Cat’s Cradle (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- First Published: 1963
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—apocalypse
- Time of Work: The early 1960’s
- Setting: The city of Ilium, New York, and the Republic of San Lorenzo, in the Caribbean
- Genres: Long fiction, Fable, Science fiction, Fantasy, Apocalyptic and catastrophe fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Traveling or travelers, Philosophy or philosophers, Caribbean, Wit or humor, End of the world, Atomic bomb, Ants, Ice, Inventions or inventors
- Locales: Ilium, NY, San Lorenzo, Caribbean
The Plot
Cat’s Cradle has a convoluted plot that develops with all the apparent chaos of a crazy quilt. The main character of the novel is its narrator, John, whose last name is not known; the novel, however, centers not on him but on ice-nine, the invention of a genius named Dr. Felix Hoenikker. Even in infinitesimal quantities, ice-nine freezes and transforms to ice-nine any liquid it contacts. The novel recounts how the world ends in an ice-nine chain reaction.
At the novel’s opening, Dr. Hoenikker, a Nobel Prize- winning scientist and one of the creators...
[The entire page is 1365 words long]
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