Cat's Cradle

First edition hardback cover
Author	Kurt Vonnegut
Original title	Cat's Cradle
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Satire, Science fiction novel
Publisher	Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Publication date	1963
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-385-33348-X

Cat's Cradle is a 1963 science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It explores issues of science, technology and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way. Having turned down his original thesis, in 1971 the University of Chicago awarded Vonnegut his Master's degree in anthropology for Cat's Cradle. Image File history File linksMetadata No higher resolution available. ... Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ... In political geography and international politics, a country is a political division of a geographical entity, a sovereign territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation and government. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... 1867 edition of the satirical magazine Punch, a British satirical magazine, ground-breaking on popular literature satire. ... Some notable science fiction novels, in alphabetical order by title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke 334 by Thomas M. Disch An Age by Brian Aldiss The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... Holt, Rinehart and Winston, somethimes abbreviated as HRW or referred to as Holt, is an Austin, Texas based publishing company, that specializes in textbooks for use in secondary schools. ... Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... ISBN-13 represented as EAN-13 bar code (in this case ISBN 978-3-16-148410-0) The International Standard Book Number, ISBN, is a unique[1] commercial book identifier barcode. ... For the string game, see Cats cradle. ... Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ... The term arms race in its original usage describes a competition between two or more parties for military supremacy. ... The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. ... Anthropology (from Greek: ἀνθρωπος, anthropos, human being; and λόγος, logos, knowledge) is the comparative study of the physical and social characteristics of humanity through the examination of historical and present geographical distribution, cultural history, acculturation, and cultural relationships. ...

Plot summary

At the opening of the book, the narrator describes a time when he was planning to write a book about what important Americans did on the day Hiroshima was bombed. While researching this topic, the narrator becomes involved with the children of Felix Hoenikker, the fictional Nobel laureate physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb. As the novel progresses, the narrator learns of a substance called ice-nine, created by the late Hoenikker and now secretly in the possession of his children. Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature. When a crystal of ice-nine is brought into contact with liquid water, it becomes a seed that 'teaches' the molecules of liquid water to arrange themselves into the solid form, ice-nine; this is similar to the actual process of freezing of normal water. However in the case of 'ice-nine' this process is not easily reversible, as the melting point of ice-nine is 114.4 degrees Fahrenheit (45.8 degrees Celsius). The Japanese city of Hiroshima ) is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshū, the largest of Japans islands. ... Cats Cradle (ISBN 038533348X) is a 1963 science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ... The melting point of a crystalline solid is the temperature at which it changes state from solid to liquid. ... Fahrenheit is a temperature scale named after the German-Dutch physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736), who proposed it in 1724. ... Celsius is, or relates to, the Celsius temperature scale (previously known as the centigrade scale). ...

Note: Vonnegut's fictional ice-nine is not to be confused with the real substance Ice IX (also pronounced "ice-nine"), which does not have the properties of Vonnegut's fictional ice-nine. See the article on ice for more details. Ice IX is a metastable form of solid water that exists at temperatures below 140K and pressures between 200 and 400 MPa. ... Snowflakes by Wilson Bentley, 1902 Ice is the name given to any one of the 14 known solid phases of water. ...

Felix Hoenikker, although dead, is in some ways the central character of the book. It is the narrator's quest for biographical details about Hoenikker that provides both the background and the connecting thread between the various subsections of the story. Hoenniker himself is depicted as amoral and apathetic towards anything other than his research, a genius who does not care how his research is used, as in his role of "Father of the Atomic Bomb", and in his creation of "ice-nine", something he saw as a mental puzzle (suggested by a Pentagon general) which ends up destroying life on Earth.

The narrator and the Hoenikker children eventually end up on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, one of the poorest countries on Earth, where the people speak a barely comprehensible dialect of English. For example "twinkle, twinkle, little star" is rendered "Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store". It is ruled by the fictional dictator "Papa" Monzano, who threatens all opposition with impalement on a giant Hook, although it is revealed later on that the hook is only actually used once every two years. The Republic of San Lorenzo is a fictional country from the Kurt Vonnegut satire Cats Cradle (1963), where much of the books second half takes place. ...

The religion of the people of San Lorenzo, called Bokononism, encompasses concepts unique to the novel, with San Lorenzan names such as: Bokononism is the fictional religion practiced by many of the characters in Kurt Vonneguts novel Cats Cradle. ...

