Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
 
Sirens of Titan
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

Sirens of Titan (Paperback)

by Kurt Vonnegut (Author) "EVERYONE NOW KNOWS how to find the meaning of life within himself ..." (more)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.


14 used from £1.95
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover Order it used
Paperback (New Ed) £6.99 £4.49 44 used & new from £1.65
Mass Market Paperback (Reissue) 7 used & new from £4.99
School & Library Binding Order it used
Audio Cassette Order it used
Show more editions and formats

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Cat's Cradle (Penguin Modern Classics)

Cat's Cradle (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Kurt Vonnegut
4.1 out of 5 stars (14)  £5.79
Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions

by Kurt Vonnegut
4.6 out of 5 stars (18)  £5.08
Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death

Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death

by Kurt Vonnegut
4.5 out of 5 stars (45)  £5.08
God Bless You, Mr.Rosewater

God Bless You, Mr.Rosewater

by Kurt Vonnegut
4.3 out of 5 stars (3)  £5.06
Mother Night

Mother Night

by Kurt Vonnegut
5.0 out of 5 stars (6)  £4.99
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group; Reissue edition (1 Oct 1998)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0385333498
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385333498
  • Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.2 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,328,597 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #80 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > V > Vonnegut, Kurt

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Kurt Vonnegut's second SF novel was published way back in 1959 but remains horribly timeless. For all the book's wild inventiveness, it's one of the most blackly nihilistic comedies ever published in the genre. The tragicomic godgame is presided over by Winston Niles Rumfoord, who has accidentally become a standing wave in space/time and knows the past and the future. Since the future is fixed, he can't change it even though it involves him arranging nasty fates for many people--in particular Malachi Constant, richest man in the world since his father's career of interpreting the Bible as a coded guide to the stockmarket. Despite his struggles, Constant is destined for a grimly comic pilgrimage around the Solar System to Titan, home since 203,117 BC of the visiting alien Salo whose presence has warped the whole of human history. Salo's far-off people manipulated us into building Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and other vast constructions as reassuring signals to their stranded emissary--who himself is carrying a message of truly cosmic unimportance. Small wonder that Rumfoord tries to cheer up humanity by founding the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. Vonnegut scatters crazed ideas in all directions, forcing you into painful laughter at the grandiose futility of his cosmos. Another worthy Millennium SF Masterworks classic. --David Langford --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.


Product Description

When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour. But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will be. He knows, for instance, that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan -- one of Saturn's moons -- is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore, who has been waiting 200,000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
EVERYONE NOW KNOWS how to find the meaning of life within himself. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
Search inside this book:

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
 
science fiction
vonnegut
satire
kurt vonnegut
great writers
classic sci-fi
fiction
titan
the
sirens
science

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Sirens of Titan
79% buy the item featured on this page:
Sirens of Titan 4.4 out of 5 stars (18)
Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death
8% buy
Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death 4.5 out of 5 stars (45)
£5.08
Breakfast of Champions
5% buy
Breakfast of Champions 4.6 out of 5 stars (18)
£5.08
Cat's Cradle (Penguin Modern Classics)
5% buy
Cat's Cradle (Penguin Modern Classics) 4.1 out of 5 stars (14)
£5.79
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

18 Reviews
5 star:
 (14)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Constant Messenger, 3 Nov 2001
By John Self "www.theasylum.wordpress.com" (Belfast, NI) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: The Sirens Of Titan (S.F. Masterworks) (Paperback)
There is a compelling argument for this to be considered Vonnegut's best book. Although the humour is more a sly ticklish undercurrent than a smack-in-the-face wake-up tidal wave, and there is none of the authorial intervention that Vonnegut has come to rely on in later work, some might say that these are no bad things.
"The Sirens of Titan" is an outlandish and imaginative fantasy that is also a serious consideration of mankind's need for meaning in life. Of course, seasoned Vonnegut readers will know that if you come to him knocking for meaning in life, the cupboard is bare. Nonetheless the investigation of why is as entertaining and thought-provoking a book as I've read all year.

Vonnegut, the arch-humanist who (in "Timequake") nonetheless acknowledges that faith is too important to lose, creates the tale of the pointlessness of everything that goes on in the "black velvet futility" of space, down to and including - especially - Earth. People search for meaning without knowing that their acts are all predestined: by a man determined to bring Earthlings together by wiping out the Martian invaders?; or by an ancient civilization from the other side of the universe trying to transport a spare part to their emissary on the moon of Saturn?; or by the seemingly arbitrary activities of an apathetic God? Well! How crazy would any of *that* be...

