Over the course of his over 40 year career, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a number of books, many of which have become revered American classics. Sirens of Titan was the second of his many novels. A comedic science fiction story, most of Sirens of Titan revolves around a Martian invasion of Earth. Specifically, the novel follows a man by the name of Malachi Constant, the richest man in America. He is so rich, in fact, that he is able to build spaceships that are capable of interplanetary travel. Constant, his spaceships, and a man by the name of Winston Niles Rumfoord are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the onset of the war.
Although it is a comedy, Sirens of Titan still deals with weighty themes. These include issues of free will and the purpose of life.
Sirens of Titan is regarded as the book that put Vonnegut's immense talent on the radar of many critics and readers alike. Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction loved the novel, saying that "The plot is tangled, intricate and tortuous" but "the book, though exasperating, is a joy of inventiveness." Similarily, William Deresiewicz remarked on the novels significance, writing, "Artistically, though, [Player Piano (Vonnegut's First Novel)] is apprentice work—clunky, clumsy, overstuffed. Turn the page to The Sirens of Titan (1959), however, and it's all there, all at once. Kurt Vonnegut has become Kurt Vonnegut." Although not its author's most prominent text, the novel will be surely remembered as significant in the overall science fiction genre -- and in Vonnegut's overall bibliography.
