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Notes -
Having read this for the first time around 10 years ago in my late 20s or early 30s, I generally agree. However, I must admit that I don't recall the book making an anti-war statement, powerful or not. I listened to the audiobook of All Quiet on the Western Front after I read Slaughterhouse Five, but looking back, the latter book reminded me a lot of the former, in describing the horrors of war in basic, matter-of-fact ways, i.e. the famous "so it goes."
I'll also add that, the scifi film Arrival came out while I was close to finishing the book, and it was kinda surreal watching that film and realizing in-the-moment that the core scifi concept was pulled directly from that book.
I'm not sure if all editions of Slaughterhouse-Five include Vonnegut's preface in which he describes a meeting he had with a Hollywood person who scoffed when Vonnegut told him he was writing an anti-war novel, telling him that he might as well write an anti-glacier novel. In light of that preface, my read ofhow the Tralfamadorians perceive time is that it's Vonnegut's critique of a particular kind of fatalism which sees war and conflict as inevitable and inexorable. If the Tralfamadorian mindset (that it's pointless to try to change the future, because it's predetermined) seems alien to us, then that is intended to shock us into a realisation about war and conflict in our world.
Arrival is a direct adaptation of Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life". I love Ted Chiang, but this is one case where I think the adaptation is marginally superior to its source material. Villeneuve and his screenwriter are to be commended, not just for adapting a short story which is aggressively uncinematic and cerebral, but for doing so faithfully and in a way which is engaging throughout. I'd be curious to know if Chiang has ever read Slaughterhouse-Five.
Of course, the concept behind both these books could have been come up with independently by both authors, but given the time periods, the extreme similarities, and Vonnegut's stature, it would be truly shocking to me if Chiang had never read Slaughterhouse Five, or at least a summary of it. It'd be like some prominent author writing a successful story about a prince whose father is murdered by his uncle deciding to orchestrate a revenge plot never having read Hamlet by Shakespeare or a summary of it.
The Lion King is old enough that there could well be adults who've been inspired by it without knowing the work that inspired it!
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