The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

A slice-of-novel, appropriate to the moment, from Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965):

“The only people who could get work had three or more PhDs. There was a serious overpopulation problem, too.

“All serious diseases had been conquered. So death was voluntary, and the government, to encourage volunteers for death, set up a purple-roofed Ethical Suicide Parlor at every major intersection, right next door to an orange-roofed Howard Johnson’s. There were pretty hostesses in the parlor, and Barca-Loungers, and Muzak, and a choice of fourteen painless ways to die. . . .

“The suicides also got free last meals next door.

“One of the characters asked a death stewardess if he would go to Heaven, and she told him that of course he would. He asked if he would see God, and she said, ‘Certainly, honey.’

“And he said, ‘I sure hope so. I want to ask Him something I never was able to find out down here.’

“ ‘What’s that?’ she said, strapping him in.”

“What in hell are people for?”

Russell Baker answers the question—or maybe asks it. Baker, the sharp-eyed, sharp-witted author of The New York Times’ Washington “Observer” column, keeps a sharp tongue firmly tucked in cheek.