While a young PR man at General Electric, KURT VONNEGUT (1922-2007) sold his first short story to one of the many literary publications that were thriving then. By the time he'd sold his third, Vonnegut quit GE to join the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner to write short stories at fifteen-hundred dollars a piece, before his first novel, Player Piano, launched his remarkable career as a countercultural novelist.