The Sirens of Titan
Ratings301
Average rating4
Only a few pages into this Sci Fi satire is an excerpt from the fourteenth edition of A Child's Cyclopedia of Wonders and Things to Do. Was Douglas Adams influenced by Kurt Vonnegut Jr I asked myself? A very quick internet search said yes, with specific reference to this specific title. Well done Kurt, I thought to myself. In my a long time ago readings of both authors, I had never noticed. But then my youthful readings may have been wasted on me in some cases. And though I did not read this one in my youth, I know it would have been “just” a Sci Fi read with little understanding of its concepts.
As a now ancient person this was for me this was a fantastic read that I took as comment on the lack of an interventionist god, the intervention of others in one's life on the other hand? There is plenty of that.
The plot I found is rather convoluted but came together beautifully at the end. The point of the story simplistically is that a super-rich man thanks the lord above for his constant luck but gets his comeuppance, (or does he?) by an all-knowing, of both the past, present and future, time traveller stuck in an odd time loop. It makes for a wonderful satire on why we might do what we do and might think what we think.
At least I think that is what it is all about haa haa!
A bit like Kurt Vonnegut Jr's first book, the technical ideas are of their times but so what. Conceptually, this is great stuff. As to the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent? Brilliant.
My 2nd read in my attempt to read Kurt Vonnegut Jr's oeuvre from first to last.
My review of number 1 here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
Onwards to the next.
The Sirens of Titan – Clever and Well-Written, but Lighter Than I Prefer
⭐ 3.5/5
Vonnegut’s writing is as sharp as ever—sophisticated yet straightforward, with some truly memorable, quotable passages. His ability to balance wit with deeper themes makes the book engaging, and the central idea—people living their lives unaware of larger forces at play, while even those who think they see the full picture might still be missing an even bigger scheme—was fascinating.
That said, the plot itself felt light, and I’ve reached a point where light sci-fi just doesn’t hold my interest as much anymore. While the book has its merits, I found myself more engaged with the writing and ideas than the actual story.
Summary: Malachi Constant is one of the richest and most morally corrupt men on Earth, and he has been invited to attend the materialization of Winston Niles Rumsfoord, another fabulously wealthy man who, as the result of accidentally entering some kind of time warp on a trip to space, materializes on Earth at predictable intervals and is able to see across time. After Rumsfoord tells Constant what his future holds, Constant tries desperately to avoid the fate that Rumsfoord has declared will be his. The rest of the story unfolds in a way that challenges the concept of free will while taking the reader across the galaxy to meet a cast of characters that includes humans, extraterrestrials, and robots alike.
I don't have any deep thoughts on this one. As far as books go, it's a good length, funny, and I had a good time reading it. There were a classic Vonnegut lines in it, and the whole thing is as Vonnegutty as you could want a sci-fi / near-space-opera thing to be.
There's a passage where a character writes lists to himself for later reference. This is a great vehicle for Vonnegut to get some of his one- or near-one-liners out. “1. If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.” “I am a thing called alive.”
This was my favorite: “The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of the pain now, Unk, but you won't learn anything if you don't invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.” It reminded me a lot of the line in Fahrenheit 451: “If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you, and you'll never learn.”
Two more:
“Theology: (15.) Somebody made everything for some reason.”
“Psychology: (103.) Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe that there is such a a thing as being smart.”
There is also a really nice little parable of Tralfamadore presented later on, which is simply classic Vonnegut, using a foreign entity (in this case the history of an alien species) to comment on humanity. I know we've been doing this for an awfully long time, but nobody does it quite like Vonnegut.
A darkly comic view of free will and purpose in life.
Malachi Constant has extraordinary luck in getting rich. In truth, he buys shares and stock by reading the Bible from the beginning and finding companies that match words as he progresses. His reasoning is that God is making him rich. Winston Rumfoord is already super rich and has his own space ship. Malachi loses his fortune and Winston manipulates him from that moment.
There is a prediction linking Malachi and Winston's wife, a war with Mars, a trip to Mercury, and time on Saturn's moon Titan. And it's all because of Winston. Oh yeah, there's also a sentient alien robot with his own space ship.
