The Sirens of Titan

Extract: I loved Vonnegut in high school. In my Modern American Lit class, we read "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater", "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse", and of course "Slaughterhouse Five." On my own, I read "Jailbird" and "Slapstick. Picking up one of his earliest novels thirty-five years later, I realized I had forgotten what a bizarre, dark writer he was.

"Siren of Titan" has a crazy, convoluted plot that is quite difficult for me to describe. It's about Malachi Constant, one of the richest but also most spoiled and morally bankrupt people on earth. When his fortunes collapse, he takes an offer to go to Mars to become an officer in their army. Constant's adventures on Mars, and later Mercury and Titan seem to be manipulated by Winston Niles Rumfoord, a man who apparently knows the future, and moves through space making appearances on earth every 50-some-odd days. Besides Constant, Rumfoord manipulates the people of earth, starting a new religion, the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, turning Constant into a sort of anti-messiah. Also in this mix is Rumfoord's suffering and spoiled wife Beatrice, and a robot alien named Salo from the planet Tralfamadore (Vonnegut uses this planet in several of his works). And, well, let's just say, you have to read the book to really get it…