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Introduction
The success of The Sirens of Titan with a public far wider than the usual
science fiction readership, has found an echo in the critical response, which
has been mostly divided over the question to which genre the novel should be
said to belong: whereas for certain obvious reasons (which I shall comment
upon later) it seems to fall neatly into the science fiction category, it has also
been variously labeled - amongst other things - satire, black humour or
fabulation. In addition, there have been voices which have complained that
Vonnegut does not take science fiction seriously, that, in fact, he makes fun of
it. This view can even derive support from various statements which Vonnegut
has made himself, and which are usually quoted in this context. In a famous
short essay that he wrote for The New York Times Book Review, Vonnegut
affirms that he never thought of himself as a science fiction writer until he was
assigned that label by the critics after his first novel Player Piano, which is
a dystopian novel in the vein of Huxley's Brave New World. Nevertheless,
Vonnegut insists that he is interested in science and technology because they
are integral parts of our lives, and therefore they should not be the exclusive
contents of a literary drawer labeled science fiction, but should rather become
staple themes of mainstream fiction.3
1 http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic99/klein2/5_99.html
Despite these disclaimers, any reader may be forgiven, if he or she
approaches The Sirens of Titan as a run-of-the-mill science fiction novel, as
indeed the lurid cover of the Dell paperback edition strongly suggests: it
features a Tarzan look-alike, a naked woman holding a book and a naked
young man with giant blue wings who is apparently about to take off whilst
above them three scantily clad beauties are to be seen within a kind of crystal
globe. All are drawn in the naive-realist style of cheap science fiction
magazines. One's worst fears seem to be not only confirmed but even
exacerbated when one proceeds to read the story. It is told by a future
historian, extends over 43 years ("between the Second World War and the
Third Great Depression", as it is said) and takes place on several planets of
our solar system.
When the attack finally takes place, there are indeed very few survivors:
Beatrice and Chrono land in the Amazon rain forest and are initiated into the
Indian Gumbo tribe. Malachi, however, does not participate in the attack, but
is sent to Mercury together with another soldier, Boaz, where they are trapped
for 3 years. There, Boaz comes to love the harmoniums, small kite-like
creatures that thrive on sounds, and he therefore stays behind when Constant
finally discovers how to escape. On his return to Earth, the latter finds himself
the scapegoat figure of the new religion and is sent into space again, this time
together with Beatrice and their common son Chrono. They land on Titan,
where Rumfoord has established a kind of permanent residence from which he
runs the affairs of the Earth with the help of a robot called Salo, who comes
from a faraway planet called Tralfamadore.4
On this planet, the machines have long ago taken completely over and organic
life has become extinct. Salo had been sent as a messenger to the other end of
the galaxy when his ship broke down in 203 117 B.C. and now he has to stay
on Titan until the required spare part is shipped to him. It turns out that the
whole of human history has been manipulated by the Tralfamadorians in order
to send encouraging messages to Salo and finally to provide him with the
needed replacement. This replacement is a piece of metal that Chrono has
picked up on Mars and has never relinquished since. Now Salo can repair his
spaceship and continue his voyage, while Rumfoord will soon disappear into
another galaxy, due to eruptions on the sun's surface. As a last favour, he asks
Salo to reveal the message he carries. Against his inbuilt prohibition, Salo
eventually complies with his request, although Rumfoord has already
disappeared. The message consists of a single dot, which in the
Tralfamadorian language means "greetings". Salo feels so depressed about the
apparent fatuity of his mission, that he disassembles himself. Chrono goes off
to live with the giant bluebirds of Titan, whereas Constant and Beatrice
gradually come to cherish each other. Beatrice dies, and Salo who has been
put back together again by Constant carries the latter to Earth, where he leaves
him at a bus-stop near Indianapolis in winter. Unfortunately, the bus is two
hours late, so that Constant dies of hypothermia. Thanks to hypnosis by Salo,
his last moments are brightened by the illusion of a reunion with his friend
Stony Stevenson.