Remember when a steak and salad at a pub meant iceberg lettuce and beetroot but now it's three different varieties of rocket and some weird stuff called quinoa and we ask, "What is all this stuff doing here?" That's what this book is like. Vonnegut chucks together so many bits and pieces and expects it all to hold together with meaning. OK, he's good at that sort of thing. He just keeps chucking new things in and I could imagine him saying "You think I can't do this? Just watch me. And you will keep reading anyway." Smug bastard.
He ends the book with the thought that "the purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
I picked this up because the book I'd just read (Ruoochio's Howling Dark) was such a heavy hitter and I wanted some relief. Sirens of Titan is weird comedy until it's not. Things got rather dark towards the end.
Quotes
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
“The moral: Money, position, health, handsomeness, and talent aren't everything“
This is one of my favorite books of all time. I could hardly put it down to be present in during my vacation because it's so good. The comedy, the irony, the parody. Kurt Vonnegut was a master at weaving this wild series of events and all these ideas together to create an unforgettable story. READ IT.
Regret ca am lasat-o cam moale cu cititul fix dupa ce am inceput aceasta capodopera. Te rog iarta-ma Mr. Vonnegut =((
I have waited a month to let my mind mull over this book and I still don't know what the hell I read.
I'm going to reread this soon and maybe then I'll know what I think of this.
Still thinking this over, not quite sure what I think of it. This rating and review might change.
Stylistically and thematically, pretty recognizable as Vonnegut despite being pretty early in his career. I don't quite know what else to say about it except that it's pretty bleak. I wasn't as into this as some of his later work.
“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
The fact that Vonnegut is not hailed as one of the master's of the human soul is baffling.
His at first-sight chaotic and randomly woven tapestry of ideas soon proves to be nothing of the sort. No sentence in the entire book seems to have been written without a clear purpose, no event is untied to a relevant aspect of the whole plot. The experience of reading his books amounts to murmuring a series of pleasant “ahhhh”s and “ohhhh”s.
The man is simply a genius.
I was one of those high school kids with zero direction in life. I picked classes based on factors such as likability of teacher, likelihood of cute girls in the class, and the way the class name sounded in my ear. This is how I ended up in a Contemporary Literature class my senior year. I was not yet a passionate reader—that would come years later—but I liked the teacher and figured it would be an easy A. (I don't recall, however, if there were any cute girls in the class.)
Contemporary Lit was where I first was introduced to Vonnegut. (We also read Kerouac, Kosiński, maybe some others.) I wasn't impressed with any of them: I thought they were all a bunch of irrelevant weirdos who were anything but contemporary. The Vonnegut was of course Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel I was surprised to find had nothing to do with mass slayings by a deranged faceless killer. Instead there was a meandering plot and aliens described as looking like toilet plungers. I guffawed at the stupidity. For years, I'd tell people who hadn't read the book about the Tralfamadorians. But here's the thing about Slaughterhouse-Five: it stuck with me. I remember more about that novel than I do some novels I read three weeks ago. And so it goes.
Eventually I became a all-caps, italicized READER; I finally read that one work that convinced me the world of stories was a world I wanted to live in. And once I entered that world, the name of Vonnegut would pop up often: writer's workshops and Internet searches; book recommendations and some of my favorite hip-hop songs. Over and over, I found like-minded people loved Vonnegut, so I thought maybe I should too.
It has now been more than twenty years since I was first introduced to Vonnegut. Despite my intentions to explore the author in the last decade, I have failed until now. Every time I picked up any Vonnegut novel, I would find myself distracted with something shinier or more promising. I finally decided I'd read The Sirens of Titan because I have a fascination with Saturn's moon and because Vonnegut himself liked the novel (when grading his works years later, Vonnegut offered an ‘A' to his sophomore novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Sunday_(book) ). Even then, it was some years before I finally read the damn book. But here I am, finally, at my destination.
Malachi Constant is also a man without direction. In a novel which promises to send the rich astronaut to Titan, he first makes prolonged stops to Mars, Mercury, and back to Earth. Along the way he loses his memory, loses his hope, and loses himself. I feel I can relate in some ways with Malachi Constant.
