Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

I was a God-fearing thirteen year old scared of burning in hell for all eternity, but after reading that book, I just thought about how there was already enough absurd suffering, that worshipping any deity was less important and less impactful than just being kind.

I think for plot/writing reasons (similar to The Martian), Grace’s crew died. I wish there was a bigger deal made about the mysterious sleep deaths too, mostly because story-wise it’s a great character beat/world-building piece for Rocky as it’d be horrifying for him in context.

The explosion deaths are also pretty convenient to leave Grace on his own, show that stupid crazy terrible things happen as per the style of disaster stories, and more to show the contrast between actually very competent ideal candidates and Grace himself (again setting up his predicament).

Yes, rather it more like Arrival and recognize the complexities of not just understanding an alien language, but culture and cognitive framework etc. Recognizing, that yeah, as a romping sci fi adventure, this is probably not the book for that, but that’s what you get for introducing aliens and not setting up a star trek hand wave commonality about it. It’s not a fully big deal in that context, just unfortunately on top of everything else (the world somewhat working together to fight an existential threat, ha, very funny), kind of broke my suspension of disbelief in a camel back broken straw way. It’s very much less a controversy for people if they just accept this book the way they accept drill rig astronauts from Armageddon, just enjoy the ride.

Opposing opinions about the writing aside (personally didn’t like how they treated translating alien language), I haven’t heard anyone talk about how incredibly traumatic Grace’s experience >!would seem to Rocky. Dude went to sleep with absolutely no one watching and woke up with the rest of his crew dead. His crew also dying in their sleep. Like the number one horror that could befall someone because they all slept unattended.!<

Opposing opinions about the writing aside (personally didn’t like how they treated translating alien language), I haven’t heard anyone talk about how incredibly traumatic Grace’s experience >!would seem to Rocky. Dude went to sleep with absolutely no one watching and woke up with the rest of his crew dead. His crew also dying in their sleep. Like the number one horror that could befall someone because they all slept unattended.!<