Philip Jose Farmer's 'Venus on the Half-Shell'

Lately I’ve been reading some older science fiction novels that I’ve had on the ‘to read’ pile for a while. After Arthur C. Clarke’s excellent The City and the Stars I dove into Philip Jose Farmer’s comic novel Venus on the Half-Shell. Written as if it was a novel penned by the fictional Kilgore Trout (who was created by Kurt Vonnegut) it is very funny and becomes more amusing the more you know about the machine-gun speed references Farmer packs the story with. I’ll finish it up in the next couple of days as time permits, but it is so much fun I kind of want to just sit and laugh my way through it right now!

 

I’ve paused reading because one humorous detail in the story keeps popping back into my head and making me giggle. The protagonist Simon Wagstaff (yes, that is a penis joke) has found a one man escape spacecraft and he relates that it was built by Titanic & Icarus Spaceship Company, Inc. He notes that name does not inspire confidence.

 

It’s not the funniest moment so far but my brain keeps circling back to it and making me smile. Sometimes it’s the smaller bits that stick the longest.