As with all classic novels of spaceflight, The Sirens of Titan is a horribly dated book. Unfortunately, it is more out of touch with its misogynist and prejudiced treatment of its characters than with the technology involved. The main female character—now that I think about it, she may have been the only female character—is reduced to serve as chattel, nameless for for too long. It doesn't feel so out-of-place in a science-fiction novel published in the 1950s, but it does sixty years later.
Let's just sidestep that issue and look at the book as a whole, shall we? Vonnegut doesn't give justice to any of his characters really. They're all rather shrewd and built on stereotypes, but it matters little as they're devoid of dimensions. Though this is only my second Vonnegut, I'm already beginning to see that characters and language take a back seat to plot, but that even plot is secondary to ingenuity. Vonnegut was a clever author. Vonnegut strikes me as a more modern and less showy Mark Twain: of course Twain largely wrote about history and his own world; whereas Vonnegut wrote about future and worlds other than his own. Vonnegut weaved wit with seemingly little effort and I think this is was makes his stories so likable. Though there are clever remarks and situations throughout The Sirens of Titan, the author did not jump in after every passage to say, “Did you see what I did there?” He trusted the reader to figure it out, or perhaps he figured if the reader didn't catch his humor, it wasn't worth his effort to explain it.
I walk away from The Sirens of Titan with similar, but more mature feelings as I did with Slaughterhouse-Five twenty years ago. I really wasn't that impressed. As a reader whose first love is characters and their development, I found The Sirens of Titan to be greatly lacking. While reading the novel, I was conscious of the fact that I found the story to be ridiculous if not outright cheesy. Yet, I continued to read with great interest. And, once again, here I am weeks later, remembering details of Constant's journey that I would've struggled to recall from parallel journeys written by other authors. So, I'm still not sure what I think about Vonnegut. I sort of liked this adventure. I sort of wondered what the hype was about. But I would give him another try. It could easily be another twenty years, but what is time in the world of Vonnegut?
Vonnegut deal with his themes of inevitability and a soldiers choice in battle fantastically. However, Slaughter House 5 deals with the same themes, if a little less effectively, and also has much more engaging characters. So, if you want a good character novel, go for Slaughter House 5. If you're more interested in the themes, read this.
Honestly I think this might be one of my favorite books of all time. The story was wild and engaging. I would often think about the characters and stories even after I put the book down. There was humorous dialogue every few pages and Vonnegut's writing kept me questioning my own way of looking at the world.
I hope that Boaz' selfless love for the harmoniums never doesn't make me cry.
It felt forced. Obligatory Vonnegut absurdity, but somehow without any real meaning. No character development or growth. Too-frequent “...and then a miracle happens” to move the story.
Not exactly sure where I should put this book but as the other books from them same author it was a pure joy to read.
Fascinating timeless story about the eternal struggle of humanity.
I bought a copy of this book in 1975, having already read it some years earlier, but it's not a book that I reread often.
Reading it now (in 2022), I find that it's fluently written, easy to read, and inventively bizarre, all of which I appreciate. However, I don't like any of the characters, what happens to them is unpleasant, and overall the story is depressing. I have seen it described as a comedy, which goes to show how different people have very different senses of humour.
It seems to be a lengthy sermon on the futility and pointlessness of life. I don't know of any particular point to life myself; but Vonnegut seemed unaware that life can still be pleasant, interesting, and enjoyable, without needing to have any overall purpose to it.
I could give the book two or three stars; I'll give it three for now, rather reluctantly, because after all I have read it at least three or four times in the course of my life, and I think of a two-star book as one I probably won't bother to read more than once. I find it depressing, and I don't enjoy being depressed; and yet its bizarre inventiveness gives it a classic quality, it contains memorable scenes and images.
It reminds me vaguely of Douglas Adams, although it was first published when Adams was about 7 years old. Perhaps it was one of many influences on his fictional style, although Adams would have had to be in a particularly bleak mood to write this kind of story.
In 1975, Al Stewart released his Modern Times album, containing the song “Sirens of Titan”, inspired by the book. I can listen to the song quite happily: it's more pleasant than the book.