Today I've been putting my books up on the shelves by author in alphabetical order and I found Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout, a book I bought in the late 1970's in paperback. Reading it I remember thinking, well, this sounds like Kurt Vonnegut, by gosh, and, yes, well Kilgore Trout was the Vonnegut character in Cat's Cradle! I think. I can't remember and I can't find the book to check until I've finished the alphabetical restacking.

Finding this book jogged the memory loss thoughts and led to this entry. The story as I heard it later was that the writer (who's name I forget, what else?) had pestered Vonnegut to let him use the name Kilgore Trout as a pseudonym for his book and Vonnegut had lived to regret the day he gave permission as every interviewer thereafter began with "why did you write this wonderful book using your character as a pseudonym" in a kind of "what a great idea, what a great book" tone. Vonnegut was not amused.

Not only do I forget the author's real name, but I forget if the book was written before or after Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which was published the same year, I believe, in 1974. This means I'm going to have to read Venus on the Half-Shell again to see why I've been confusing these two. The main character of the book is The Space Wanderer,"a man without a planet who has gained immortality from an elixir drunk during a sexual interlude with an alien queen in heat..., a pretty nice guy whose only fault is that he asks questions that no one can answer; primarily, Why are we created only to suffer and die?"

To taste the cheese, what else?

Piffle and poof, you say. Who cares if you forget things like that? (The cousin's names, yes, the cousin's names are always a problem.) Well, an example: Recently we hired a new contractor in our group who's name is Shiela. Well, actually not, her name is Sheila with an "ei" and there's a difference. There are Shielas in this world who spell their names with "ie" and the difference is (taught to me many years ago, your mother may have mentioned it too) that one spelling is the benign everything is OK spelling and the other is the secret "the one evil woman whom all should know" spelling that means run, dear god, run as fast as you can and then run some more.

The story is simple enough, a genetic thing, really, a kind of personal radiation that first affects the parents, causing them to write "Sheila" or is it "Shiela" on the hospital form. All myth, all fears of the dark and the storm come through "Shiela" (or "Sheila") and it is good to know, woman or man, which is which. I don't remember. I can't seem to recall. That's what I mean by memory loss.