Book cover illustration and design for Kurt Vonnegut's collection of short stories "Welcome to the Monkey House". 

In the short story "Welcome to the Monkey House" a drug is developed by a chemist to make zoo monkeys numb from the waist down. The pious chemist was determined to rid the monkeys of "inappropriate behavior" after taking his family to the zoo on Easter Sunday, and witnessing a monkey touching himself. Later, due to world over population, the drug was made mandatory for all humans as a form of "ethical" birth control. The main character of the story, Billy the Poet, and others who refuse to take the drug are referred to as "nothing heads".

"Harrison Bergeron" is a story set in the not so distant future when under the law everyone is mandated to be equal in every way. Anyone who is smarter, stronger, or more attractive than the average person is forced to wear handicaps that eliminate their advantage. In today's environment this is a sensitive topic. I don't interpret this as an argument against equality, as ethnicity is not part of the story. It's more a warning about extremism, and giving too much power to authority who have no regulation.

"Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog" is about two old men who are strangers, sitting on a park bench in Florida. One man is trying to read a book, and the other won’t stop bragging about how many fortunes he made and lost over his lifetime. The man trying to read gets fed up, and makes up a tall tale about growing up next door to Thomas Edison, making the braggart look foolish in the end for having such a big mouth.

The idea behind this illustration is Hell on Earth, with the patriarch of the family "Gramps" being the ruler of hell.

The story is set in 2185 A.D., 102 years after the invention of a medicine called anti-gerasone, which halts the aging process and prevents people from dying of old age as long as they keep taking it. Anti-gerasone is cheap and plentiful, made from mud and dandelions. As a result, the world now suffers from severe overpopulation and shortages of food and resources. With the exception of the wealthy, most of the population survives on a diet of foods made from processed seaweed and sawdust.

The Schwartz family, headed by 172-year-old Harold ("Gramps"), inhabits a three-room apartment in New York City, which has grown so large due to overpopulation that it now spills into the state of Connecticut. Gramps' grandson Louis, his wife Emerald, and 20 other descendants are crowded into the space, perpetually jockeying for Gramps' favor. Gramps gets the best food and the only private bedroom, and controls everyone's life by constantly revising his will to disinherit anyone who earns his displeasure.