Synopsis: From the flaps of the Putnam first edition: "Futurology! Kurt Vonnegut caps his mind-bending career of unconventional attitudes and fiction and lectures with this new book. While written in straightforward English, Timequake is a literary for such as the world has never seen before. It has to be. The three protagonists are the author, and the underappreciated, long-out-of-print science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, who is the author's second self, and a seriously dysfunctional universe. On February 13th, 2001, according to Vonnegut, the universe will tire momentarily of expanding forever. What's the point? Maybe it would be more fun to shrink for a change, and have a reunion of all the stuff back where it began. Then it could make a big BANG again. It will shrink back to February 17th, 1991, but will then decide that expansion is the way to go, after all. As time marches on once more to 2001, though, Vonnegut and Trout and everyone else and everything else will have to do exactly what they did the first time through the decade, for good or ill: marry the wrong person, bet on the wrong horse. Whatever! Ten years of deja vu all over again! At least ten years of deja vu will doesn't cause physical injury and property damage. But all hell breaks loose when the rerun is over and free will kicks in again. Everybody is so used to being a robot of the past that almost nobody if prepared to think of new things to do and then do them, in order to avoid accidents or whatever. Off-balance pedestrians will fall down and not get back up. Unsteered motor vehicles will slay them by the millions. Factory workers will allow themselves to be gobbled up by their own machinery! Hero of the moment? Kilgore Trout! Not for everybody. Parental guidance suggested."