When it comes to popular fiction, it's a general rule that spoilers are bad. At any given point, anything within the logical constraints of the universe should be able to happen. A twenty-first-century novelist would be considered in poor taste to write a book in such a way that the readers know exactly what's going to happen.
These were the ideas that had long since been implanted in my subconscious when I opened Slaughterhouse-Five and read Chapter 1, which closed by revealing the last line of the book. Now, granted, said last line was "Poo-tee-weet?" which doesn't really reveal anything about the storyline, but that line told me right away that Kurt Vonnegut would not be following conventions with this book.
And Slaughterhouse-Five did in fact break that no-spoiler rule quite a lot, thanks to its Tralfamadorian influences. We jump around time with Billy, finding out the fates of characters and then returning to before they had met said fate. Almost every time that Edgar Derby is mentioned, Vonnegut reminds us that he's "doomed." Whatever he does, readers think "Oh, yeah, he's the guy that's going to get executed for stealing a teapot." On an opposite note, after Billy's death scene, there can be no doubt that Paul Lazarro will survive the war. No matter what happens, he has to live in order to murder Billy in 1976.
Similar issues arise in Kindred. Our knowledge of the state of Kindred's world in 1976 gives us insight into certain events that must transpire in the nineteenth century. Obviously, the existence of Dana, as well as the information written in her family Bible, tells us that Rufus and Alice must produce a child named Hagar, who must herself live long enough to have children of her own. On a subtler note, the Bible also reveals the future of the relationship between Rufus and Alice: "Grandmother Hagar. Hagar Weylin, born in 1831. Hers was the first name listed. And she had given her parents' names as Rufus Weylin and Alice Green-something Weylin" (28). At some point, Alice evidently feels comfortable enough with Rufus to adopt his surname, relegating "Greenwood" to her middle name.
But let's go back to the idea of "spoilers" itself. Is it always applicable? Well, you can't spoil history. Nobody is going to to respond to a mention of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln with "Oh, come on; I hadn't made it to 1865 yet!" Mythology is in the same situation. The next step would probably be really old literature. Most people agree that it's OK to blurt out "Romeo and Juliet die in the end!" because it "spoils" something that's over 400 years old and that's ingrained very firmly in popular culture (in actuality, it's not a spoiler because the first page of the play reveals that they're going to die). Some people argue that it's OK to spoil the huge plot twist at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince because, even though the book was published less than a decade ago, it's become so popular that few people don't already know what happens. I myself have gotten into multiple arguments about whether or not the big reveal near the end of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is "exempt from spoilers." Sure, it's the most critically-acclaimed video game of all time, and millions of people have played it, but I maintain that its events should still be treated as potential spoilers. Although the game came out in 1998, I didn't play it until 2011. I hadn't known about the big reveal, and I'm glad that I didn't (even though I totally saw it coming), so I believe that it should not be revealed for the sake of those who waited even longer than I to play it.
In general, the concept of a spoiler is difficult to pin down, which makes it difficult for writers to avoid it. Was Butler's reveal of the eventual change of Alice's surname intentional or not? Maybe it was, but the fact remains that stories that play withe remain particularly vulnerable to spoilers. Of course, there are always authors like Vonnegut who just decide to toy with that fact by revealing the book's last line in the very first chapter.
The whole idea of a "spoiler" in historical fiction gets a little complicated, when the novelist is dealing with real-life events. (Maybe Butler achieves this same effect by giving *us* her story's ending at the start.) In _Libra_, for example, we all know where this plot is going--I'm not spoiling anything by saying that Kennedy ends up getting shot on November 22, 1963. But *how* that happens is what's important--it's the familiar storyline infused with new meaning and implications that motivates our reading. Likewise, with _Slaughterhouse-Five_, we know now only that Dresden is going to be bombed, Vonnegut also risks "spoiling" his own plot by setting out the climax, and the first and last lines. But in the Tralfamadorian mode, plot and its outcomes are not the most important thing moving us forward as we read.
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