Anticipating the invention of chat LLMs nearly 40 years before their commercial proliferation, Kurt Vonnegut gave us “Mandarax” in his 1985 novel, Galápagos.

“It had eight new French fighter-bombers and each of these planes, moreover, was equipped with an American air-to-ground missile with a Japanese brain which could home in on radar signals, or on heat from an engine, depending on instructions from the pilot.“ Galápagos (1985) 1/4

“I was impressed. I realized that nations could never acknowledge their own wars as tragedies, but that families not only could but had to. Bully for them!” Slapstick (1976) 6/6

“But then, just when everything was going so well — when Americans were happier than they had ever been, even though the country was bankrupt and falling apart — people began to die by the millions. . . And that was the end of the Nation. It became families, and nothing more.” Slapstick (1974) 1/5

“[He] described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don't want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more. Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives and needles and razorblades.” (S5)

“She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.” Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

“I find myself thinking even now that the story of Sacco and Vanzetti may yet enter the bones of future generations. Perhaps it needs to be told only a few more times. . .” Jailbird (1979) (1/9)

"’I should want to go to jail?’ said Paul, trying to get some sort of message for himself out of the anecdote. ‘You shouldn't let fear of jail keep you from doing what you believe in.’”

“The only Martian military success was the capture of a meat market in Basel, Switzerland, by seventeen Parachute Ski Marines. Everywhere else the Martians were butchered promptly, before they could even dig in. As much butchering was done by amateurs as by professionals.” 1/

“He was laughing at the ferocious mess he was in—at the way he had pretended all his army life that he had understood everything that was going on, and that everything that was going on was just fine. He was laughing at the dumb way he had let himself be used—by God knows who for God knows what.” 1/

“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled ‘science fiction’ ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal. The way a person gets into this drawer, apparently, is to notice technology.” Science Fiction (1974)

“Midland City has now been depopulated by a neutron bomb explosion. It might have been a bigger story, a signal for the start of World War Three, if the Government hadn't acknowledged at once that the bomb was made in America. One newscast I heard called it *a friendly bomb.*. . .” (1/5)

"’That's worse. You're a Fascist, Wilbur. That's what you are.’ ‘That's absurd,’ I said. ‘Fascists are inferior people who believe it when somebody tells them they're superior,’ she said. ‘Now, now—‘ I said. ‘Then they want everybody else to die,’ she said.” Slapstick (1976)

“He predicted, I remember, that human slavery would come back, that it had in fact never gone away. He said that so many people wanted to come here because it was so easy to rob the poor people, who got absolutely no protection from the Government. . .” (1/4)

“[S]imply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work . . .” Bluebeard (1987)

“Another thing the Elders liked about Earthlings was that they feared and hated other Earthlings who did not look and talk exactly as they did. They made life a hell for each other as wellas for what they called ‘lower animals.’ They actually thought of strangers as lower animals.“ 1/2

“If I'd wasted time creating characters, I would never have gotten around to calling attention to things that really matter: irresistible forces in nature, and cruel inventions, and cockamamie ideals and governments and economies that make heroes and heroines feel like something the cat drug in.”1/2

“[1970] gave me a job in the Nixon White House. [1975] sent me to prison for my own preposterous contributions to the American political scandals known collectively as *Watergate*. Three years ago, as I write, [1977] was about to turn me loose again. I felt like a piece of garbage.” Jailbird (1979)

"It's all right," she said. "You couldn't help it that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed—so you were a good man just the same." Jailbird (1979)

“The novel was about the end of the world in the year 2000. It told of how mad scientists made a terrific bomb that wiped out the whole world. There was a big sex orgy when everybody knew that the world was going to end, and then Jesus Christ Himself appeared ten seconds before the bomb went off.”

“There was a small riot going on in the park adjacent to the United Nations, only three blocks away. Out-of-work white youths armed with baseball bats were braining men they thought were homosexuals. They threw one of them into the East River, who turned out to be the finance minister of Sri Lanka.”

“How could he amount to anything if he did not use loaded dice? How has he used loaded dice with you? The laws that say he can fire anybody who stands up for the rights of workers—those are loaded dice. The policemen who protect his property rights but not your human rights—those are loaded dice."

