Sirens, on my brief reflection only having finished the book maybe an hour ago, is more comprehensible as a linear story, but still has that kind of jumping around quality. I was shocked and baffled to go back to the beginning of the novel because I had completely forgotten that the story started with someone from the future lamenting how humans of the past didn't know how to discover the meaning of life within themselves through the "53 portals." What? This is where the story started? And where does it go from here? Following Malachi Constant from being the richest man on Earth to fighting his destiny to be sent to Mars by throwing away all of his wealth, being sent to the Mars Army and having all of his memories erased, becoming Bunk, living on Mercury for 3 years searching for escape with Boaz, then being sent back to Earth as both messiah and devil, and then being launched into space once again to Titan as a human sacrifice with his "wife" and child for the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, so that finally his child could deliver a replacement piece for an alien named Salo that is delivering a message of "greetings." Seriously. What an insane book. I think any other author could have made an entire book out of each of its settings and pieces, yet here is Sirens running the whole gamut and making sense. It's like a beautiful magic trick and, though I need to reread all these books at some point, this book I feel I especially need to reread to understand all the little clues along the way to the finale.
This is one of those books that make me just have to sit for a while and think about what I've read. I've been feeling like I don't have purpose recently and I find it saddening to be an atheist because that means that you have to come up with a purpose for your life on your own. Sirens is interesting because it presents that exact feeling. The meaning of life for humans in the book is ultimately to bring a small metal fragment to an alien that is marooned on Titan. Everything great that humanity has done is in service for something so banal, so an alien could deliver a message to the other side of the universe that is only one dot and means "greetings." With the help of Rumfoord he is able to release humanity from a deterministic religious world in which everyone serves God into serving a religion in which they acknowledge the indifference of God. So they switch from one religion to another only to declare that their purpose in serving God is a farce? I can't even wrap my mind around this. That they all burden themselves in one way or another so that they can't gain an advantage whether physically, mentally, or otherwise is also amusing. What is the point of this? So that no human has to feel inferior anymore? That will eliminate sadness? I don't know, but the ultimate message I got was that these humans are stuck in situations that they have no control over and even when they fight to escape this future they are doing exactly what was planned for them. This one part really hit me about the purposelessness and futility in trying to manufacture a sense of purpose for ourselves, the legend of the origin of Tralfamadorians:
Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others.Of course this is a dig at humans and our ceaseless search for purpose first in religion and then turning our intellect over into machines or AI or what have you. It's like the Tralfmadores are the future of humanity as we know it now, and the humans in the book are humans who are blessed enough to gain the knowledge that the universe is a hard and meaningless place.
These creatures spend most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame.
And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough.
So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.
And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be.
The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all.
The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else.
And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore."
And the gut punch ending of a message:
It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.It's interesting that he says "a" purpose of human life, not the purpose of human life. Maybe that's what those other 52 portals into the human soul would reveal. But even then, the perfect machine made to follow orders from the gas galaxy in which all decisions, morals, and actions are formed in the gaseous hivemind, he would abandon his one directive to not open the message before his destination in the name of love and friendship for Rumsfoord. Perhaps that is the purpose of life and nothing more. To serve each other as humans and to love one another, not to be searching for some eternal higher truth or vain pursuit of fame, fortune, and glory.
Other interesting notes:
Getting stock tips from the Bible. If Constant's father got all of this stock tips from the Bible and Malachi is a messenger for God (or Salo and the Tralfamadores) is the Bible just another part of humanity that was conceived light years away so that Malachi could be delivered to Salo?
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Boaz. Poor Boaz. Or fortunate Boaz? I don't know how to interpret this character. He becomes a pretty major figure during the middle portion of the book but then is cast off once Malachi leaves Mercury. Was his life and his destination on Mercury all part of the plan too? He seems like a tragic character to me because he, from what I can remember, was picked up from a not so great life on Earth at a young age, then turned into a Martian Commander with what is seemingly a purpose, but really not since he doesn't even know where his orders come from. And then he isn't even part of the Martian suicide mission, but rather he is left marooned on Mercury. Maybe Boaz represents the idea of love in the purest form, encapsulated when he says this:
“I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I'm doing good, and them I'm doing good for know I'm doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home.”He loves and cares for the harmoniums the best he can and that's all he wants to do for the rest of his life. But isn't he in some way a god to the harmoniums because he can give them music and a sense of ecstacy that they've never known before? Maybe that, in addition for his love for the harmoniums, is the purpsoe that he was able to find within himself. I don't know how to make of Boaz keeping from Malachi the fact that it was he himself that mudered his best friend Stony.
"Don't turth me, Unk," said Boaz, "and I won't truth you."This also leaves me sort of confused. What would have happened if Boaz had told Unk the horrifying truth? Is ignorance bliss in this instance? What's the truth that Unk is trying to tell Boaz? That the harmoniums don't have any thought and aren't capable of any human emotions so his caring for them is essentially moot?
This was a pretty heart wrenching moment in the book.
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“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
This perfectly encapsulates my overarching worldview. As much as I may believe in freewill and having control over our fates, I can't help but feel that the universe and human actions are all the result of some accidents and the most important moments in history are out of human control. I know there's probably a million ways to rebut this, but I do feel that so much is out of our control. It also defines the premise of the stuff that I love so much. Catch 22, Huck Finn, Coen Brother movies, and, recently, The Wire. In The Wire people are for the most part working competently to make money or do good police work or what have you, but every step of the way something stands in the way. They all stand in each others ways either unwittingly or on purpose, but the invisible threads from the character's perspectives are as strong or stronger than the intentional threads.
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Anyway, this book is to be revisited.
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