Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922-April 11, 2007) was born to a once wealthy and prestigious family in Indianapolis, Indiana. The family fortune dwindled during the advent of the Great Depression, but Vonnegut was able to enroll at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, after high school as a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). Much of the critical attention given to Vonnegut’s writing career notes his subjects are often war-related and his pieces often present an anti-war sentiment. This is not surprising given the fact that Vonnegut, after losing his place in Cornell’s ROTC program because of subpar academic performance, enlisted in the Army in March of 1943 instead of waiting to be drafted into the World War II military effort.

The United States had entered World War II after Japan’s 1941 attack on the US Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Shortly after enlisting, the Army trained Vonnegut in mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and at the Army Specialized Training Program at the University of Tennessee. This training placed him in close proximity to a part of the military beginning to consider the uses of computer-type technology as part of its strategic planning practices. Vonnegut would ultimately be deployed to fight in Germany as an intelligence scout.