• karass - a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The people can be thought of as fingers in a Cat's Cradle.
• duprass - a karass of only two people, who almost always die together. The typical example is a loving couple who work together for a great purpose.
• granfalloon - a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is "Hoosiers"; Hoosiers are people who went to college in Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so really share little more than a name.
• wampeter - the central point of a karass
• foma - harmless untruths
• wrang-wrang - Someone that steers a Bokononist away from their line of perception
• vin-dit - a sudden shove in the direction of Bokononism
• saroon - to acquiesce to a vin-dit
• duffle - the destiny of thousands of people placed on one person
• stuppa - a fogbound child
• sin-wat - a man who wants all of somebody's love for himself
• pool-pah - wrath of God, "shit storm"
• Busy, busy, busy - words Bokononists whisper when they see an example of how interconnected everything is

The supreme act of worship of the Bokononists is called 'boku-maru', which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons. A karass is a group of people who, unbeknownst to them, are collectively doing Gods will. ... A duprass, in the fictional religion of Bokononism (invented by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cats Cradle), is defined as a karass that consists of only two people. ... --Bokonon A granfalloon, in the religion of Bokononism invented by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cats Cradle, is defined as a false karass. That is, it is a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is...

It is supposed to result in peace and joy between the two communicants, and when detected, is of course punished with death by the dictator, who wishes his people to be as scared, isolated and oppressed as possible. This dictator, ironically, is hailed as "one of Freedom's greatest friends" by representatives of the American government.

The dictator has bribed a son of Felix Hoenikker with a high government appointment in exchange for a piece of ice-nine, and he uses it to commit suicide as he lies dying from inoperable cancer. Consistent with the properties of 'ice-nine' the dictator's corpse instantly turns into a block of solid ice at normal room temperature. A sudden airplane crash into the dictator's seaside palace causes his still-frozen body to tumble into the ocean, at which point all the water in the world's seas, rivers, and groundwater also turns into ice-nine in a gigantic chain reaction, which destroys the ecology of the earth and causes the extinction of practically all life forms, including humans, in only a few days.

In Vonnegut's own words: (from Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons)

The title of the book derives from the string game "cat's cradle". Early in the book, we learn that Felix Hoenikker was playing cat's cradle when the atom bomb was dropped. The game is later referenced by Newt Hoenikker, Felix's dwarf son. A string figure is a pattern formed by weaving string around ones fingers, or sometimes between the fingers of multiple people. ... Cats cradle is a well known string game or series of string figures. ...

The character Felix Hoenikker was inspired by Irving Langmuir, a scientist at General Electric in Schenectady, New York, where Vonnegut worked in the 1950s, with the town of Ilium representing Schenectady in many of Vonnegut's works. Langmuir himself came up with the idea of ice-nine as a joke. In terms of characterization, however, Hoenikker is a composite figure assembled from Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller, the two scientists who finalized the math for the H-Bomb. Irving Langmuir at home (c. ... This article is about the American company. ... Union Colleges Nott Memorial, one of the most recognized buildings in Schenectady Schenectady (IPA ) is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. ... Stanisław Ulam in the 1950s. ... Edward Teller (original Hungarian name Teller Ede) (January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Austria-Hungary-born American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as the father of the hydrogen bomb. ...

The Hoenikker family also shares some characteristics with Vonnegut's own.^{[citation needed]}

Cat's Cradle was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1964. The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works. ...

A few years after the publication of Cat's Cradle, Soviet scientists announced the discovery of polywater, a substance that seemed eerily similar to ice-nine. The fervor around polywater lasted a few years but subsided when the initial results were shown to have been caused by impurities. Polywater was a hypothetical polymerized form of water that was the subject of much scientific controversy during the late 1960s. ...

Movie adaptation

The book was adapted into script form by Richard Kelly, the writer and director of Donnie Darko. A film adaptation of Cat's Cradle was expected to be made in 2007 but now it appears unlikely to be produced. Richard Kelly (born March 28, 1975) is an American film director and writer, best known for 2001s Donnie Darko. ... For the fictional character, see Donald Darko. ...

The book has been picked up by Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way. Father and son team James and Jake Hart have been linked to the developing script. There is no word yet if DiCaprio will star in the film or not.

Trivia

The famous virtuoso guitar player Joe Satriani wrote a song called Ice 9 that is based on the substance in the book Joe Satch Satriani (born on July 15, 1956, in Westbury, New York, USA) is an American guitarist and former guitar instructor. ... Ice-9 is a fictional material conceived by science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Cats Cradle. ...

External links and quotations

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Cat's Cradle

• Bokononism All of the text from Cat's Cradle which refers to Bokononism (including the Books of Bokonon).
• The Books of Bokonon online
• Definition of karass
• Definition of granfalloon