The Sirens of Titan

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut is a satire science fiction novel from '59. The story is about a guy named Malachi Constant, who is told by a man-playing-God figure stuck in space via something called 'chrono-synclastic infundibulum', that he's going to marry his wife Beatrice, have a kid with her, and end up living [and dying] on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Malachi, the richest man on Earth does everything in his power to make sure none of that happens. He responds by throwing the best damn party ever and loses all his money.

The first Vonnegut book I read was Slaughterhouse-Five, check out my review for that book here.  I liked The Sirens of Titan much more than Slaughterhouse-Five. And that's because Sirens is much more of a science fiction novel, with grandiose ideas about life, sprinkled with tons of satire, with what I call dark humor or black comedy. Siren's has a very breezy, easy reading style just like Slaughterhouse. The ideas are many but are rooted more in science fiction here than in Slaughter-house, which is why I liked it much better. After all, I'm a science fiction guy. 

There are two obvious themes of the novel. Free will is one of them. Vonnegut suggests that we are victims of a series of accidents, as its quoted from the story. Malachi Constant, Unk, Beatrice, Chrono, the Tralfamore robot [the reason why all this is happening is so the robot can get a part to go home], and Winston Niles Rumford don't have free will. Random events put them in the positions they were in and there's nothing they could say or do that could influence the unpredictable. 

The other theme is the philosophical one. The meaning of life. Vonnegut suggests that everyone knows how to find the meaning of life by themselves. Although there's no free will we can find meaning and purpose in life. And the purpose of life, no matter who's controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. If I wasn't single this would be more meaningful. :D

Life is meaningless but we should be happy. No matter what happens we have the option to make life meaningful. That's what makes us different from the music organisms on Titan, what makes us human.  

Going forward, this isn't your typical 50's pulp science fiction novel, although technically it is a 'pulp 50's science fiction novel'. What I mean is that if you're into Heinlein, Asimov, and Alfred Bester, you'll notice that this is an entirely different animal. Although there are spaceships, a war between Martians and Earth, and Universal Will To Become [metaphysics perhaps] to power spaceships, Vonnegut is using science fiction to tell an allegorical story about life. With ideas and philosophy that is anti-war, anti-religion, and anti-Bio-Mass [anti-society]. 

The science fiction element stems from the character Winston Niles Rumfoord, who, with his dog Kazak, accidentally becomes “chrono-synclastic infundibulated” during a space voyage. They're spread through space and time, appearing on planets sometimes. Vonnegut explains the phenomenon in his own inimitable way. Being spread through space and time allows Rumfoord to know everything that is past, present, and future. This allows Rumfoord to play God with the human race, with emphasis on Malachi Constant, and Rumfoord's wife, Beatrice. Rumfoord stages a war between the Martians [there's Martians living on Mars in this story too] and Earth just to make a point, to teach mankind a lesson. 

There are enough great ideas in this novel to be two or three novels. The characters are unpredictable, the humor is dark at times, and satirical, and philosophical themes make this a terrific science fiction treatise. 

To conclude, you don't have to look into grandiose ideas for what this story is really about. As a matter of fact its very simple. Vonnegut's satire ends with this conceit: All of mankind's purpose, past, present, and future is for this alien robot [the Tralfmadorian] to find this one little metal part [the size of a can opening lid], that will take him home.

I'm already reading more Vonnegut. I'm currently reading his first published novel Player Piano, which is much different from this style and voice-wise. Stay tuned to the page, as I will write my Player Piano review sometime soon.   

[original book cover art by Richard Power pictured above] 

Eden

Eden is an early science fiction novel written by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, in 1959. However, it wasn't translated into English until 1989-way, way later.

The characters here don't have names, rather the crew are called the Doctor, the Chemist, the Captain, etc. The story starts with a crew landing on an alien planet called Eden. The ship gets damaged, but its repairable. So the crew works on fixing the ship as well as exploring the planet. 

What they see sort of reads like a horror story. They find spider-like plants, mass graves of dead aliens with amorphous shapes and faces all over the place, a bio-factory of aliens, flying, spinning discs, etc. All of which makes the whole experience look like an alien concentration camp. The crew keeps trying to make sense out of everything but at the end of all the debate they realize that nothing makes sense no matter how much they keep learning. 

Most of the book is the crew repairing the ship, exploring, and explanations of what they see, in their jeep with their giant robot. At one point they get attacked by aliens [whom they call doublers], and they retaliate using an atomic weapon! 

Nothing is really known the longer the novel goes on until the last chapters. In fact, there's no character development nor is there any clear plot or story line. At the end the crew finds an alien [a doubler] that's wearing clothes [a rag-like thing]. They find out through the doubler's star maps that he is a man of learning and science. They figure out a way to get the ship's computer to translate the doubler's gurgling cough language. 

From here we learn that the alien civilization here is highly stratified. There used to be a tyrannical government in place in the beginning. Then there were leaders who led anonymously. There's jails set in place where the aliens serve voluntarily, sent there for punishments from the higher ups of the planet, perhaps for doing wrong, perhaps not, we don't know as the computer is iffy with the doubler's translation. The higher ups also control who gets to distribute information, an Orwellian influence. Basically a concentration camp without any guards, designed so that prisoners stay inside on their own free will. I still don't quite get it, but I'm not sure if I'm suppose to nor do I think its that important. Its an interesting concept nonetheless. 

