I cherish this book, as well at the PBS special it's based on. I'll bet I watched the latter at least two dozen times.

Except for Vonnegut's introduction, this is pretty bad. I saw the teleplay with my father on Chicago's public television station, WTTW, in 1972 or thereabouts, then read the published screenplay while travelling by rail from Chicago to Michigan City, Indiana just over a week ago. The show worked at the time, the transcript of it doesn't except as a reminder of the original program and that only "worked" because it is virtually all taken, hodge-podge, from Vonnegut's beloved novels.

Bizarre and unsatisfactory – but I’m keen to read more of Vonnegut’s work.

A very quick read given that it was a script. An interesting compilation of Vonnegut characters and fun to see familiar faces and stories, but I’m not sure it would translate to an audience not familiar with Vonnegut.

A screenplay for a 1972 US TV production with copious stills from the show, hence the speed at which I read this (less than 24 hours)
Although Vonnegut's name is on this he wasn't the scriptwriter and it shows. Its a cobbling together of characters and scenarios from various of his novels without any common theme. Disappointing

KV picture book, fun

The show may be better. I don't think they captured the humor in the book.

"The only way you can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around."

Actually a script, but whatever.

A mildly diverting curiosity solely for Vonnegut completists. Hello there!

The foreword by Vonnegut knocked my socks off and over-set my expectations. I don’t know if I agree with Vonnegut’s note that Lady Luck was kind to the scriptwriters and production. Don’t get me wrong, the photographs are delightful and add a fun texture to Vonengut’s writing that doesn’t exist in his other works. It’s not horrible, but it’s a watered-down mix of all his hits, almost as if you asked AI to make a Vonnegut screenplay. I wish they had more notes about the writing table or general process, but so it goes. It’s pleasant, more than a net neutral after reading, and a cool collector-ish item, but not something I would really recommend to anyone but a die-hard Vonnegut fan. (please don’t see this as Vonnegut slander, I love the man. this is just the La Croix of his writing)

The unquestionable bottom of the Vonnegut barrel, this television screenplay cobbles together fragments of several novels and short stories to no evident purpose. To be fair, Vonnegut distances himself from this work by stating up front that: "The first draft of the script, most of which survived, was by David O'Dell." Despite this, Vonnegut's name, not Mr. O'Dell's, graces the cover, so Vonnegut must ultimately be held responsible for this train wreck. Two facts are telling: First, this book has never been re-issued to my knowledge. Second, the finished product has never (again to my knowledge) been rebroadcast or made available on home video. If "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" had been a misstep, this was an unmitigated disaster which only served to trivialize the powerful novels and stories from which its contents were unceremoniously torn.

What was going on here? It seems likely that Vonnegut was experiencing creative exhaustion and that this was a way to both tread water and to cash in on the enormous success he had garnered in the prior decade. But whereas the film version of "Slaughterhouse-Five" was handled with great care, suggesting that another such film adaptation might have been a better choice, "Between Time and Timbuktu" comes across as slapdash and careless. To take but one example, by boiling Bokononism (drawn from "Cat's Cradle") down to a few short pages of script, what had been intriguing, when taken in the context of a full novel, becomes ludicrous and impotent when reduced to a synopsis.

This was a painful embarrassment. And Vonnegut seems to have learned his lesson: He soon returned to writing novels.