The Sirens of Titan

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Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren’t anything like machines. They weren’t dependable. They weren’t efficient. They weren’t predictable. They weren’t durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn’t high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn’t really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, “Tralfamadore.” Do you read a Vonnegut book, or does the book read you? Does it expose your thoughts to the most detailed analysis of humanity, human behavior, and human mind and then tells you to not give a damn? Except that it also seizes the phrase 'to not give a damn' from your control. Leaves you hanging midair. Questioning. Kurt Vonnegut, when he wrote Sirens of Titan, was 37 Earth years old, he was 6 feet 2 inches tall and had curly brown hair that his mother, Edith Lieber, called chestnut. a pleasant surprise while reading this was how timeless it felt. seriously! for 90% of the book, i was barely even noticing i was reading a story first published in 1959. in this review, i will explore the two major themes of the novel, state what we can learn them, and explain how these lessons apply to our meager lives.

Winston Niles Rumfoord runs his private spaceship into an uncharted chrono-synclastic infundibulum. The result is that he and his dog Kazak exist as wave phenomena, materializing and dematerializing on Earth and on Mars, where Rumfoord plans an invasion of Earth. On Mars, he transforms disaffected Americans into an army, literally washing out their brains through surgical procedures and directing their wills through antennas implanted in their heads. On Earth, Rumfoord lures Malachi Constant, the richest American, into his plot, inviting him to witness his materialization. Scottish singer-songwriter Al Stewart paid homage to the novel with the song "Sirens of Titan" on his 1975 album Modern Times, featuring the lyric "I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all..." as the chorus, as well as references to many other aspects of the book ("marching to the sound of the drum in my head" "here in the yellow and blue of my days" "watching for the signs the harmoniums make" etc.) Westbrook, Perry D. "Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: Overview." Contemporary Novelists. Susan Windisch Brown. 6th ed. New York: St. James Press, 1996.

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The book's plot doesn't really exist beyond Malachi has to go to Titan with Bea/Beatrice and Chrono because Rumfoord said so. There's also something about three beautiful siren women who don't make any actual appearances beyond artwork and pictures. Seriously! What is the point of the sirens!? Towards the end of the book we're told that Malachi knew what they once meant, but what is that? His sexual/romantic desires? He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked as a journalist before joining the U.S. Army and serving in World War II.

I remembered this novel as a Big Deal, a game-changer for me, and so it might have been in my teens. I think encountering a created world in which the Indifference of the Divine was simply accepted as fact, and the attitude towards the accumulation of money was sneeringly superior to those who merely grub after gold in the mud resonated strongly with my noblesse oblige sense of wealth as responsibility not opportunity. Brooke-Rose, Christine (1981): A Rhetoric of the Unreal. Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic. Cambridge: Carcanet. Needless to say, I do not agree with this view, although Allen also tries to give a positive note to his assessment by suggesting that in this novel Vonnegut lays the foundations for his later work. 27 I shall therefore try to show where in my view the main achievement of The Sirens of Titan lies and it what way it is seminal for Vonnegut's later work.

I'll start with a roundabout introduction. Garry Kasparov was not just one of the best chessplayers of all time, he was also one of the best analysts. Even as a teenager, he was always coming up with the most amazing ideas. Chessplayers often prefer to hoard their ideas; it can be worth a lot to surprise your opponent in a critical game, and there are many stories about grandmasters keeping a new move in the freezer for years, or even decades. Kasparov asked his trainer if he should be hoarding too. "No, Garry!" came the sage reply. "Use them now! You'll get new ones." And, indeed, this turned out to be a correct prediction.

Aldiss, Brian W., and David Wingrove (1986): Trillion Year Spree. The History of Science Fiction. London: Gollancz. Freese, Peter (1986): "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan, 1959", in Der Science-Fiction-Roman in der angloamerikanischen Literatur. Interpretationen, ed. Hartmut Heuermann. Düsseldorf: Bagel.And what if you belong to a dirt-poor part of the populace, and don't much care for Rich Folks' Gentrification Projects for Deep Space? I will abstain from asking myself these questions after a Vonnegut book in future. Best is to try and emulate the sweet sounds of Poo-tee-weet. Eisenhart, Mary (November 12, 1987). Transcript: Jerry Garcia Interview. Verified 30 March 2005. Jerry Garcia discusses Sirens of Titan at length. Mayo, Clark. Kurt Vonnegut: The Gospel from Outer Space (Or, Yes We Have No Nirvanas). San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1977. A fairly short book adopting Vonnegut’s style, voice, and satire while writing about Vonnegut. Discusses The Sirens of Titan in detail. But Vonnegut also has Eliot Rosewater, the eponymous hero of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater say famously to the yearly Science Fiction-Writers' Convention: "I love you sons of bitches. You're all I read any more. You're the only ones who'll talk about the really important changes going on." 35 Vonnegut is also the creator of the fictitious purveyor of science fiction pulp, Kilgore Trout, whose books change the life of Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. And finally, he describes himself without apparent qualms as a science fiction writer in the Playboy interview of 1973 and has consistently used science fiction motives in his later books. But of course these are always employed in a way which breaks the bounds of conventional science fiction and also those of conventional realist fiction.