We also learn that although the doublers have no sense of nuclear power, they did once conduct a mass experiment to enhance the species. The experiment failed, which resulted in deformed doublers, who are ostracized from the main society. The doubler tells them that because information gets you killed here, that when he found out that a ship with aliens crash landed, he took this as the chance of a life time, which the humans empathized with.

The crew realizes that they've been exploring something of a prison planet, that sort of thing. The two doublers that the crew found during their stay decided to stay behind the ship's exhaust and die, rather than go back to their oppressive society.  

Before the crew leaves the planet the Captain and the Doctor have a debate. Should they intervene? This is the book's philosophical angle. In the end the Captain decides they shouldn't interfere with these aliens and their society, which makes sense especially because this book was written under Soviet-style regime. However, it also makes the case against having an influence upon another society, another civilization. Sometimes its best to leave things be, which they decide to do. 

Although the prose here isn't anything grand, this book kept my attention. I finished the novel in three days because I was so curious about what was happening on the planet. The book was sort of terrifying in a way, what with the whole prison concentration camp vibe. However, I think that horror element keeps the story exciting, as the prose is sort of dry. 

When the crew is flying off they look back at Eden and see that its a beautiful violet sphere. They realize that it was because of its beauty that they accidentally flew too close and entered its atmosphere. Because of this beauty, that's the reason its called Eden.

I would definitely read more Stanislaw Lem, he's one of the only modern European science fiction writers I've read. I've seen the movie version of his book Solaris, a terrific 1970s sci-fi flick. I would be interested in reading that. 

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a science fiction film from 1951 (in black and white), 20th Century Fox, produced by Julian Blaustein, and directed by Robert Wise. The movie stars Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Billy Gray, Hugh Marlowe, and Sam Jaffe. The film was inspired by a short story called Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates. The score was composed by Bernard Herrmann. 

The film is about this humanoid alien named Klaatu. He comes to earth in a spaceship accompanied by an eight-foot robot named Gort. He has an important message for the entire human race. Klaatu only gets to speak through a few sentences before some lunatic shoots him down, blood oozing out of his shoulder. 

Klaatu goes to a hospital where he's treated by doctors ("He makes me look like a third world witch doctor!") but the doctors eventually learn that Klaatu has healed himself with some sort of futuristic healing salve. He gets himself out of there, mysteriously. The government was not going to let Klaatu go off and do his own thing. Their primary directive was to keep him imprisoned for a while, maybe even do some experiments on him (the dark side of political and scientific research). They don't show on-screen how he leaves the hospital, as it was surrounded by army personnel. In the next scene we find him on the streets, at a dry cleaners. He takes a suit with the name Mr. Carpenter on it, his new human identity. 

He finds lodging in a sort of boarding house, using the name Mr. Carpenter. There's a boy and her mother there that Klaatu becomes involved in. He babysits the son while the mother is off with a guy (boyfriend, businessman) who wants to marry her. While exploring the city Klaatu asks the kid who the most important person in the world is. He says some scientist. So off they go the scientists's house. 

Klaatu tells the scientist that he needs to bring together all the greatest minds of Earth to the spaceship and there he will give a speech outlining a message for the future of human civilization. There's some political and relationship stuff that happens in between that happening. For example the mother's boyfriend suspects Klaatu is the alien (who everybody is looking for) and he informs the authorities. Consequently the mother dumps her boyfriend and goes off with our alien main character. 

In the end Klaatu ends up getting shot (again!). But this time Gort (the eight-foot tall robot) comes to his rescue, doing a lot of damage in the meantime. Klaatu had told the mother some alien language words that she needed to say to Gort if anything was to happen to him. So she ends up saying the magick alien words and the robot calms down and stops destroying everything. 

Gort picks up the mother and they go in the spaceship. Gort places Klaatu is some sort of plasma beam generator healing tank and it makes a bunch of melodious beeping and tea-pot kettle-esque sounds. My friends really liked that sound effect and scene in particular, although I found it to be quite jarring. Klaatu starts breathing again and the gun wound is but a blood spot on his suit.

He puts on his alien clothes, this sort of chrome sports suit and goes to address the greatest minds of Earth. He warns them about their tendency to war and violence. And that if they keep it up Earth will be blown asunder. He doesn't really explain much beyond this, its almost as if his entire being for going to Earth was more of a warning, which the Earthlings could construe as a sort of threat. 

After that he goes back into the ship, which causes the smartest Earthlings to run in fear, ironic. Klaatu and the mother fly off into space. The End in cool science fiction letters. Cool movie. 

A movie like this is quite stylized for its time period, the 50's. Its a sort of old school science fiction when science fiction was still in the ghetto. The characters are sympathetic, understanding, and realistic. The idea of an alien coming to warn Earthlings about their nature and future is a popular idea. The movie does a great job of developing Klaatu and the ways in which he learns to work with humans from a different civilization from his own. I think I got a lot out of that idea from the movie. 

The film can be found on Netflix. 

Klaatu: I must admit I'm a little confused.