Kurt Vonnegut 16 min read

Gramps Ford, 172 and going strong on anti-aging Anti-Gerasone, crows 'we did that a hundred years ago', while three generations crammed into one apartment wait, and wait, for him to die.

Kurt Vonnegut's 1954 story is a sharp, darkly funny dystopian social-SF satire of immortality and overpopulation. Clever, biting, wonderfully Vonnegut. Read it for early Vonnegut at his most acid and playful, a household of squabbling heirs and one deathless patriarch in a hopelessly overcrowded tomorrow.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

16 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Sandy Kossin