With Vonnegut's permission, Farmer expanded the fragment into an entire standalone novel (including, as an in-joke, a scene that incorporates all of Vonnegut's original text). Farmer's story was first published in two parts beginning in the December 1974 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The plot, in which Earth is destroyed by cosmic bureaucrats doing routine maintenance and the sole human survivor goes on a quest to find the "Definitive Answer to the Ultimate Question", was an inspiration for the plot of the later Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.[citation needed]
According to Farmer's introduction in Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, Vonnegut was initially reluctant to allow the project, but finally relented. After publication, a poorly worded magazine article gave Vonnegut the impression that Farmer had planned to write the story regardless of his permission, which angered Vonnegut. Also, it was popularly assumed that Vonnegut wrote the book. This problem was solved by reprinting the book with Farmer's name as author.
A common element to this novel is the origin of many of the characters' and locations' names. Farmer "put in a lot of references to literature and fictional authors... Most of the alien names in Venus were formed by transposing the letters of English or non-English words."[1]
The title and paperback cover art are a reference to an Italian Renaissance tempera painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, which depicts the birth of the goddess Venus as her rising from the sea on a scallop shell. The phrase "on the half-shell" commonly refers to a method of serving oysters.
In 2013, Titan Books reprinted Venus on the Half-Shell with new cover art referencing The Birth of Venus.
Table of character names with known origins
Name | Origin | Etymology |
---|---|---|
Chworktap | Patchwork | anagram[1] |
Utapal | Laputa | anagram |
Zelpst | selbst | phonetic rendering of the German word meaning self[1] |
Raproshma | rapprochement | phonetic rendering of the French word meaning approximation.[1] |
Dokal | Caudal | pseudo-anagram (means having a tail)[1] |
Tunc | Cunt | anagram |
Angavi | vagina | anagram |
Gviirl | Virgil | anagram |
Clerun-Gowph | Aufklärung | derived from the German word for enlightenment[1] |
Odiomzwak | Quasimodo | pseudo-anagram |
Citations
- ^ a b c d e f Farmer 2008, p. 23.
General sources
- Farmer, Philip José (2008), Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, Subterranean Press.
External links
- Original magazine publication cover at VISCO
- Venus on the Half-Shell title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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series
- World of Tiers (1965-1993)
- Riverworld (1971-1983)
- Herald Childe (1968-1979)
- Traitor to the Living (1973)
- Secrets of the Nine (1969-1988)
- Tarzan (1974-1999)
- Khokarsa (1974-2012)
- Dayworld (1985-1990)
- Dungeon (1988-1990)
novels
- The Green Odyssey (1957)
- Flesh (1960)
- A Woman a Day (1960)
- The Lovers (1961)
- Cache from Outer Space (1962)
- Fire and the Night (1962)
- Inside Outside (1964)
- Tongues of the Moon (1964)
- Dare (1965)
- The Gate of Time (1966)
- Night of Light (1966)
- Lord Tyger (1970)
- Love Song (1970)
- The Stone God Awakens (1970)
- The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971)
- The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973)
- Venus on the Half-Shell (1975)
- Jesus on Mars (1979)
- Dark Is the Sun (1979)
- The Unreasoning Mask (1981)
- Stations of the Nightmare (1982)
- Greatheart Silver (1982)
- A Barnstormer in Oz (1982)
- Escape from Loki (1991)
- The Caterpillar's Question (1992)
- Nothing Burns in Hell (1998)
- Naked Came The Farmer (1998)
- Up From the Bottomless Pit (2005–2007)
- The City Beyond Play (2007)
- The Evil in Pemberley House (2009)
collections
- Strange Relations (1960)
- The Alley God (1962)
- The Celestial Blueprint: And Other Stories (1962)
- Down in the Black Gang (1971)
- The Book of Philip José Farmer, or the Wares of Simple Simon’s Custard Pie and Space Man (1973)
- Riverworld and Other Stories (1979)
- Riverworld War: The Suppressed Fiction of Philip José Farmer (1980)
- The Cache (1981)
- Father to the Stars (1981)
- Stations of the Nightmare (1982)
- The Purple Book (1982)
- The Classic Philip José Farmer, 1952-1964 (1984)
- The Classic Philip José Farmer, 1964-1973 (1984)
