A Post Birthday Greeting from Tralfamadore

 

"Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other." (Chapter 5)

"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice." (Chapter 10)

- Excerpts from Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 classic Slaughterhouse-Five, (or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death). In the quote Vonnegut addresses his mythical realm of Tralfamadore, an exoplanet many light-years away from Earth which first appeared in Sirens of Titan* and, later, in Timequake. It is to this planet Billy Pilgrim, the central character of Slaughterhouse 5, is taken after his abduction and where he is held as an entertaining specimen in a Tralfamadorian zoo. (Inset left is a digital image by Janmesh Shah.)

The unique thing about the novel is that Slaughterhouse 5 is not considered a science fiction tale. It is hailed as the primo 20th century anti-war novel, while, at the same time, the thinly disguised memoir of a former WW2 soldier who literally marched through a living hell but somehow survived to tell the harrowing tale.

"Kurt Vonnegut's fiction is often explicitly science fiction, yet Vonnegut recoils at the use of the term -- scared off, I suppose, by the books written by Kilgore Trout, his fictional alter-ego. So you won't find Vonnegut in the science fiction department either, even though "The Sirens of Titan" is about flying saucers, "Player Piano" is about the effects of  in a near-future society, and "Cat's Cradle" is about a lab-created crystal with the capacity to plunge Earth into a permanent Ice Age. These are science fiction themes, whether Vonnegut wishes to admit it or not. And since his books are so readily available, I won't complain. At least I know where to go in the bookstore to find his books..."

- Mac Tonnies via Posthuman Blues, Sunday, March 14, 2004. Mac was a huge fan of Vonnegut. For him, Vonnegut was right up there with Kafka, Kerouac, Ballard, Bradbury, Burroughs, Gibson and P.K. Dick.** His favorite Vonnegut novel was Breakfast of Champions (1973). It was one of the books he'd want on hand if he was stranded on a deserted island.

That being said, Mac's bewilderment regarding Vonnegut's attitude towards the sci-fi genre was not unique. Critics still debate this topic today in spite of Vonnegut's own essay on the topic, On Writing Science Fiction:

"Years ago I was working in Schenectady for General Electric, completely surrounded by machines and ideas for machines, so I wrote a novel about people and machines, and machines frequently got the best of it, as machines will. (It was called Player Piano, and it's coming out in hard covers again next spring.) And I learned from the reviewers that I was a science-fiction writer.

I didn't know that. I supposed that I was writing a novel about life, about things I could not avoid seeing and hearing in Schenectady, a very real town, awkwardly set in the gruesome now. I have been a sore-headed occupant of a file-drawer labeled ''science- fiction'' ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a tall white fixture in a comfort station."

In the case of the planet Tralfamadore and Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut was writing about alien abductions during a decade when "alien abductions" and UAP sightings were just beginning to trickle into the public domain via local mainstream news sources. The phenomenon emerged in the early 1950s but,75 years later, we are still none the wiser and have little understanding of the abduction experience.***

As it was, via an article entitled The Laughing Time Traveller, we learn:

"...that Vonnegut invented Tralfamodore as a child when he was stargazing with his extended family on a jetty at their summer home on Lake Maxinkuckee in north-western Indiana."

Hmmm... How many ways can we translate that line? Memories are such slippery things.

Inset right is Vonnegut in 1940 when he was a lad of 18.  Two years later he enlisted in the army (joining the Children's Crusade). Soon afterwards his mother committed suicide. Maybe a year after that Vonnegut, an American of German descent, emerged from Slaughterhouse Five as a POW in Germany to watch helplessly as the great city of Dresden and most of its people were burned in a firestorm created by Allied missiles; a sight which haunted him for the rest of his life.

In any case, in the photo, he was just a kid. What you can't tell from the photo is that he was very tall. Oddly enough, he reminds me of Mac in some way. Mac may have thought so, too.

(Continued below the jump...)

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Admittedly, this post is a little schizophrenic, not to mention fairly late in terms of Mac's birthday. But, in my defense, I started writing the post a week ago, in the midst of juggling two Kurt Vonnegut posts for Trans-D.

And, well, it's cloud season here in Albuquerque.

