Between Time and Timbuktu

Plot

A young poet named Stony Stevenson, who still lives at home with his mother, finds out on live TV that he has won a jingle contest for Blast-Off Space Food. The grand prize is a ride on the Prometheus-5 rocket straight into the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum. TV reporter Walter Gesundheit and former astronaut Bud Williams, Jr. say Stevenson was picked because a poet might be the only one who can put the time warp into words, since it could explain everything in creation.

Williams, Jr. admits he once struggled to describe Mars, calling it just like his own driveway. On the island of San Lorenzo, Stevenson meets Bokonon, a cult leader who gives his followers comforting lies because their real lives are too harsh. He later sits on a jury at the trial of Dr. Paul Proteus, who is charged with fighting against technology and industry. He then ends up with Dr. Hoenikker and a General talking about Ice Nine, a substance that could freeze all water on a battlefield so soldiers never have to slog through mud.

In another place, no one is allowed to be better than anyone else. He watches dancers weighed down by handicaps struggling through a ballet until Harrison Bergeron rebels, stripping the weights off himself and his partner to dance freely. He visits an Ethical Suicide Parlor in a crowded world and meets Lionel J. Howard, who wants one answer before he dies: what are people for? Finally, he catches a ride on a fire truck with a girl named Wanda June, who was hit by an ice-cream truck before her birthday party, and faces his own death.