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    2 B R 0 2 B
    2 B R 0 2 B
    2 B R 0 2 B
    Ebook33 pages19 minutes

    2 B R 0 2 B

    By Kurt Vonnegut

    4/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateApr 2, 2011
    Author

    Kurt Vonnegut

    Kurt Vonnegut was a master of contemporary American Literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Siren's of Titan in 1959 and established him as ""a true artist"" with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene has declared, ""one of the best living American writers.""

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    Reviews for 2 B R 0 2 B

    4/5

    286 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a very short story, set in a future world that I'll call "dystopian utopia." Vonnegut sets the stage succinctly: Everything was perfectly swell. There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars. All diseases were conquered. So was old age. Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.

      Sounds utopian, right? But there is, of course, a catch. Do yourself a favor and spend twenty minutes reading this story, and think about what makes some lives more valuable than others, and how we make the same kinds of decisions today, just in more subtle ways, on more macroscopic levels.
    • 3/5
      Nice short story, nothing we can't live without, but that's probably my fault --- I rarely like short stories.
    • 5/5
      Grabbed this in audio version for a long car trip and really enjoyed it. Only complaint was that it is a short story and I definitely wanted more. Love Vonnegut so I wasn't surprised at how good it was but continued to be amazed at how he can drill down to the nuances of where our society is going and the crazy "logic" that we continue to apply to justify where we go as a society. As we look at modern medicine and the desire to prolong life this book really hits a chord on the philosophical questions of what it means to be entitled to a long life. Loved it!
    • 5/5
      Definitely Vonnegut! It was a quick read. I almost feel I can't call this reading a book, but it's classified as such, so there you go. I'll do a review on accidentallymars.wordpress.com sometime in the month of March.
    • 5/5
      Sharp Teeth Press; 44/80; Nice story w/ a typical KV moral overtone....too many people!
    • 5/5
      Brilliant little story, with a surprising depth.
    • 5/5
      Sci-Fi is fantastic. Through Sci-Fi, writers can explore the consequences of strong hypothesis and bring them to their limits.

      What if ageing will be "cured"? How would society look like? What would it mean to be human? What would time be? And above all, to be or not to be?
    • 2/5
      The value of life is briefly explored in a world where death has been cured. Worth reading since it is short, but I felt like the topic has more to give than Vonnegut takes.
    • 3/5
      A bit more bleak and not nearly as entertaining or imaginative as the other Vonnegut work that I've read.

      The ending seems a bit too pat and inevitable than I would have expected.
    • 2/5
      It''s as dark as hell and paints a frightening vision of Scientists laying down the law of population control by compulsory suicide.
    • 5/5
      I am a pure Vonnegut fan; he understands the mindless cruelty of mankind.
    • 5/5
      These days you hear a lot about how people born today will likely live to 150 or later. Aside from the bummer of the notion that you will go to work every day for over 120 years of your life, this little story considers some other very important issues with "immortality".

      Namely, population control.

      At under 20 pages this can be read in one sitting, if you get my drift. And it's free on Kindle, so download away!
    • 4/5
      The "0" in the title is pronounced "naught," of course, and is the number that people dial when they are ready for an assisted suicide. This is common in this future earth since people pretty much live indefinitely and that means terrible overpopulation. To control this population problem, anytime a child is born, the parents must secure someone to dial the number or the child cannot live. In this story, the father-to-be is having triplets but has only one person to dial 2BR02B. In the vein of so many other science fiction stories, science and technology has advanced beyond our wildest dreams (humans are nearly immortal), but it comes at a great cost (people must be killed in order to make room for new births) and society in general accepts this as okay and doesn't at all question the morality of the situation. It's an overly practical resolution to a serious problem: if the earth reaches its human saturation point and people no longer die natural deaths, what can be done? This story is extremely short but nevertheless contains classic Vonnegut dry humor and weary outlook on the fate of humanity with just a trace of hope. If you're a fan of Vonnegut, look this story up.
    • 4/5
      I have to say this was interesting. It was my first read by Vonnegut and I do understand now why my son loves him.It's a short story about population control. For every child born that is going to live, a volunteer must die. Imagine what goes through a father's head when his wife is about to have triplets! I enjoyed it and it really makes me stop and think. I didn't think I would enjoy it and I was pleasantly surprised. I think I will give something else by this author a try.
    • 4/5
      A very interesting premise. I am glad we do not have to live a society similar to the one presented here. Not quite what i expected, but very happy I read the book.
    • 3/5
      Short and dark. Typical Vonnegut fare.

    Book preview

    2 B R 0 2 B - Kurt Vonnegut

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of 2 B R 0 2 B, by Kurt Vonnegut

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: 2 B R 0 2 B

    Author: Kurt Vonnegut

    Release Date: May 3, 2007 [EBook #21279]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 2 B R 0 2 B ***

    Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Geetu Melwani and the Online

    Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

    Transcriber's note.

    This etext was produced from Worlds of If, January 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.

    Got a problem? Just pick up the phone. It solved them all—and all the same way!

    2

    B

    R

    0

    2

    B

    by KURT VONNEGUT, JR.

    Everything was perfectly swell.

    There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars.

    All diseases were conquered. So was old age.

    Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.

    The population of the United States was stabilized at forty-million souls.

    One bright morning in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, a man named Edward K. Wehling, Jr., waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only man waiting. Not many people were born a day any more.

    Wehling was fifty-six, a mere stripling in a population whose average age was one hundred and twenty-nine.

    X-rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets. The children would be his first.

    Young Wehling was hunched in his

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