According to the NY Times, Kurt Vonnegut died this week at 84. There was nothing like it when I discovered " The Sirens of Titan,” a science-fiction novel featuring the Church of God of the Utterly Indifferent in the library when I was 13 (except for the discovery, a few weeks later, of Heinlein's " A Stranger in a Stranger Land.")

Vonnegut's darkly comic, wildly satiric novels were just the thing for a young dorky teen in a close-in suburb, giving me tools to laugh, mock and understand the status quo--and the emerging counter culture.

Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut. So it goes.