I came across this title in my search for a book in the Science Fiction genre – a genre pretty much unknown to me so I had no reference point of familiarity.
Having read it, I’m not sure whether the purists regard this as fair dinkum sci-fi; I think it would fit into the genre of political satire, maybe even religious satire. It appears to revolve around the thesis that ‘pure’ scientists developed products for the purpose of solving a particular problem, without regard for the dangers of unintended consequences. Hence, the narrator, John (Jonah) goes in search of ‘the average American’ account of what people were doing on the day Hiroshima was devastated. His particular targets are the offspring of Felix Hoenikker, the character drawn from the physicist who played a part in developing the Atom Bomb to enable the war-weary USA to end the war against Japan.
Initially, Jonah interviews Hoenikker’s scientific supervisor ‘only on paper’ who describes Hoenikker’s obsession with a military officer’s ironic statement that the most valuable invention for the military would be a way to ‘keep them out of the mud’; apparently most soldiers considered the constant slogging through mud with heavy loads their biggest complaint about army life. Hoenniker’s response was to develop a substance called ‘ ice-nine’ which, while remaining solid at room temperature, would immediately turn liquid water into solid form: just one crystal of ice-nine would solidify a swamp or river. This substance remained in the inventor’s possession, ultimately to be in the possession of his three dysfunctional offspring.
Their characters appear to draw on stereotypical society misfits of the time: Frank, the antisocial kid who tortured insects, hated school and spent his early life building and designing miniature buildings and planning miniature towns with an exquisite talent. This talent combined with his antipathy to regulation, led him to a job as Chief Architect on the remote island of San Lorenzo. Sister Angela, described as 6-feet-tall and horse-faced (double-whammy misfit qualifications for a girl!), has had to stay at home to care for her father after the death of her mother, and had no prospects of personal happiness until the day of her father’s funeral, when a former acquaintance knocked on the door, and she married him 3 weeks later! Baby brother Newton, a dwarf, suffered all the negative social implications of that condition, and thought he had found happiness in an affair with a Russian dwarf dancer who, having taken asylum in USA, promptly applied to go back to Russia rather than live with the media frenzy created by the affair: he was heartbroken and targeted by the tabloid media because of the novel situation, but years later, as a well-adjusted human being, takes pleasure in the fact that he ‘…may not have a marriage, but at least I had a honeymoon’.
The mythical Caribbean island of San Lorenzo becomes the gathering place for all the main characters of the book, as the narrator, Jonah, is sent there on another story, and is hoping to find the beautiful woman with whose picture he has fallen in love. In the meantime, he has discovered a cult-like religion called Bokononism; named for its founder, an African-American whose name, Johnson, translates as Bokonon in the dialect native to San Lorenzo. He had arrived there after being shipwrecked on one of his lifelong adventures in search of higher learning. The miracle of this survival gave him an epiphany:
“A fish pitched up
By the angry sea,
I gasped on land
And I became me.”
He felt reborn, and determined to surrender to whatever fate brought him after emerging naked from salt water. Features of this fatalistic belief system fascinate Jonah, and events in the book seem made to fit his conversion to its beliefs.
Thus, for various reasons, Jonah, the 3 Hoenikker children, and two other couples (the Mintons, stereotypical Darby and Joan; and the Crosbys, quintessential insensitive Ugly Americans) meet on a flight to San Lorenzo. During the flight, character elements are drawn out of each of the people and analysed by Jonah as the narrator: this section of the book, with all its irony about Christian beliefs, the American way of life, and the cruel condescension shown to minorities, was the highlight for me.
On San Lorenzo, it becomes obvious that the dictatorial ruler is terminally ill, and further, that he has in his possession a quantity of ‘ice-9’ – the use he makes of it, and the consequences for the island and its inhabitants, including the passengers on the recently-arrived flight, are indeed the stuff of science fiction. By the end I found it a bit tiresome, but there is no doubting the power of Vonnegut’s satirical prose, particularly in the context of that era, when America and the whole world began seriously to wonder and worry about where untamed scientific advance might lead us. The ‘cat’s cradle’ of the title is explained in a typically unexpected sequence, but I won’t disclose it!
Helen
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