- The Grand Adventure (1984)
- Riders of the Purple Wage (1992)
- Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe (2005)
- The Best of Philip José Farmer (2006)
- Strange Relations (2006)
- Pearls from Peoria (2006)
- Up from the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories (2007)
- Venus on the Half-Shell and Others (2008)
- The Other in the Mirror (2009)
- The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer: Protean Dimensions (2010)
- Up the Bright River (2010)
- The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust and Soul (2011)
- The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 3: Portraits of a Trickster (2012)
- Tales of the World Newton Universe (2013)
- "O'Brien and Obrenov" (1946)
- "Duo Miaule" (anii 1950)
- The Lovers (1952)
- "Sail On! Sail On!" (1952)
- "The Biological Revolt" (1953)
- "Mother" (1953)
- "Moth and Rust" (1953)
- "Attitudes" (1953)
- "Strange Compulsion" (1953)
- "They Twinkled Like Jewels" (1954)
- "Daughter" (1954)
- "Queen of the Deep" (1954)
- "The God Business" (1954)
- "Rastignac the Devil" (1954)
- "The Celestial Blueprint" (1954)
- "The Wounded" (1954)
- "Totem and Taboo" (1954)
- "Father" (1955)
- "The Night of Light" (1957)
- "The Alley Man" (1959)
- "Heel" (1960)
- "My Sister's Brother" (1960)
- "A Few Miles" (1960)
- "Prometheus" (1961)
- "Tongues of the Moon" (1961)
- "Uproar in Acheron" (1962)
- "How Deep the Grooves" (1963)
- "Some Fabulous Yonder" (1963)
- "The Blasphemers" (1964)
- "The King of the Beasts" (1964)
- "Day of the Great Shout" (1965)
- "Riverworld" (1966)
- "The Suicide Express" (1966)
- "The Blind Rowers" (1967)
- "A Bowl Bigger than Earth" (1967)
- "The Felled Star" (1967)
- "The Shadow of Space" (1967)
- "Riders of the Purple Wage” (1967)
- "Don't Wash the Carats" (1968)
- "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod" (1968)
- "Down in the Black Gang" (1969)
- "The Oogenesis of Bird City" (1970)
- "The Voice of the Sonar in my Vermiform Appendix" (1971)
- "Brass and Gold" (1971)
- "The Fabulous Riverboat" (1971)
- "Only Who Can Make a Tree?" (1971)
- "The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World” (1971)
- "Seventy Years of Decpop" (1972)
- "Skinburn" (1972)
- "The Sumerian Oath" (1972)
- "Father's in the Basement" (1972)
- "Toward the Beloved City" (1972)
- "Mother Earth Wants You" (1972)
- "Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind" (1973)
- "Monolog" (1973)
- "After King Kong Fell" (1973)
- "Opening the Door" (1973)
- "The Two-Edged Gift" (1974)
- "The Startouched" (1974)
- "The Evolution of Paul Eyre" (1974)
- "Passing On" (1975)
- "A Scarletin Study, as Jonathan Swift Somers III" (1975)
- "The Problem of the Sore Bridge - Among Others, as Harry Manders" (1975)
- "Greatheart Silver" (1975)
- "The Return of Greatheart Silver" (1975)
- "Osiris on Crutches, as Leo Queequeg Tincrowder" (1976)
- "The Volcano, as Paul Chapin" (1976)
- "The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight, as Jonathan Swift Somers III" (1976)
- "Fundamental Issue" (1976)
- "The Henry Miller Dawn Patrol" (1977)
- "Greatheart Silver in the First Command" (1977)
- "Savage Shadow as Maxwell Grant" (1977)
- "The Impotency of Bad Karma as Cordwainer Bird" (1977)
- "It's the Queen of Darkness, Pal, as Rod Keen" (1978)
- "Freshman" (1979)
- "The Leaser of Two Evils" (1979)
- "J.C. on the Dude Ranch" (1979)
- "Spiders of the Purple Mage" (1980)
- "The Making of Revelation, Part I" (1980)
- "The Long Wet Dream of Rip Van Winkle" (1981)
- "The Adventure of the Three Madmen" (1984)
- "UFO vs IRS" (1985)
- "St. Francis Kisses His Ass Goodbye" (1989)
- "One Down, One to Go" (1990)
- "Evil, Be My Good" (1990)
- "Nobody's Perfect" (1991)
- "Wolf, Iron and Moth" (1991)
- "Crossing the Dark River" (1992)
- "A Hole in Hell" (1992)
- "Up the Bright River" (1993)
- "Coda" (1993)
- "The Good of the Land" (2002)
- "The Face that Launched a Thousand Eggs" (2005)
- "The Unnaturals" (2005)
- "Who Stole Stonehenge?" (2005)
- "That Great Spanish Author, Ernesto" (2006)
- "The Essence of the Poison" (2006)
- "The Doll Game" (2006)
- "Keep Your Mouth Shut" (2006)
- "The Frames" (2007)
- "A Spy in the U.S. of Gonococcia" (2007)
- "A Peoria Night" (2007)
- "The First Robot" (2008)
- "Getting Ready to Write" (2008)
- "My Summer Husband" (2010)
- "What I Thought I Heard" (2011)
- "Kwasin and the Bear God" (2011)
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