Virtually ignored at the beginning of his writing career, is now lauded as one of the most respected novelists. One year after quitting GE to begin writing, Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, and seven years later his second, The Sirens of Titan. These first two works of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. were initially categorized as science fiction, however Vonnegut’s books go far beyond the realm of most pure sci-fi. Ernest W. Ranly explains in Commonwealth:

Vonnegut’s time in Indianapolis schools not only helped instill a sense of ideals and pacifism in him, but it also got him on his was to a writing career. While attending Shortridge High School from 1936 to 1940, Vonnegut during his junior and senior years edited the Tuesday edition of the school’s daily newspaper, The Shortridge High School Echo (2,4). His duties with the newspaper, then one of the few daily high school newspapers in the country, offered Vonnegut a unique opportunity to write for a large audience of fellow students. Vonnegut noted that, “…just turned out I could write better than a lot of other people. Each person has something he can do easily and can’t understand why everybody else has so much trouble doing it,” in this case writing. After graduation from Shortridge High School, Vonnegut attended Cornell University where he majored in biochemistry and biology (3,1). Kurt had called Cornell a “boozy dream” due to the alcohol he imbibed; however he found success outside of the classroom working for the Cornell Daily Sun (2,5). After attending Cornell University, he enlisted in the United States army serving in WWII (4,1). Kurt was somewhat delighted to join the war since he was flunking everything by the middle of his junior year (2). He has first been rejected for health reasons, but was later selected and placed into the Specialized Training Program, sending him to study mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and at the University of Tennessee (2,6). Vonnegut ended up as

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