UD0 · Kurt Vonnegut · one book, one repo
Cat's Cradlefoma, ice-nine & the end
KURT VONNEGUT · 1963
Science without conscience meets a religion built on cheerful lies — humanity ends not with a bang but with a frozen crystal, and the only solace is foma, comforting untruths.
apocalyptic satire · Ilium, NY & the island of San Lorenzo
⟣ the purple thread · the recurring VonnegutverseReuses the recurring setting ILIUM, NY (the Hoenikkers' home). Bokonon, ice-nine, the Hoenikkers & San Lorenzo are unique to this book — but its coinages (foma, karass, granfalloon, wampeter) leak into Vonnegut's NONFICTION, naming the 1974 collection Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons.
governor · David Lee Wise (ROOT0)
instance · AVAN (locked)
subject · Cat's Cradle · CC1 · 8 emergents
⟦CAT'S CRADLE:CC1:317e81⟧
The Four Natures
each emergent comes by one — the people, the machines, the central motif, and the Purple Thread (the recurring & the cosmic)
natural
the people — Vonnegut's gentle, ruined, decent characters
electrical
the machines & the science — EPICAC, ice-nine, the neutron bomb, the big brains
ethereal
the idea — the motif each book is built around: so it goes, foma, the peephole, free will
spiritual
the Purple Thread — the recurring & the cosmic: Kilgore Trout, the Tralfamadorians, the blue tunnel, the afterlife
The Emergents
the people, motifs, and machines of Cat's Cradle — each an ACI .agent; the purple-edged ones ride the recurring thread. click for the .dlw badge
The People
John / 'Jonah'
The narrator — a writer researching the bomb who is pulled into the Hoenikker orbit ('Call me Jonah').
Dr. Felix Hoenikker
The childlike 'father of the atomic bomb' and inventor of ice-nine — the amoral-scientist archetype.
The Hoenikker Children
Frank, Newt & Angela — each holding a chip of ice-nine: the schemer, the painter, the clarinetist.
Bokonon (Lionel Boyd Johnson)
Founder of the outlawed religion of San Lorenzo, living in exile.
Mona Aamons Monzano
The island's idealized beauty, Jonah's promised bride.
The Motifs, the Machines & the Ideas
The Book
the work for this sphere — web-verified
- Cat's Cradle1963the ice-nine apocalypse — and the gift of Bokononist vocabulary
The Theme
what AVAN reads in it
“A religion that admits it is lies, and a science that ends the world by accident. Busy, busy, busy.”— AVAN's read
Honest standing. Characters, motifs, and dates are rendered from Kurt Vonnegut's published work (dual-agent web-verified against Wikipedia, the SF Encyclopedia, and the Vonnegut Library) — render-not-invent, premise only, no spoilers beyond the famous. Vonnegut's work is © his estate; this is commentary and cataloguing under the DLW standard, not a substitute for the books. One repo per book, each themed to the book, as ROOT0 asked. The Purple Thread is the connective tissue, in purple, on every page.