If Billy Pilgrim being “unstuck in time,” ping-ponging from Dresden to Tralfamadore, hooked you, you’ll love how Cloud Atlas braids six stories that leap centuries and genres. Like the way Vonnegut drops you from the firebombing to a zoo-dome with Montana Wildhack and back again, Mitchell splices narratives so each piece refracts the others—making those “so it goes” moments resonate across lifetimes.

Billy’s uncontrollable jumps—from the POW boxcar to Tralfamadore—turn time into a trap. Kindred makes that trap visceral: Dana is yanked from 1976 Los Angeles to an antebellum Maryland plantation whenever her ancestor’s life is at stake. As with Billy watching the Dresden ruins in reverse, Butler uses the dislocation of time travel to force hard reckonings about fate, responsibility, and survival.

If Vonnegut’s deadpan—“So it goes”—made you laugh-cry through Billy’s march into Dresden and the Tralfamadorian terrarium, Catch-22 hits the same nerve. Yossarian crawls through missions as nonsensical as Roland Weary’s glory fantasies, sparring with officers who’d sell out anyone for a promotion. The jokes are razor-sharp and gutting, much like the way Edgar Derby’s execution lands amidst the absurdity.

Tralfamadorian fatalism—seeing all moments at once, shrugging “so it goes”—has a spiritual sibling in The Sirens of Titan. As Malachi Constant is swept from Earth to Mars to Titan, he learns his grand life might serve a trivial message delivery, echoing Billy Pilgrim’s sense that his capture, the bombing of Dresden, and even his glass-dome life with Montana Wildhack were pre-scripted by forces beyond him.

If the Tralfamadorians’ view of time—and Billy’s serene acceptance of every moment—stuck with you, Einstein’s Dreams offers thirty brief “what if” worlds where time behaves differently. Each vignette invites the kind of quiet reflection you might have felt after the Dresden scenes or Billy’s zoo conversations: What changes if time loops, freezes, splinters, or ends? What remains of choice, love, and grief?