Prologue, Chapters 1-5 Summary

The author opens the book with a prologue that explains how he took a novel that had not come together very well and cut out all the bad pieces. He compares it to filleting a fish, so only the good meat is presented. The science fiction premise is that the universe stops expanding for a decade, and this causes a timequake. Everybody suddenly finds themselves ten years back to the day, and everybody has to repeat the decade exactly as it happened the first time. The author also explains that Kilgore Trout, a character who often appears in his other novels, is actually the author's alter-ego. Trout also writes science fiction and comes up with the outrageous observations and sayings with which the author might feel uncomfortable.

In Chapter 1, the author expounds on the way people are toward living...