SIRENS OF TITAN

Kurt Vonnegut—the brilliant, insane genius who is so terribly missed—just keeps on giving to new generations. SIRENS OF TITAN, from 1959, is typical of Vonnegut’s masterful, sardonic approach to the topics of religion and science fiction. He tosses out insightful concepts like confetti, cramming more thought-provoking ideas into one book than most writers do in a dozen. Narrator Jay Snyder takes on the task of making real the bizarre characters in the novel: the bombastic space-time traveler (and his dog); the wretched Malachi Constant (the hero, of sorts); and even the alien Salo, from Tralfamador, the planet that inadvertently shaped life on Earth. Snyder's delivery is so clean, so slick, that the story just slides out of one’s headphones. The hardest part is turning the player off and facing the drab, non-Vonnegut, real world. M.S. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2008]