The sirens of Titan

Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fictionWhen Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour. But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will be.

He knows, for instance, that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world.

He also knows that on Titan - one of Saturn's moons - is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore, who has been waiting 200,000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft . . . A finalist for the 1960 Hugo Award, The Sirens of Titan was Vonnegut's second novel.

It received wide acclaim, and played with ideas of free will and predestination, themes he continued to explore in his later works.

In 2015, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. -'The Sirens of Titan is marvellous. It's so funny it made me want to cry' - Infinity Plus'A classic, ripe with wit and eloquence and a cascade of inventiveness' - Brian Aldiss 'His best book . . . He dares not only to ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it' - Esquire