<Tr> <Th> LC Class </Th> <Td> PS3572. O5 S57 2006 </Td> </Tr> <P> The Sirens of Titan is a Hugo Award - nominated novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., first published in 1959 . His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history . Much of the story revolves around a Martian invasion of Earth . </P> <P> Malachi Constant is the richest man in a future America . He possesses extraordinary luck that he attributes to divine favor which he has used to build upon his father's fortune . He becomes the centerpoint of a journey that takes him from Earth to Mars in preparation for an interplanetary war, to Mercury with another Martian survivor of that war, back to Earth to be pilloried as a sign of Man's displeasure with his arrogance, and finally to Titan where he again meets the man ostensibly responsible for the turn of events that have befallen him, Winston Niles Rumfoord . </P> <P> Rumfoord comes from a wealthy New England background . His private fortune was large enough to fund the construction of a personal spacecraft, and he became a space explorer . 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 ." When they enter the infundibulum, Rumfoord and Kazak become "wave phenomena", somewhat akin to the probability waves encountered in quantum mechanics . They exist along a spiral stretching from the Sun to the star Betelgeuse . When a planet, such as the Earth, intersects their spiral, Rumfoord and Kazak materialize, temporarily, on that planet . </P>

I was a victim of a series of accidents as are we all