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    The Sirens Of Titan: The science fiction classic and precursor to Douglas Adams

    Kurt Vonnegut

    Formats & Editions

    Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction

    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 . . .

    A finalist for the 1960 Hugo Award, The Sirens of Titan was Vonnegut's second novel. It received wide acclaim, and played with ideas of free will and predestination, themes he continued to explore in his later works. In 2015, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

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    'The Sirens of Titan is marvellous. It's so funny it made me want to cry' - Infinity Plus

    'A classic, ripe with wit and eloquence and a cascade of inventiveness' - Brian Aldiss

    'His best book . . . He dares not only to ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it' - Esquire

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    Praise for The Sirens Of Titan

    • A classic, ripe with wit and eloquence and a cascade of inventiveness - Brian AldissA work of great scope and staggering originality ... It's an experience not to be missed - Books and BookmenA very funny novel about the meaningless of it all - Science Fiction: 100 Best NovelsThis is a real delight

    Kurt Vonnegut

    Kurt Vonnegut

    Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century. Vonnegut's audience increased steadily since his first five pieces in the 1950s and grew from there. His 1968 novel Slaughterhouse-Five has become a canonic war novel with Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to form the truest and darkest of what came from World War II. Vonnegut began his career as a science fiction writer, and his early novels- Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan- were categorized as such even as they appealed to an audience far beyond the reach of the category. In the 1960s, Vonnegut became closely associated with the Baby Boomer generation, a writer on that side, so to speak. Now that Vonnegut's work has been studied as a large body of work, it has been more deeply understood and unified. There is a consistency to his satirical insight, humour and anger which makes his work so synergistic. It seems clear that the more of Vonnegut's work you read, the more it resonates and the more you wish to read. Scholars believe that Vonnegut's reputation (like Mark Twain's) will grow steadily through the decades as his work continues to increase in relevance and new connections are formed, new insights made.

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