From the start both the cynical finesse and singleminded determination of Vonnegut's prose should have you in helpless thrall to his cause...

All these elements are present in this masterful early novel by one of the 20th century's greatest writers. Douglas Adams, author of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, accepted a debt of inspiration to Vonnegut and here's where it most clearly lies: the made-up books, the universal-omniscient author, the chrono-synclastic infundibulum... The difference is that Adams' work was really (in his own words) "just jokes," whereas Vonnegut's serious purpose gives his book steel. And range: even Salo, the depressed robot precursor to Marvin the Paranoid Android, is profoundly moving, as are the deaths of the main protagonists, however stupid and selfish and careless they have been. Why: they're almost like you and me.

Comment Comments (3) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "God Does Not Care About You", 4 Sep 2006
This review is from: The Sirens Of Titan (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
Kurt Vonnegut careens from crazed premise to crazed premise like a narrative pinball. A TARDIS in book form, the novel contains more ideas than it seems possible to cram into its 224 pages, with Vonnegut's imagination almost being a chronosynclastic infundibulum of its own, "a place where all truths fit together". And holding it all together is the idea that there is nothing or nobody holding it all together.

Like most of Vonnegut's novels, the humour is fast, sharp and pitch black. In many ways, the story is similar to Voltaire's "Candide", although perhaps more sympathetic. In "Candide", Voltaire's characters are little more than archetypes off which to bounce ideas off, or even collide them headfirst into them. Vonnegut clearly invites us to feel for his characters, despite how repellent and awful they may at first appear.

The new Gollancz edition has much to recommend for itself, being published in a knowingly pulpy format, complete with eyecatching book design and a cheerfully informative foreword by Jasper Fforde.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A one-off, 2 May 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Sirens Of Titan (S.F. Masterworks) (Paperback)
Well, if you're looking for science fiction adventure with alien contact, space battles and the like, The Sirens of Titan is not going to be your cup of tea I'm afraid. In fact, it is debatable whether it's science fiction at all. Rather, this is a barmy, barking, Brobdignagian romp across a solar system which is definitely not our own! Top-heavy with satire, dripping wit and inventive with knobs on, not to mention an ending sad enough to make Pickaxe Charlie break down and sob. Simply great. Read and enjoy, but be warned - this book is to science fiction what the Official Monster Raving Looney Party is to British Politics!!
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars If you've never tried Vonnegut, this is the place to start
Winston Rumfoord visits the planets. He sees plenty, but is powerless to change anything. Although he understands the past and the future, he can affect no change. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Blackhorse47

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my ALL TIME FAVOURITES!
This book may not be for everyone, but it is one of my all time favourites and I think I have read it twenty or more times over the years. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Maya Hiort Petersen

5.0 out of 5 stars It deserves the title 'SF Masterwork'
For some reason it was America that held the monopoly on the SF satirical novel. Vonnegut, and later Sladek and Sheckley and indeed Dick with his more subtle comedy, produced some... Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2007 by Rod Williams

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, bleakly blackly funny and provocotive
This is my first read of a Kurt Vonnegut novel. I can only say i found it gripping. It's imaginative, and so astoundingly modern in its tone, you could be forgiven for thinking... Read more
Published on 9 Aug 2007 by anon-london

5.0 out of 5 stars Vonnegut's best novel
I have read this early Vonnegut many times, and it never loses its freshness. If all Sci Fi were like this, the genre might actually attract good writers. Read more
Published on 12 Feb 2006 by D. Maceoin

5.0 out of 5 stars A different sort of SF
If you think SF is about Star Wars, then think again.
This is a typical vonnegut novel, with the narrative being a bit odd, even taking on a crazed air. Read more
Published on 31 Dec 2003 by Johnny London

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtfully provocative sci-fi
This book floats gently in and out of your brain while still having some impacting themes. A nice romp, nothing you have to think about too deeply unless you want to. Read more
Published on 23 Jul 2003 by Mike

3.0 out of 5 stars unusual for vonnegut, less meandering than usual.
Although full of the consistently good ideas that vonnegut always thrusts at us, thsi book is unusual in style. It has a more common structure. Read more
Published on 14 April 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre and affecting
beautiful. beautiful. beautiful. I read this book once every two years - it stuns me. less words than music. Vonnegut is in on something - he *knows*. Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2002 by Pascale (passion_brand@hotmail...

2.0 out of 5 stars Try before you buy!
Dave Langford seemingly loves every book in this series. I certainly don't. This is another that shouldn't have been included. Read more
Published on 15 April 2001

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject










i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.