The Sirens of Titan (1959)

The concepts behind it could have been interesting. I wanted to like Vonnegut because people kept telling me he was brilliant. I just... wasn't that interested. I didn't care about the characters, and I wasn't even sure there was a story. Perhaps it's just that I'm much more of a characters person than anything else. ( )

I only read this because someone recommended it to me. This was my first Vonnegut book, and, simply put, I didn't like it. That's what the 1-star rating says when I mouse over it, and so that's what I have rated it.

I'm not a big fan of sci-fi in general, but religious satire sci-fi? No thanks.

Do yourself a favor and read the last few lines of the book. Yeah, that's the end. A joke on a statement said in one of the first chapters.

Ha. Ha.

( )

*note to self. Copy from A. Different cover. 1964. Scan later.

Pretty typical Vonnegut, though the plot seems more like something he would have attributed to Kilgore Trout in his later books. He adds on "religion sucks" on top of his normal "war sucks" theme. Douglas Adams claimed that he loved Sirens of Titan and that he learned a lot about writing from how it was constructed. I can definitely see some resemblances from aliens manipulating human society for their own means right down to the hero wandering around space in a dirty bathrobe. ( )

The richest man on Earth is sent on a harrowing journey around the Solar System, but under whose influence? "The only controls available to those on board were two push-buttons on the center post of the cabin - one labeled on and one labeled off. The on button simply started a flight from Mars. The off button was connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off." His description of Mercury's life forms, the harmoniums, is achingly beautiful. I didn't all out love this book - it may be because some of the ideas that would have blown me away, I've read before (particularly in Ray Bradbury - not sure who wrote first). ( )