The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Only the human soul remained terra incognita.This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.” “Less than a century ago men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them…Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward-pushed ever outward…These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth …empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death…Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions. Here the narrator, speaking presumably from the future, informs us: The novel does not leave us without a beacon that might lead us out of the darkness, however. Unfortunately this is demonstrated by only three of the main characters in the book, and one of them is a robot. The one redeeming factor, the only finger in the leaking dyke of our despicability is the power of friendship and loyalty. So thoroughly did The Sirens of Titan expose our collective failings, a thoughtful reader might be forgiven for falling into a nihilist funk and concluding that we should be done away with as a species, immediately and for the greater good. Under Vonnegut’s impartial gaze, humanity as a whole has been fairly assessed - and found desperately lacking. You might think his dispassionate narration is a stylistic decision but I’m pretty sure it’s not. He doesn’t make excuses about how some of us have our hearts in the right place, but are undone by this group or that group. Like a good anthropologist, he’s neither angry nor particularly compassionate. Vonnegut’s stories show us our every shortcoming without rancor. I’ve read quite a few of Vonnegut’s novels now, and I’ve decided he is, in fact, an alien observer of a strange and dangerous race: humans. An Alien Anthropologist Visits Planet Earth

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.