Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Bell Curse | 2013 | Kevin G. Summers | N/A |
| 2 | The World of Kurt Vonnegut | 2013 | Kevin G. Summers | Buy |
| 3 | Peace in Amber | 2014 | Kevin G. Summers | Buy |
| 4 | As Much Protein as an Egg | 2014 | Kevin G. Summers | Buy |
| 5 | Children’s Crusade | 2014 | Kevin G. Summers | N/A |
| 6 | Newt and Zinka’s Wild, Wild Week OR How the K.G.B. Got Ice-Nine | 2014 | Kevin G. Summers | N/A |
Amazon’s Kindle Worlds program, which ran from 2013 until its closure, licensed the estates and publishers of various authors to allow fan writers to publish paid fiction set in those authors’ worlds. The Kurt Vonnegut estate participated, and Summers was among the first writers to contribute, with “The Bell Curse” the very first title published under the World of Kurt Vonnegut imprint.
The stories feature characters from Vonnegut’s novels, most notably Kilgore Trout, the hapless, perpetually unpublished science fiction writer who appears across much of Vonnegut’s work. Summers wrote six entries in the series across 2013 and 2014, more than almost any other contributor. Reviewers noted that his work captured Vonnegut’s tone well, the semi-folksy first-person style with its dark undercurrent and affection for losers, which is not easy to replicate.
The platform closing means these stories have effectively gone out of print, which is a shame given how much care went into them. For readers who collect Vonnegut-adjacent fiction or are curious about how writers engage with his world, the titles are worth seeking out in whatever form is available.