The Big Space Fuck by Kurt Vonnegut

800 pounds of freeze-dried jizzum.

Life on earth sucks. The planet is dying, pollution and overpopulation are completely out of control. Volcanoes are literally coughing up garbage. People are banned form having kids and children can sue their parents for long-forgotten slights. Oh, don't forget the giant lampreys that have slithered onto land and can swallow you whole in a single chomp. So yeah, things aren’t great.

In response, humanity’s best and brightest respond in the most sensible way possible: they launch a rocket ship called the Arthur C. Clarke toward the Andromeda galaxy, stocked not with people, supplies, or culture, but with semen (referred to throughout as “jizzum”), in the vague hope that human life might somehow reboot itself elsewhere in the universe. It’s a ridiculous premise and completely hilarious. The Big Space Fuck by Kurt Vonnegut is pure comedy gold! It fires on all cylinders and is easily one of the funniest sci-fi short-stories I have ever read.

Science-fiction comedy is an underrated and often overlooked corner of the genre. Sci-fi already gets unfairly dismissed as not being “serious” literature, and once you add jokes into the mix, it becomes even more niche. A few names usually come up like Douglas Adams, Terry Bisson, John Scalzi, Andy Weir and of course, Kurt Vonnegut. It’s a surprisingly small pool, or maybe I just haven’t gone deep enough yet. Either way, Vonnegut stands out as one of the absolute best to ever blend speculative fiction with razor-sharp humor.

We all know that Vonnegut has a reputation as a very very funny writer but it’s how he’s funny that is worth exploring a bit more. His satire takes classic science-fiction ideas (space travel, humanity’s future, technological salvation) and twists them until they expose how ridiculous, selfish, and shortsighted people can be. The sci-fi trappings are really just a delivery system for his trademark dark humor and moral bite. He uses exaggerated scenarios, deadpan narration, and deliberately juvenile elements to highlight how little humanity seems to learn, even at the end of the world. The result is comedy that’s playful on the surface but also scathingly critical underneath.

The story never takes itself too seriously though, which is part of its charm. It’s goofy and gleefully irreverent, all at once. I found myself chuckling throughout and even laughing out loud a few times, which doesn’t happen often. The hilarious ending was totally unexpected in a good way, chef's kiss. Vonnegut remains one of the great 20th-century satirists, and The Big Space Fuck is a compact and thoroughly delightful reminder of why his voice still feels so fresh. From start to finish, it’s absurdly entertaining.