Was Kurt Vonnegut a Literary Stephen Hawkins?

The "banning" by Republic High School in Missouri of Vonnegut's classic anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969), prompted me to pull out my old, yellowed copy, saved since my original reading as an escape from the pressure of my final year in medical school, to see exactly what had prompted the action (After re-reading the book, it seems the removal from the school library was because some of the characters thoughts or actions could be considered "non-biblical" - in which case any novel about Hitler, etc could be considered non-biblical.) I am, however, confident that the banning, rather than saving the students from exposure to Vonnegut's book, assured most of the students at the school will now read the book over the ensuing weeks.

Forty years older now, my reaction is still mixed, though I see the anti-war sentiment more clearly, having by this time considerably lowered my expectations from our political "leaders."

What did strike me on my current reading were certain parts of the story of Billy Pilgram. "Billy Pilgram has come unstuck in time . . .is spastic in time." He tells the story of being captured by the alien Tralfamadorians (who see in four dimensions  - adding time as a visual dimension) and learning that "when a person dies, he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future have always existed, always will exist."

If you have read Hawkins' book The Grand Design and one of his Brief History of Time books, it is apparent that current quantum physics and relativity more or less supports this claim by Vonnegut's character of the past, present, and future concurrently existing.(In fact I find these discussions of  time to be very, very strange, and it is suggested that before the big bang, time may not have existed.)   Kurt was not a physicist and never claimed any knowledge of quantum physics, but intuition can sometimes get you a long way.

OTHER RECENTLY READ BOOKS:

The Ghost in the Wires - The biography of the "most wanted hacker in America."  Kevin Mitnick now owns his own security consulting firm.  This Link to his website currently has a video of his interview on the Colbert Report - very entertaining!

Matterhorn - a most disturbing novel of the Vietnam conflict. Having no firsthand experience, I will need to consult with my cousin John C as to the accuracy of this book