Awards. ''Between Time & Timbuktu'' received a 1973 Hugo Award nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation.

How Can You See 'Between Time' for Yourself? If you find yourself in Los Angeles or New York, you can arrange a viewing at the Museum of Television and Radio.

or Prometheus-5:
a Space Fantasy
1971

from the printed screenplay's preface © 1972
KURT VONNEGUT: ''This book is said to have been written by me. And I did write it, too, pretty much -- over the past twenty-two years. But it would never have occurred to me to put my words in this particular order. That vision was received by some friendly people at National Educational Television in New York and at WGBH in Boston. With my permission, they took unrelated incidents from several of my stories, and they tacked them together to form a rough draft of a script for a ninety-minute TV show.

''I was reminded of the bizarre surgical experiments performed in the H.G. Wells tale The Island of Dr. Moreau. Dr. Moreau cut up all sorts of animals -- and he assembled grotesque new creatures from the parts.

''I began to fool around with the script myself. I grafted the head of a box turtle onto the neck of a giraffe, so to speak -- and so on. Amazingly, chillingly, hilariously, the impossible creature lived for a little while. It was clumsy, funny-looking, and almost pathetically eager to please.

''It had a soul, too, which was mainly supplied by an extraordinarily gifted actor my own age, William Hickey. Bill, played the part of the reluctant astronaut, Stony Stevenson. Since Stony was not a strongly motivated character, and since we weren't sure what he was supposed to represent anyway, we asked Bill to be himself. He demonstrated that Bill as Bill, adrift in time and space, was an enchanting human being.

''Hello, Bill.''

''My father loved the music of Kurt Weill, and he said one time, admiringly, that the music sounded as though it were written by an inspired amateur. My father was a professional architect. I think he came to resent the neatness and tightness and slickness which his professionalism (and his clients) imposed on his designs. He could never be slapdash and childish or passionately crude. He could never do what inspired amateurs did, which, among other things, was to leave a lot to Lady Luck.''

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PBS BROADCAST:  Between Time & Timbuktu  ·  Vonnegut's Preface RELATED SECTIONS: Archives · Complete Writings · Dramatic Works HARRISON BERGERON VIDEO: CNN Feature

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