THE SIRENS OF TITAN
“Tell me one good thing you ever did In your Iife.” – Winston Niles Rumfoord
In the beginning, God became the Heaven and the Earth…. And God said, ‘Let Me be light,’ and He was light. – The Winston N/les Rumfoord Authorized Revised Bible
For a delicious tea snack, try young harmoniums rolled into tubes and filled with Venusian cottage cheese. – The Beatrice Rumfoord Galactic Cookbook
In terms of their souls, the martyrs of Mars died not when they attacked Earth but when they were recruited for the Martian war machine. – The Winston Niles Rumfoord Pocket History of Mars
I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm. – Boaz in Sarah Home Canby’s Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury
“I am at a loss to understand why German batball is not an event, possibly a key event, in the Olympic Games.” – Winston Niles Rumfoord
“There is no reason why good can not triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.” – Winston Niles Rumfoord
“In a punctual way of speaking, good-bye.” – Winston Niles Rumfoord
The Sirens of
Titan
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Copyright (c) 1959 Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Victor Gollancz Edition published 1962
Coronet edition 1967
Second impression 1972
Third impression 1973
Fourth impression 1974
Fifth impression 1975
CORONET BOOKS
Hodder & Stoughton
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which this is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Printed and bound in Great Britain for
Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton,
St. Paul’s House, Warwick Lane,
London, EC4P4AH
By Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd
Aylesbury, Bucks
ISBN 0 340 02876 9
“Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules – and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.”
RANSOM K. FERN
DEDICATION
For Alex Vonnegut, Special Agent,
With love –
All persons, places, and events in this book are real. Certain speeches and thoughts are necessarily constructions by the author. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, since God Almighty protects the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine.
CHAPTER ONE
BETWEEN TIMID AND TIMBUKTU
“I guess somebody up there likes me.”
– MALACHI CONSTANT
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.
But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.
They could not name even one of the fifty-three portals to the soul.
Gimcrack religions were big business. Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward – pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.
Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward.
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