About the Story: Vonnegut sold two stories to Horace Gold, the editor of GALAXY magazine, early in his and the magazine's career; this characteristic absurd employment of common themes was the first of them, published in the April 1953 GALAXY. Vonnegut's absolute familiarity with science fiction tropes and his mocking contempt for them are well displayed in a story which shifts between tragic cartoon and straightforward projection. His highly evolved humans in an indeterminate future have become body-transcending spirits and Vonnegut handles this vaporous situation with deadpan comedy suspended over unspeakable loss, a characteristic technique. In its fluidity - the story is parody masked as extrapolation; no, it is a horror story in the form of a parody. This kind of cross-category narrative attack was often used by Vonnegut and makes him difficult to label; he is too serious to be funny, too absurd (as in jailbreak or as in the concept of Billy Pilgrim's alien Tralmalfadorians) to be taken as realism. Vonnegut when he wrote this story at 30 was still trying to find his voice, identify his material; as a laboratory of his enveloping subject matter and technique UNREADY TO WEAR is particularly interesting and disturbing, demonstrating that Vonnegut could have gone in any number of directions and perhaps by deliberately failing to make a decision, found his voice through indeterminacy. It is as a poet of indeterminacy then that Vonnegut went on to write his most famous novel, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE.

About the Author: Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was a science fiction writer who in the early 50's disentangled himself from identification with the genre as quickly as possible and became identified as a writer of satirical mainstream fiction...although his work was always based upon the recycling of familiar science fiction elements toward grim and comic social commentary. His early novels, PLAYER PIANO and THE SIRENS OF TITAN among them, were recognized and embraced by the science fiction community while being published outside of it. He struggled for mainstream recognition and finally obtained it in 1969 with SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, his famous and partially autobiographical novel centered on the bombing of Dresden. That novel appealed to the same audience and was as famous as Joseph Heller's CATCH-22 and like the Heller novel made a cult writer of its author and has remained influential for almost half a century. Vonnegut became the guru and voice of the generation coming to adulthood during the period of the Vietnam War and SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE was considered the best and truest evocation of the actual circumstances of World War II. The entirety of Vonnegut's canon remains in print and is read consistently and appreciatively.

About The Galaxy Project: Horace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction's most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.

The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today's best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.