For the second part of this project I chose the novel the Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. In this work of science fiction there a numerous characters. Malachi Constant, a wealthly frivolous playboy, is contacted by the millionaire and space traveler Winston Niles Rumford. Rumford, who is stuck in a chronosynclastic infundibula which causes him to be broken up into a spiral of particles that circulates around the sun converging in different places at set intervals, informs Constant of his future and how he will end up on Titan with Rumford’s wife. Rumford’s wife and Constant both hating each other and this idea try everything in their power to afford this fate. This causes Constant to go bankrupt. He is then recruited to the martian army, which plans to invade earth. He is brainwashed and made into a perfect automaton. While in the Martian army, he kills his best friend Stong Stevenson. The Martain War commences and is revealed to have been planned by Rumford (Mars is one place where he materialized periodically) and it fails miserably (on purpose). Constant, now Unk, is redirected to Mercury with a fellow Martain solider Boaz and stay there for the duration of the war. When he returns to earth, he is hailed by a prophet by the new world religion the Church of God the Untterly Indifferent. This religion holds Malachi and his playboy mannerisms to be regugnant and the essence of all things bad. However, they do not know it is him. He is taken to Rumford’s estate, where Rumford materializes reveals him for who he is and places him on a ship to Titan into exile. Rumford also call Beatrice/Bee and her son Chrono onto the ship with Unk. On Mars they were mated and had a son. When they arrive on Titan, they come to find out that their entire life’s journey was established to bring a small piece of metal, Chrono’s good luck piece, to an alien who is standed on Titan. His planet has exerted its will on earth and caused most of the course of history to send the stranded alien, Salo, messages. Eventually Rumford’s stream of particles is shifted and his blinks out of existence in our solar system, and Salo rips himself apart in sadness because he had befriended Rumford. We eventually find out that Salo was sent to deliver a message to the other edge of the universe. The message is . or Greetings.
I have read many of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels and each one is an amazing experience, in and of itself. However, the Sirens of Titan is my favorite. I have read it two or three times and each time am impressed by the complexity and humor that appears in this novel.
