Continuing my literary adventures in sci-fi, I picked up Cat’s Cradle, the third novel by Kurt Vonnegut. Coincidentally the hero of Ready Player One named his spaceship the Vonnegut so there’s a segway.

(Spoilers ahead) Our narrator Jono, an American college student, embarks on writing a book about the day on which the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. He engages with the children of Dr Felix Hoenikker, a fictional co-inventor of the atomic bomb.

Jono tracks down one of Frank, one of the children, to a small caribbean dictatorship where he has been appointed Major General. The rest of the story just ambles around. Dr Hoenikker invented a variant of water called Ice Nine, which freezes at 45 degrees. When he froze himself to death with it, his children each took a piece. Frank gave his to the island’s dictator, who kills himself with it, and then drops into the sea, causing the entire world’s water supply to be instantly frozen. The world comes to an end. The characters of the book survive for a while in a bunker, and eventually the hero encounters the mysterious religious leader Bokonon before the story suddenly ends.

I felt a bit lost with this one. The scenes weren’t painted with enough detail for me - I felt like my imagination was really filling in the gaps. And the whole Bokononism religious tangent just bored me. The book doesn’t go anywhere. It’s not particularly humorous or clever. It didn’t leave me thinking. And the imagery was lacking. Overall I’ve no idea why it’s celebrated, apart from the concept of ice nine which came from elsewhere anyway.