“On this particular planet, where money mattered more than anything, the nicest person imaginable might suddenly get the idea of wringing her neck so that their loved ones might live in comfort. It would be the work of the moment— and easily forgotten as the years went by. Time flies.” Jailbird ‘79

“. . .‘At least we still have freedom of speech,’ I said. And she said, ‘That isn't something somebody else gives you. That's something you have to give yourself.’” Hocus Pocus (1990)

“My idealism did not die even in the Nixon White House, did not die even in prison, did not die even when I became, my most recent employment, a vice-president of the Records Division of RAMJAC Corporation. I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”

". . . “Anyway, Thoreau was in jail because he wouldn't pay a tax to support the Mexican War. He didn't believe in the war. And Emerson came to jail to see him. 'Henry,' he said, 'why are you here?' And Thoreau said, 'Ralph, why *aren't* you here?’”. . .” Player Piano (1952)

"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia." The Sirens of Titan (1959)

“I call that being a teacher. I don't call that being a mastermind of a treasonous enterprise. All I ever wanted to overthrow was ignorance and self-serving fantasies.” Hocus Pocus (1990)

The man who got me fired was Jason Wilder, the celebrated Conservative newspaper columnist, lecturer, and television talk show host . . . Wilder had promised to denounce the college in his column and on his TV show if the Trustees did not fire me. So they dared not come to my assistance. HP (1990)

"We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true. "I give you a holy word: DISARM." Deadeye Dick (1982)

"The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings," said Paul, "not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems." Player Piano (1952)

“The therapist, after a deeply upsetting investigation of normality at this time and place, was bound to conclude that a normal person, functioning well on the upper levels of a prosperous, industrialized society, can hardly hear his conscience at all.” God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

“He coined a new word for Sylvia's disease, ‘Samaritrophia,’ which he said meant, ‘hysterical indifference to the troubles of those less fortunate than oneself.’ . . .” God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

“Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti.” Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

“. . . its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves— and yet it described no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong. . .” Slapstick (1976)

". . . Hell, everybody used to have some personal skill or willingness to work or something he could trade for what he wanted. Now that the machines have taken over, it's quite somebody who has anything to offer. All most people can do is hope to be given something." Player Piano (1952)

“. . . What I'm telling you now is: This world is full of suffering, and money can do a lot to relieve that suffering, and I have far more money than I can use. I want to buy decent food and clothing and housing for the poor, and right away. . .” God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

". . . My point was, and maybe I can make it today without having to finish that book, that workers in the field of mental health at various times in different parts of the world must find themselves asked to make healthy people happier in cultures and societies which have gone insane.” (1988)

"’. . .a man can obey every law and still be the worst criminal of his time.’ . . . ‘You are yet another nincompoop, who, by being at the wrong place at the wrong time,’ he said, ‘was able to set humanitarianism back a full century! Begone!’” Jailbird (1979)

“‘My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die. ‘There is evil for you.’” Deadeye Dick (1982)

“‘Oh, I have what a lot of people would probably call communistic thoughts," said Eliot artlessly, ‘but, for heaven's sakes, Father, nobody can work with the poor and not fall over Karl Marx from time to time—or just fall over the Bible, as far as that goes.’” God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

“And it was [AI] who would decide for the coming years how many engineers and managers and research men and civil servants, and of what skills, would be needed in order to deliver the goods; and what IQ and aptitude levels would separate the useful men from the useless ones…” Player Piano (1952)

Question: What is the white stuff in bird poop? Answer: That is bird poop, too. Timequake (1997)

“He never said he wanted kids. That could be a clue that he did know about his crazy relatives in Peru, after all. But I don't believe that. He was against everybody's reproducing, since human beings were, in his own words, ‘about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.’” (HP 1990)

“…Without imaginations, though, they couldn't do what their ancestors had done, which was read interesting, heartwarming stories in the faces of one another. So, according to Kilgore Trout, ‘Booboolings became among the most merciless creatures in the local family of galaxies.’” Timequake (1997)

“Father and Mother used to tell me much the same thing. They, too, were made to feel like fools who had somehow gone to great pains to deliver themselves to a slaughterhouse.” Jailbird (1979)

“. . . And the Law of Natural Selection was powerless to respond to such new technologies. No female of any species, unless, maybe, she was a rhinoceros, could expect to give birth to a baby who was fireproof, bombproof, or bulletproof.” Galápagos (1985)

". . .’History is merely a list of surprises,’ I said. ‘It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.’” Slapstick (1976)

“It was such a comically trite historical situation, I thought. Aside from battles, the history of nations seemed to consist of nothing but powerless old poops like myself, heavily medicated and vaguely beloved in the long ago, coming to kiss the boots of young psychopaths.” Slapstick (1976)

‘"Don't ever forget one thing," he said. "No matter what this country does to you, it is still the greatest country in the world. Can you remember that?"’ Jailbird (1979)