Having previously only read Slaughterhouse 5 and Breakfast of Champions, I couldn’t help but wonder where the science-fiction label sometimes thrown at Vonnegut had come from. Granted there were nods to sci-fi in both books, but that was it, and I figured it was the usual case of a lazy industry trying to pigeon-hole someone who was too damn good to be slotted into any easy category. In retrospect, I was probably right. Vonnegut’s work, even as early as his second published novel, was unique. But now that I have read The Sirens of Titan, the classification makes a little more sense. It is science-fiction enough, at least, for Gollancz to justifiably stick it under their SF Masterworks banner–though if by Vonnegut’s standards it is straight genre fiction, it is still primarily and unquestionably Vonnegut.

It’s both reassuring and intimidating to see how fully-formed his style was even so early on. Compared with his later work there are less of those qualities that propelled him into (and arguably, beyond) the realms of popular literature, but the compensation is a degree of control, perhaps even a desire to impress, that simply isn’t there amidst the willful genius of something like Breakfast of Champions.

Any attempt to summarize the plot would be a waste of time, but a brief quote will give some idea:

“Winston Niles Rumfoord had run his private space ship right into the heart of an uncharted chrono-synclastic infundibulum two days out of Mars. Only his dog had been along. Now Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog Kasak existed as wave phenomena–apparently pulsing in a distorted spiral with its origin in the Sun and its terminal in Betelgeuse.”

From this starting point of Rumfoord’s bizarre ascension to near-godhood, Sirens spirals off with the constant invention, ferocious satire and very black wit that you would expect–but also with a particularly intricate and carefully constructed plot that you might not necessarily see coming. In terms of the genre, it is not too much of a stretch to say that The Sirens of Titan reads like the best book Philip K. Dick never wrote. It is just as imaginative as Dick’s best, it makes your brain ache in that same special way, but where Dick’s prose is occasionally awkward or workman-like, Vonnegut’s is both simple and dazzling–and often dazzling precisely because it’s so simple, especially when describing (as it often does) the appalling and the absurd.

As is probably apparent by now, I loved The Sirens of Titan, and can’t recommend it enough. Rather than belabor the point any more, here’s another quote, from the prologue–for anyone put off by the thought that Vonnegut might have been making it all up:

“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.”