Birthdays are like hours chiming from behind the dial of a huge vintage clock; its dome-like face covers the world. It chimes a thousand times a minute. Happily, we don't hear it... and only sometimes does it come as an alarm.

Annually, one of those minutes (or perhaps seconds) is yours, but, for the sake of economy (regarding calculation), you are granted one whole day to celebrate... whether you want to or not.

Why does one's first moment in time - the moment of the first breath and, presumably, the first conscious awareness, carry so much weight in our lives when a moment in time is the least substantial thing in our existence? Obviously, because birthdays - yours, mine... and other people we never knew personally - are special. The esoteric science of astrology depends on the moment an individual is born.

But, a birthday is much more. At first it seems almost elementary. It is the day a human leaves the crucible in which it has been transformed, and nourished for 9 months. It is the day a human enters the world outside the pod of its mother's bodies (our motherships).

It is also where our personal narratives begin.... our stories. And, if you're famous, it becomes a component of your name, your memetic signature, your identity... along with a host of personal numbers we juggle every day. Observe:

"Mac Tonnies (August 20, 1975 – October 18, Mac2009) was an American author and blogger whose writings explored futurology, transhumanism, cosmology, and paranormal topics, including UFO phenomena and nonhuman intelligence. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Tonnies gained recognition in fringe research circles for challenging extraterrestrial origin theories of UFOs through his cryptoterrestrial hypothesis, which posited that such sightings stem from advanced, indigenous humanoid species cohabiting Earth in concealed habitats, potentially underground or aquatics, rather than interstellar visitors."

The quote above was sourced from Grokipedia, an alternative to the first digital meme depository (Wikipedia) launched by Elon Musk late last year. It's been referred to as the right-wing version of Wikipedia. So, if you're a woman, non-white, non-binary, or, well, awake - be aware.

That being said, Mac's entry is not bad. It's also fairly long. If you can get past the "Fringe" label then you'll appreciate observations like this one:

"Renewed attention to Tonnies' cryptoterrestrial framework has paralleled U.S. government UAP disclosures, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's June 2021 preliminary assessment documenting 144 unexplained incidents from 2004–2021, many defying known aerodynamics. Subsequent 2023 congressional hearings featured testimony from intelligence official David Grusch alleging U.S. recovery of non-human craft and biologics, prompting calls for transparency that have elevated fringe hypotheses like Tonnies' to legitimate debate. These developments have framed Tonnies' rejection of interstellar origins as increasingly relevant, with commentators noting his emphasis on indigenous, deceptive intelligences aligns with patterns of UAP evasion and mimicry reported in official data."

Mac would've appreciated it. Moreover, the entry comes complete with many external links. Here's one: The Indigenous Aliens: Engaging with Mac Tonnies' Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis - Point of Convergence podcast, 2020)

I will note that none of the links will lead you to tribute blogs... not this one, nor to Macbots. I guess we're just too unofficial... too "fringe." We emerged from a more casual, less cynical, less commercial digital period. Then again, Sarah Multiverse and myself are both woman. So it goes. To be fair, Wikipedia is the same. (Although I will say, they have improved upon Mac's entry.)

Cultural memes come and go. But, then there are the cultural memes which stay. Cultural memes very often have human names... like Picasso, Freud, Einstein, Bugs Bunny... most often in reference to their accomplishments These memes, without fail, have both a history and a personal story. We can type the names into search engines. They will appear in Wikipedia - the first digital memetic field guide in existence - allowing for meme dissection and classification which, in our newly spawned virtual world, is crucial. Memepedias get us from point A to point B.

By the way, here's another memepedia listing Mac: Alchetron.

Lastly, because without it this birthday post would not be complete, Mac Tonnies has achieved what he may have never expected his meme is now included in the online Famous Birthday website. Congratulations, Mac, you've made it!

As always, Happy Birthday to Mac in the Multiverse! 🎈🎈🎈

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* An earlier view of the Tralfamadorians can be found in the pages of The Sirens of Titan. This Vonnegut quote was sourced from Goodreads:

"Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren’t anything like machines. They weren’t dependable. They weren’t efficient. They weren’t predictable. They weren’t durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn’t high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn’t really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, “Tralfamadore."

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(Remaining footnotes to come...)