His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history, with much of the story revolving around a Martian invasion of Earth.

Traveling between Earth and Mars, his ship—carrying Rumfoord and his dog, Kazak—entered a phenomenon known as a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, which is defined in the novel as "those places ... where all the different kinds of truths fit together".

On Titan, the only place where he can exist permanently as a solid human being, Rumfoord befriends a traveller from Tralfamadore (a world that also figures in Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, among others) who needs a small metal component to repair his damaged spaceship.

As it turns out, the replacement part is a small metal strip, brought to Salo by Constant and his son Chrono (born of Rumfoord's ex-wife).

The Sirens of Titan largely deals with questions of free will, with multiple characters being stripped of it and the revelation that humanity had been secretly manipulated for millennia for an inane purpose, playing major roles in the story.

[1] More broadly speaking, lack of agency has been a hallmark of Vonnegut's novels, with the protagonists struggling against forces they can never overcome and often can't comprehend.

"[3] Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction in 1961 rated The Sirens of Titan 4.5 stars out of five, stating that "The plot is tangled, intricate and tortuous" but "the book, though exasperating, is a joy of inventiveness".

[5] William Deresiewicz, in a 2012 retrospective published after a second Library of America collection of Vonnegut's work was released, wrote:[6] Artistically, though, [Player Piano] is apprentice work—clunky, clumsy, overstuffed.

Pleasant, MI) staged a production of "The Sirens Of Titan" under the direction of Professor Elbert Bowen, featuring Terry O'Quinn in the role of Malachi Constant.

Vonnegut sold the film rights to Sirens of Titan to Jerry Garcia, guitarist and vocalist for rock band The Grateful Dead.

So our task has been to take the essential dramatic relationships, make it playable for actors, so that it's free from the Big Picture emphasis of the book.

After waiting a "respectable period of time", Robert B. Weide, who had written and produced the 1996 film adaptation of Mother Night and had been working on a Vonnegut documentary for years (it would after long last be released in 2021), asked the author about the status of the rights.

[15] Vonnegut bought back the rights from Garcia's estate and gave them to Weide on a "verbal handshake", where they remained for years while he attempted to write and find backers for his adaptation.

[16] On July 19, 2017, it was announced that the novel would be adapted as a TV series and would be directed by Dan Harmon, who will be collaborating with Evan Katz on the project.

[17][18] In a 1979 interview released in 2007, Douglas Adams discussed Vonnegut as an influence on The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:[19] 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.