Space!!

I read The Sirens Of Titan over a month ago (maybe even two months ago) so I don't remember much in the way of specifics. This phenomenon -- this not remembering details -- usually indicates that one did not enjoy the thing he or she is trying to remember,^[1] but that is not the case with Sirens. I loved it.

Sirens is about a dude named Malachi Constant; he's a millionaire playboy, the richest man in America at the time the novel takes place. Throws sick parties.^[2] He's invited to see an Appearing by a space-traveler man, Winston Niles Rumfoord, who can (sort of) teleport over vast galactic distances and predict the future; he dematerializes, gets whisked away to say Titan and chills there for a bit, then comes back. Rinse, repeat.

So Rumfoord owns a spaceship, and he sends Malachi to Mars in it. Malachi's memory is wiped out and he is known only as Unk; he repeatedly tries to remember where he came from and who he is, but he (and everyone else on Mars) is under radio control. He's broken free and gone searching for his past something like seven times, but each time ends with his memory being erased more aggressively.

There aren't any stereotypical Martians on Mars: No green men with big heads or anything, just ex-Earth people. They're all in an Army and they're going to attack Earth. (Rumfoord is behind this entire operation.) They train for a bit (but not long enough) and launch their assault. It does not go well. They have far too few soldiers for the job^[3] and they're divided over a huge number of ships. To their credit, their first assault is successful: They manage to overthrow the couple of people on the moon and claim it as their own. As a "Warning Strike," they fire some rockets at the Earth that get burned up in the atmosphere. Earth, in retaliation, destroys the moon with like twenty nukes.^[4]

The Martian Army does not back down and keeps sending their ships to Earth, each one carrying like 50 soldiers and landing many, many miles away from one another. In the American South, farmers await the arrival of smaller ships and dispatch the soldiers themselves. Where actual Earth military is needed, the casualties are entirely on the Martian side. It's a slaughter, but it's a planned one.^[5]

When all of the soldiers are killed, Rumfoord sends the women and children in ships. They, too, are slaughtered -- and Rumfoord appears on Earth and explains that this whole time they've been killing transported Earthlings. Ostensibly, he does this to bind the whole human race together under a common tragedy, which is mostly what happens. He also decides to start a religion, the Church Of God The Utterly Indifferent, which is sort of like Deism.^[6]

In one of my favorite passages, Rumfoord commands that the people listen to him and follow his new religion -- abandoning their old ones -- because he can actually do miracles. He predicts the future, for example, and everything he says totally comes true. His teachings are viewed as more valid because of his actions, which is an awfully slippery slope,^[7] but it's exactly what happens.

The primary tenet of the Church is the adamant belief that no God has chosen us for anything. "Somebody up there likes me" and similar phrases are incredibly offensive, arrogant, and solipsistic. There is no plan.

During this whole thing, Malachi (Unk) is on the Mothership, a much slower, larger vessel with something like thirty years' worth of hot dogs, hamburgers, and soda. He goes to a different planet with glowing things, completely misses the "Oh the horror!" of the Martian genocide, and arrives on Earth well after Rumfoord has established his Church. This is where my memory fails me, but I think Rumfoord's predicted Malachi coming back to Earth, so his prediction is seen as the Big Miracle that convinces everyone completely that he's right. Malachi is then banished to Titan.

On Titan, there is a marooned "alien" explorer named Salo. His ship crashed and it needs a replacement part. He's stuck there for over 200 millenia, and he sends a distress signal to his home planet. His people manipulate human history and make mankind evolve so that they may produce the replacement part. The Great Wall of China, Stonehenge, and other human constructions are simply messages to Salo indicating how much progress has been made towards making the part.

That part is the ship that brings Malachi to Titan. Literally all of human history, everything was predetermined to bring a replacement part to a stranded alien.^[8] Rumfoord was a pawn. Free will doesn't exist.^[9]

Lol.

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[1] The idea being that you don't commit brain-space to things you hate; why remember the backstory of a minor character in a movie you found boring?↩

[2] Pretty sure he wakes up in his drained swimming pool and has his butler recount his evening to him, The Hangover-style. He gives all of his money away, telling everyone to take and sell whatever they can get their hands on.↩

[3] Something like 300,000.↩

[4] This reminded me of the scene in (I think) the first Austin Powers movie where the President threatens to blow up the moon. Yep. Here it is.↩

[5] DUM DUM DUM↩

[6] Sort of like, "Sure, God exists, but it doesn't affect our lives in any way; it's hands-off."↩

[7] If I taught people, for example, that murder was totally justified for any and all reasons, I would be regarded as (A) wrong and (B) insane. The Sirens Of Titan posits that if I made that claim and then levitated in mid-air, people would say, "Oh, this person is clearly a divine being and we must do what he tells us," even when what I say is immoral. Sure is a good thing no omni-benevolent God ever told anyone to do anything bad. That'd be zany.↩

[8] ↩

[9] ↩