Critical responses
This short summary of the story is not intended to make it sound more
preposterous than it is, but only to give an outline of the motives and devices
used in it. If one were to base an assessment of the novel only on these,
though, one might feel tempted to concur with James Mellard, who says:
The Sirens of Titan is nave literature in every way possible, since it is a formulaic type (science
fiction), employs formulaic characters, episodes, themes, properties, and settings, and is written
in a remarkably simple style that, though not particularly formulaic, nevertheless includes
evidence of formulaic epithets and phrase-tags.5
It is perhaps also understandable that some critics have thought that Vonnegut
is not being serious in this novel. He evidently has fun with a number of time-
honoured science fiction tropes, such as time- and space-travel, robots and
interstellar wars, so that the suspicion might be justified that this is actually a
parody of the whole genre. The question of course would be - to what end? It
will hardly be denied that science fiction can be used for quite serious
purposes and that there are a number of examples for this. Vonnegut's
treatment, however, seems frivolous and appears to have unwarranted and
easy fun with the conventions of the genre. As Ellen Rose points out:
Not only are the details of Vonnegut's science fiction inventive and highly improbable, they seem
gratuitous. Vonnegut is not apparently using alien life-forms to throw into relief peculiarities or
inadequacies of humans, nor does he seem to be using Tralfamadorian technology to say
something about ours. While The Sirens of Titan abounds in science fictional ingredients, they
are not combined to produce the effects readers have come to expect of science fiction.6
True, indeed. The question then arises: for what purpose is Vonnegut using the
staple tropes of science fiction? Before attempting an answer, it may be
advisable to look at what readers "have come to expect of science fiction".
There have been many attempts to define what science fiction is or should be.
The older ones by famous practitioners in the field like John W.
Campbell and Isaac Asimov agree that science fiction should show how man
gains deeper knowledge of the universe through the use of science and
technology and how he may use that knowledge to control
his destiny.7 Evidently, this may easily take the form of wish-fulfilment and
escapism, as indeed is the case in many inferior productions of the genre. One
might therefore prefer a more cautious and neutral definition like the one
by Kingsley Amis, which is roughly contemporaneous with The Sirens of
Titan:
Science fiction is that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the
world we know, but which is hypothesised on the basis of some innovation in science or
technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial
in origin.8
In this dystopian aspect of the novel one can also detect a critique of the
American political system, where the rich shape the destinies of the less
affluent. Rumfoord and his ideology have therefore been seen as caricatures of
Roosevelt and the New Deal. Rumfoord is introduced as a member of the
social elite, a man of old inherited wealth, who may be well-intentioned, but
in reality despises mankind.11 He believes himself to be superior to criticism
and therefore has not the slightest qualms about using other people as tools,
although he himself complains bitterly about being used in this way.
Effectually, he plays at being God - at least in a minor way. It is rather ironic
then, that the alternative to his egocentrical despotism is supplied by a
machine: Salo overcomes his inbuilt programme in order to make an
autonomous gesture of friendship.
The aforementioned approaches have in common that they see Sirens as some
form of criticism (of whatever) and going about it in some roundabout way,
i.e. it might have been done more directly (apart from the SF parody). But
perhaps one should take the novel more seriously and accept its form as
necessary for its contents.
