The Sirens of Titan

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961 First hardcover edition, first printing. One of 2,500 copies. Publisher's black cloth, with front board and spine lettered in white; in its original wraparound pictorial dust jacket, printed in purple and green, lettered in white, with photograph of Vonnegut to rear panel taken by Anne Simpkins. About fine, with just some light rubbing to spine ends and corners, and a touch of toning to head of spine; near fine dust unclipped dust jacket, with some toning and a few light marks to spine, some light wear and shallow chipping to spine ends, a tiny bit of soiling to rear panel, and a small closed tear to top edge of front panel. Overall, an exceptionally tight and attractive copy. Pieratt and Klinkowitz AB2. The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut's second novel, is a comic science fiction novel that revolves around three main characters - Winston Niles Rumfoord, whose space flight through the chronosynclastic infundibulum gives him the ability to predict the future, Malachi Constant, the richest man on earth who gets swept up in an interplanetary war, and Salo, a robot from the planet Tralfamadore whose ship is stranded on Saturn's moon, Titan. The novel explores the subject of free will, a subject that Vonnegut revisits in subsequent books, like Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Breakfast of Champions (1972). Douglas Adams, in a 1979 interview in which he discusses Vonnegut's influence on his book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), says, "Sirens of Titan is just one of those books - you read it through the first time and you think it's very loosely, casually written…And then you read it a few more times, simultaneously finding out more about writing yourself, and you realize what an absolute tour de force it was, making something as beautifully honed as that appear so casual." . First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Dust Jacket Included.