Review: The Sirens of Titan

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I almost don't want to say much about the Sirens of Titan because it's so rich and funny and fantastic that any words I'd use to describe it wouldn't be enough. The more I read of Vonnegut, the better it gets (and I'm saying that as someone who really didn't like Slaughterhouse-5). This is the most novel-like of Vonnegut's novels. He tends toward deconstruction and achronality, and neither of those are missing from Sirens of Titan, but not only does the book proceed in chronological order but also the action serves to move the plot forward in that order. In a lot of Vonnegut's writing, there are asides and non sequiturs that emphasize one of his main philosophies - the cosmic meaninglessness of everything humans do - and I think he uses the linearity of Sirens of Titan to make the same point, only in this case, it's phrased a little differently. Here, he's telling us that even if we see some sort of arc or meaning or growth toward a climax, life will inevitably continue on to prove that there is no grand purpose.

The story here follows Malachi Constant, a billionaire party boy who has never done anything constructive in his life. He meets with a man, Winston Niles Rumfoord, who has been through a chrono-synclastic infundibulum - basically, a portal that spreads him throughout the universe, so that he experiences the entire past and future of the solar system and only appears at certain places at regular intervals. Rumfoord tells Constant that the latter will soon leave Earth, go to Mars, Mercury, back to Earth, and then to Titan, and that in the process he will have a child with Rumfoord's wife. And while neither Constant nor Rumfoord's wife Beatrice believe this, it does come true.

Spoilers follow: Constant loses his fortune and accepts an offer to go to Mars and be part of an army that plans to invade Earth. The army is made up of humans from across the globe, all controlled by antennas placed in their heads and wiped of memories of home, but Constant can't seem to shake his memories. He remembers that he has a mate and child and seeks them out as the army leave for Earth, and encounters Rumfoord - who he doesn't remember - in the process. Rumfoord sends Constant and his 'buddy' Boaz to Mercury instead of Earth. The description of the aliens - harmoniums - on Mercury is quirky and adorable in Vonnegut's way. Little glowing yellow kites that feed off musical vibrations, who love the music that Boaz plays for them during the years the two men are stranded on the planet. The whole time, Rumfoord is arranging the aliens on the wall to spell out glowing messages for the men, and eventually shows them how to get off the planet (though Boaz chooses to stay and take care of the harmoniums).

Meanwhile, on Earth, the invasion is over, and failed. It was meant to fail, as we discover. Rumfoord engineered it so that humans would fear the invasion, but be unified in their (quick and easy) defeat of the Martian army. And then Rumfoord tells the world that the Martian army were willing martyrs who sacrificed themselves to unify the world, and he begins a religion: the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, where God does not smile upon or curse anyone because all humans are too insignificant to matter. Rumfoord uses Malachi Constant as an example of the worst kind of person, the kind who believes he is just lucky or that 'someone up there likes him,' and doesn't do anything to counteract that luck. (Once the religion has taken hold, strong people wear weights to drag them down, smart people marry dumb people to keep them humble, beautiful people deliberately obscure their beauty with bad posture and make-up.) And when Constant returns, Rumfoord makes a big show of exiling him (along with Beatrice and their son, Chrono) to Titan for his sins.

On Titan, we discover that Rumfoord is constantly materialized there and lives there with a stranded Tralfamadorian alien named Salo. Salo is waiting for a part for his spaceship, and occasionally receives messages from his home planet that are instantiated in human achievements like the Great Wall of China or the UN building (he also hasn't told Rumfoord about that last bit, because he's worried Rumfoord would be angry, and he enjoys the novel experience of friendship with Rumfoord). Rumfoord is suffering from sunspots and will soon be ejected from the solar system. His last request of Salo is for Salo to share the message he has sworn to carry across the galaxy without opening - and he reveals that he knows he has only been an agent manipulated by the Trafalmadorians to get Salo's missing part to him, so Salo owes him. Salo refuses (until it's too late, and then opens the message to find it says "Greetings") and Rumfoord disappears, and then Salo disassembles himself. This leaves the unhappy family of Constant, Beatrice, and Chrono alone on Titan. Chrono leaves to live with the birds of Titan, Constant lives off the land and tries to rebuild Salo, and Beatrice spends the next 30 years writing a treatise on the actual meaning of human life, trying to prove Rumfoord's nihilism/Trafalmadorian conspiracy wrong. And when Salo finally reappears after Beatrice's death, he takes Constant back to Earth, where he dies a peaceful death.

This was only Vonnegut's second novel, and while it shows its earliness (in the sense that it's much less experimental than his later ones), it also shows what a master Vonnegut is at sly humor and building a moving story. We learn just enough at the beginning to be invested in Constant's journey, but we're still invested and the twists and turns are surprising and emotional. The tone and even the plot of this book reminded me a lot of Douglas Adams. Lots of hijinks like the messages spelled out in harmoniums on Mercury, dry wry sense of humor, the achievements of human existence serving only to deliver a piece of an alien ship to Titan.

I'm intrigued by Rumfoord, too, and wonder if he really told the future as it was supposed to be or deliberately worked pre-emptive vengeance on his cold wife and the man who cuckolded him. I think we're supposed to assume that he does have all-seeing knowledge of the solar system, but his treatment of Constant and Beatrice seems a little extreme and unnecessary, even for sending a message to his congregation.

There's also the matter of messengers. Malachi, we are told, means 'messenger,' and what Malachi wants most is to carry a crucially important message from one place to another. He wants to carry a message from God, ideally. And in a way, he does - his return to and exile from Earth are a message to the people of Earth, to the congregations of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. And the ship he leaves on carries the replacement piece for Salo's ship (though Malachi himself doesn't carry it) so that Salo can continue carrying his message. And Salo's message, though it's of utmost importance to him and his planet, is simply one word (one dot, in Trafalmadorian), which again reinforces how meaningless even our most important goals and words are. There's more here, probably enough to write an essay on, but that's not the point of this review. Overall, it was a great book, and I was hooked 'til the end.

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