The novel can also be seen as a "shaggy-dog story", i.e. an elaborate hoax
with an anti-climactic punch-line.17 In this interpretation, the exaggerated
science fiction-clichs are deflated by the revelation that all human
endeavours so far have had as their sole end the delivery of a piece of metal to
a broken-down spaceship, piloted by a robot on a fool's errand. There can
hardly be a more negative commentary on the belief of mankind's being able
to shape its own destiny. In fact, this interpretation turns The Sirens of
Titan almost into a novel of the absurd, with similar implications as the works
of Kafka or Beckett. Arguably, however, Vonnegut's outlook is not quite as
bleak, because once Salo continues on his way, mankind is presumably free to
pursue its own objectives.18 Furthermore, it can be argued that the novel does
not claim that life is absurd, but rather that it does not make sense to look for
its meaning in some external source.19 One does not have to go as far as
Lawrence Broer, who sees The Sirens of Titan therefore purely as a
psychological novel with the events happening only in the
protagonist's mind,20 but he is certainly right in so far, as Malachi undergoes a
complete mental change between the beginning and the end of the novel. A
development which takes him from self-centered lust-fulfillment and the
search for a "higher" meaning to acceptance of and contentment with life as it
is. Malachi thus becomes another variant of the profligate who turns into a
holy man, and his story follows "the three stages of departure, initiation, and
return" of the basic mythic-adventure pattern.21
In this way, Malachi's voyage through the solar system appears as an allegory
on contemporary man's psychical condition and the steps he would have to
take to change it. Most importantly, he would have to break through his
egotistical isolation which is caused by his preoccupation with the self.
Significantly, the name "Malachi Constant" translates as "faithful messenger",
but it is not "a first-class message from God to someone equally
distinguished" as Malachi hopes, that he is made to carry, but rather a message
that "Unk" sends to himself on Mars in a desperate bid to maintain
his identity.22 Ironically, he is not able to recognise it for what it is. The most
he or anyone can aspire to achieve in the way of personal communication is
apparently on the level of the harmoniums' "Here I am " - "So glad you are" or
Salo's "Greetings".23
Malachi's voyage is thus also a quest for spiritual salvation. This quest has its
literary antecedent in Dante's Divina Commedia with Beatrice, Rumfoord's
wife, as the unlikely object of his love. Malachi goes through the hell of Mars,
the limbo of Mercury, and the purgatory of Earth to the celestial regions of
Titan, and dies with a glimpse of paradise. This paradise is an inner one which
finds parallels in Milton's Paradise Lost: When Adam and Eve are expelled
from the Garden of Eden, the Archangel Michael shows them the plight that
awaits them, but they are also vouchsafed the discovery of a paradise
within themselves.24
Given that The Sirens of Titan seems to be shaped by so many diverse modes
of writing and to allow such a number of possible approaches only in order to
negate them, it is understandable, that this diversity can also be seen
negatively as lack of control on the part of the author, possibly due to
inexperience. This is what William Allen thinks:
Needless to say, I do not agree with this view, although Allen also tries to give
a positive note to his assessment by suggesting that in this novel Vonnegut
lays the foundations for his later work.27 I shall therefore try to show where in
my view the main achievement of The Sirens of Titan lies and it what way it is
seminal for Vonnegut's later work.
Quite a lot of science fiction since the 50s has used mythic patterns in order to
find a deeper order in the world and to make sense of it all. Sense, however, as
we have seen, is something that The Sirens of Titan decidedly refuses to make.
None of its ostensible explanations or solutions can be taken at face value.
Malachi's quest can be seen as an "anti-quest" in that he cannot make any free
decisions, but is forced or inveigled into every move, and what he eventually
finds is pure illusion.28 This is especially emphasised by the ending of the
novel, since the sentimental wisdom that Malachi reaches there is deflated by
his silly death at the bus-stop, which is only mitigated by a robot-induced
hallucination. So I agree with Charles Elkins who says: "What The Sirens of
Titan does, in fact, is to demystify the mythic pretensions of most
contemporary... science fiction."29
The Sirens of Titan thus does not provide the reader with any of the
comforting ideas that he may have come to expect from science fiction - or,
indeed, from most other kinds of fiction: man is not only shown to be utterly
devoid of control over his own destiny, but even devoid of any importance
within a higher scheme of things. Vonnegut thereby insists that sense and
meaning can only be the ineluctable responsibility of each individual. In using
the format of science fiction, Vonnegut is making a wry comment on what he
is writing about: As Lawler ("Story", 1977: 73) has pointed out: "The form
supplies the comic perspective needed to dramatize the tragic-comic
implications of modern thought and attitudes."by employing the means of a
genre which is often called escapist, but nevertheless adapts the mode of the
realist novel, Vonnegut questions the nature of reality as it is commonly
perceived and the conventions by which it has been described in literature. He
thus uses the science fiction framework in order to make certain points that
would not have been possible in a realist novel. He does this by drawing
attention to the textuality of his text, to the way it becomes a
textual object.30 Like other postmodernist fiction, The Sirens of
Titan foregrounds the process of "world-building" that is the constituent
of all fiction,31 and which is here shown to be an artefact - as are all other
constructions that purport to explain reality. Form is indeed inseperable from
function here.
