Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

A modern-day Mark Twain, right down to the bushy mustache and black humor, Kurt Vonnegut wrote dozens of satirical novels whose central theme is life's cosmic joke on humanity. Vonnegut was often called a science fiction author, but it's well known that he used the cloak of sci-fi simply as a means to deliver his cranky-but-funny deliberations on the human condition. His best-known books include Cat's Cradle (1963), Welcome to the Monkey House (1968), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Slapstick (1976). Many of his books featured a character named Kilgore Trout, a fictional author who is something of an alter-ego for Vonnegut himself. Vonnegut was the unwitting subject of a famous Internet hoax in 1997: a list of whimsical advice for college graduates was widely circulated via e-mail, identified as the text of a Vonnegut commencement address at MIT. In truth, Vonnegut had no connection with the essay, which was written by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich.

Extra credit: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s father was also named Kurt... Venus on the Half-Shell, a real-life 1975 novel "by" Kilgore Trout, was written not by Vonnegut but by Philip Jose Farmer.