Review: Science Fiction: "2 B R 0 2 B" by Kurt Vonnegut

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“Everything was perfectly swell,” the reader is told. Disease, poverty, slums, wars, insane asylums, disability (author Kurt Vonnegut uses the then approved of word “cripples”), and prisons are all things of the past. Death, aside from accidents, is an adventure for volunteers. The population of the United States has stabilized at forty million. (At the time or the story, 1962, the population of the U. S. was about 187 million, according to Wikipedia. It’s currently 326 million.) Which brings up the question of having children. Not many people do, but Edward K Wehling, Jr. is about to become the father of triplets. They planned on one child and found one volunteer—Wehling’s grandfather—to go to the municipal gas chambers, officially known as the “Ethical Suicide Studios.” Unofficially, they’re known by such names as “The Catbox,” “The Easy Go,” “Lucky Pierre,” and “The Waring Blender.” Now he has to find two more volunteers or he’ll lose one or more of their children. Edward K. Wehling wants all three of their children. He doesn’t want to lose his grandfather. While Wehling is at the hospital waiting for his wife to give birth, a mural is being painted, depicting the doctor in white sowing the seeds and men and women in purple pulling weeds and disposing of refusing. Its title: “The Happy Garden of Life.” The painter hates it for its neatness. The good news arrives that all three babies have come into the world robust and healthy. Their mother is doing well. Wehling find a brutal solution for his dilemma. This story, like much of Vonnegut’s later work, is funny and devastating at the same time. The title, “2BR02B,” refers to the phone number volunteers call for “services.” It makes sense if the 0 is pronounced “naught.” Kurt Vonnegut, the author of some fourteen novels, served in the Second World War. He was taken prison during the Battle of the Bulge. He later survived the firebombing of Dresden. Slaughterhouse-Five is his best-known book. Vonnegut was, and remains, one of my favorite authors. This story is available at Project Gutenberg and as an audiobook from Librivox: _____ Title: “2BR02B” Author: Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) First published: If January 1962 Source: ISFDB