It is perhaps not surprising that there has been some confusion about the
question to which category the writer Vonnegut should be assigned. He has
been called, e.g., "a mediocre science-fiction writer, a social satirist, a Black
Humorist, and a major novelist".32 Brian Aldiss alleges in Billion Year Spree:
"Vonnegut sped right out of the field [of science fiction] as soon as he had
cash for the gasoline."33 He has certainly some grounds for this view in
Vonnegut's earlier mentioned short article, where he complains about being
limited to the role of science fiction writer and says he wants to break out
of it.34
But Vonnegut also has Eliot Rosewater, the eponymous hero of God Bless
You, Mr. Rosewater say famously to the yearly Science Fiction-Writers'
Convention: "I love you sons of bitches. You're all I read any more. You're the
only ones who'll talk about the really important changes
going on."35 Vonnegut is also the creator of the fictitious purveyor of science
fiction pulp, Kilgore Trout, whose books change the life of Billy Pilgrim
in Slaughterhouse-Five. And finally, he describes himself without apparent
qualms as a science fiction writer in the Playboy interview of 1973 and has
consistently used science fiction motives in his later books. But of course
these are always employed in a way which breaks the bounds of conventional
science fiction and also those of conventional realist fiction.
After the "New Wave" science fiction of the 60s by authors like Brian Aldiss,
J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Tom Disch, Samuel R. Delany or Ursula
LeGuin, and later developments like "Cyberpunk", these features of The
Sirens of Titan may not seem so exciting anymore, but it has to be
remembered that Vonnegut certainly was among the first to make use of them
and that he used them in a way which at once constitutes a critique of both
realist and non-realist modes of writing. He is especially radical in denying
the reader the comfort of "ideational closure".
To call Vonnegut a science fiction writer, then, is both true and untrue: in The
Sirens of Titan he may be said to have started deconstructing genre boundaries
long before it became the common fashion. In fact, The Sirens of Titan not
only makes one ask "What genre does it belong to"? but also "Is that a
meaningful question?". It could therefore be said to deconstruct the question
of genre itself. By doing this, this novel also prefigures the dissolution of the
distinction between mainstream, popular and avantgarde fiction which is
usually taken to start much later. In this respect, Vonnegut is very much akin
to avantgarde writers like Burroughs, Barth or Pynchon who on occasion also
use science fiction concepts for similar ends, but it should be acknowledged
that The Sirens of Titan is certainly among the first novels to do this.
Bibliography
Aldiss, Brian W., and David Wingrove (1986): Trillion Year Spree. The
History of Science Fiction. London: Gollancz.
Freese, Peter (1986): "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan, 1959",
in Der Science-Fiction-Roman in der angloamerikanischen Literatur.
Interpretationen, ed. Hartmut Heuermann. Dsseldorf: Bagel.
Mayo, Clark (1977): Kurt Vonnegut. The Gospel from Outer Space. San
Bernardino: R. Reginald/Borgo Press.
Rose, Ellen Cronan (1979): "It's All a Joke: Science Fiction in Kurt
Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan", Literature and Psychology 29/4, 160-
168.
References
13 Northrop Frye calls the two Alice books "perfect Menippean satires"
(1990, 310).
18 This may be what the narrator alludes to when he talks about his
own time (i.e. the future), when men will have found true contentment.