One of the masters of speculative fiction, Kurt Vonnegut, passed away yesterday at 84.

I first encountered Vonnegut in the wonderful PBS movie, "Between Time and Timbuktu," which prompted me to go off and read the novels. While he never thought of himself as a "science fiction" writer, he did some of the best work in the field, precisely because he never stooped to the genre.

With his encyclopedic knowledge and his caustic eye for detail, he saw it all, and his stories tied it all together, the high and low, sad and comic, the tragic and the absurd. As his fictional religious leader, Bokonon, might be inspired to eulogize:

"Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen —
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice —
So many different people
In the same device."
 — Cat's Cradle

Though I never met him, a college buddy of mine was assigned to rent a car and drive him around when he spoke at Syracuse University, a year or so after I left. The story goes that Vonnegut was just as awesome and funny in person, but the stuff of local legend was what happened when my buddy dropped the writer at the airport on his way out of town. He gave my friend that trademark grin and said, "Keep the car a few days."

He was a master storyteller, a brilliant stylist, and a dark and savage humorist the likes of which we have not seen since Mark Twain. We'll miss him.

Read the NY Times obit