From Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

Jim Burns "The Sirens of Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut (Science Fiction Monthly 1976)

Source (Twitter)

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

Crescent Moon Beyond Greek Temple: Why is a thin crescent moon never seen far from a horizon? Because the only geometry that gives a thin crescent lunar phase occurs when the Moon appears close to the Sun in the sky. The crescent is not caused by the shadow of the Earth, but by seeing only a small part of the Moon directly illuminated by the Sun. Moreover, the thickest part of the crescent always occurs in the direction of the Sun. In the evening, a thin crescent Moon will set shortly after the Sun and not be seen for the rest of the night. Alternatively, in the morning, a crescent Moon will rise shortly before the Sun after not being seen for most of the night. Pictured two weeks ago, a crescent moon was captured near the horizon, just before sunrise, far behind remnants of the ancient Temple of Poseidon in Greece.

Image Credit & Copyright: Elias Chasiotis  ::  [Scott Horton]

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“Time passed quickly. Constant did not move.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

You'll find the other polls in my 'sf polls' tag / my pinned post. I also have a 'fantasy polls' tag and 'fairy tales' tag in my pinned post.

I just think it’s cool…

tralfamadorians are so different between The Sirens of Titan and Slaughter-House Five idk

It is always difficult to love a novel without a likeable protagonist. This one sort of almost does, at its very end, when all the existential planet-hopping dadaism of a wacky 50s scifi resolves into a series of achingly human portraits - and a portrait of humanity generally - with quick, sure strokes. Its resolution is strong and the rest of it, even if it’s nothing more than a wildly weird ride to get there, at least passes swiftly.

Galactic Gazetteer: Tralfamadore

Appearances: "The Sirens of Titan" (Kurt Vonnegut, 1959); "Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade" (Vonnegut, 1969); Slaughterhouse-Five (film, 1972)

Type: terrestrial planet

Location: Small Magellanic Cloud

Inhabitants: Tralfamadorians

Fun fact: in "The Sirens of Titan," the Tralfamadorians were mechanical creatures developed by a race of superbeings to search for meaning in existence.

Another fun fact: in "Slaughterhouse-Five," they were green, plunger-shaped organisms thst existed four-dimensionally, experiencing all of time at once.

Fun fact 3: in "Hocus Pocus" (1990), Tralfamadore is noted as the meeting place for transdimensional superbeings, while in "Timequake" (1997) it is noted as the meeting place for the personifications of chemical elements.

From Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan

Currently Reading

…And currently why I never seem to finish books. The pile only grows.

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

It was all so sad. But it was all so beautiful, too.

Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan (p. 312)