"Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut

The narrator of "Cat's Cradle" is John, a writer who sets out to write a book entitled "The Day the World Ended", focussing on the human side of the events of August 6th 1945 when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The book is narrated from the future at the end of the novel, as the narrator recollects the events that brought him to where he is now. During his research for his original book he corresponds with two of the three children of the late Dr. Felix Hoenikker, fictionally attributed as the "father" and inventor of the atomic bomb. Dr. Hoenikker's now grown-up children Newt and Angela talk of their father's eccentric personality and his detached approach to their upbringing. Felix was a strange genius who playfully pursued unsolved problems and new inventions based on his mood and fickle interests. Towards the end of his life, Dr. Hoenikker secretly invented a substance, "Ice-Nine", a sort of isotope of water which solidifies at room temperature and transforms all other water it touches into the same substance. When Felix dies on Christmas eve at his family's holiday home at Cape Cod, his three children divide the small quantity of Ice-Nine amongst themselves, with the intent of keeping the existence of the substance a secret. However, all three children succumb to using part of their share to get ahead in the world; Angela marries a handsome weapons research scientist in the U.S.; Newt has a brief affair with a Ukrainian dancer, who subsequently steals part of his portion before returning to the Soviet Union. Frank Hoenikker, Felix's other child, finds himself washed up on the shores of the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo (after a series of run-ins with a Cuban smuggling ring) where he is taken in by the island's dictator "Papa" Monzano and made the small nation's Major General, secretly in exchange for his portion of Ice-Nine.

The narrator's research eventually brings him to San Lorenzo, and by co-incidence Angela and Newt have caught the same flight to attend's their brother's wedding with the island's most beautiful woman and adopted daughter of Papa Monzano, Mona. On the flight the narrator also meets Mr. and Mrs. Crosby, who are emigrating to San Lorenzo to try and start a bicycle manufacturing business and Mr. Horlick Minton, the recently appointed U.S. Ambassador to San Lorenzo, who is accompanied by his wife Claire. It is at this point in the story that the narrator is first introduced to "Bokonism", a fictional religion, outlawed on San Lorenzo but practised by almost all it's population. From the beginning of the novel as the narrator recalls the events of the story, he has identified himself as a "Bokonist", a religion whose central tenets revolve around the folly of "truth" and the absurdity of life and the universe. It's founder Lionel Boyd Johnson arrived at the island by shipwreck more than forty years ago and is a cult figure on the island, living in hiding. When the narrator arrives he learns that "Papa" is near death, and is coerced by Frank Hoenikker into accepting the position of Papa's replacement as the president of the island. Frank, who was to be President, desires only to be left to his position of running the "technical" aspects of the nation, shying away from having to deal with people.

During a ceremony at Papa's castle to commemorate San Lorenzans who lost their life while in transit to fight with the allies in the second world war, the narrator is hurried into Papa's room by his physician who has found him dead and frozen solid. Papa has ended his suffering by drinking the small vial of Ice-Nine he carries on a chain around his neck. Recalling a previous story of Dr. Felix Hoenikker given by his supervisor at his old research laboratory in which a U.S. army general requested Dr. Hoenikker to invent a substance that could instantly turn mud into solid ice, the narrator puts two and two together and realises that Ice-Nine exists and that Frank had brought it with him to San Lorenzo. The narrator calls in the Hoenikker children and they attempt to hide the body and decontaminate the Papa's room of all traces of Ice-Nine. Through an incredible stroke of bad luck (or perhaps just fate as a Bokonist might interpret it), a plane crashes into one side of the castle during the war remembrance ceremony and during the ensuing landslide of one section of the castle, Papa's body is thrown into the sea, setting of a chain reaction that freezes all the world's oceans and essentially ends most life on the entire planet.

Surviving the apocalypse within an underground bomb shelter, the narrator spends the next months writing a book about the events. A handful of the characters survive and continue to live from within a sheltered cave. One day while foraging for supplies, the narrator comes across Bokonon himself who is pondering what the last words of his life's work, "The Books of Bokonon" should be. Bokonon states that if here were a younger man he would write a statement on the stupidity of humanity and take his book to the highest peak of San Lorenzo before consuming the Ice-Nine that covers all, presumably sparking an idea for what the narrator should do himself.

"Cat's Cradle" is both hilarious and depressing at the same time. The fundamental subject matter of the novel is deeply depressing; the characters live lonely lives, strive to make a difference or make sense of the world around them and nothing is ever understood, all their endeavours futile and pointless and everything and everyone is wiped away to oblivion at the end of the novel. There is no catharsis. But overlaying the fundamental themes, Vonnegut writing is funny, gentle, personal and original. His characters are fantastic; he uses a lot of contrasting caricatures but the characters still contain so much depth. I love the way they reveal themselves through the conversations they have with the narrator. The novel challenges religion, scientific progress and war, and provides a fairly strong critique of these three. Bokonism is playfully self-deprecating, declaring itself to be nothing but shameless lies (with it's many amusing and interesting concepts and words for fate and the mystical interactions of different people's lives). It's message is that life is absurd and random; God's plan will never be understood and chance, connection and coincidence lead to events that humans have no control over. Like "Slaughterhouse Five" the book also carries fairly strong anti-war themes, with parallels to be drawn between the Ice-Nine apocalypse and the potential consequences of the nuclear arms race (which was in full swing during the cold war era in which the book was written).

This was a really great book, which I thoroughly enjoyed (like "Slaughterhouse Five"). The writing is funny, very engaging and easy to read with a frenetic pace to the story and presentation, so a lot is covered in a short number of pages with no fluff and boring bits. Recommended reading, but be warned you might feel fairly depressed by the end of it.

"Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner

Written in the 1960s, "Stand on Zanzibar" is fictional account of the future world of 2010, told using a series of different techniques including story threads with central characters, vignettes of life in the future world using minor characters, streams from pop-culture and television commercials and snippets from real and fictional books and newspaper articles. Brunner's vision of the future revolves mainly around the theme of over-population and the resulting social, political and environmental disorder that follows. "Eugenics" laws forbid procreation by citizens labelled as possessing sub-standard genes. The reality of living in close-quarters with large groups of other people results in acts of socially-undermining sabotage and "muckers", a phenomena in which one undergoes a psychotic episode and attempts to kill or main those around them. Throughout the novel, Brunner creates a picture of a busy and out-of-control world, raising issues such as the right the bear children, media monopoly and the control of social opinion, recreational drug use, social disorder, rioting and general hysteria.

Two of the central characters, Donald Hogan and Norman House share a New York apartment but don't have much else in common. Norman is an African American junior executive at General Technics, a huge multi-national corporation with ownership in everything from chemicals, nano-technology, the aerospace industry and "Shalmaneser", a mega-brain classed supercomputer which is used for everything from advising the future direction of the company to forecasting social and pop-culture trends. Donald works as a Dilettanti, a sort of academic in cross-disciplinary studies, but secretly signed up to be a spy for the US government ten years previously and is waiting anxiously, hoping that he is never called up for active duty. When the US ambassador to the tiny, under-developed African nation of Beninia requests help from General Technics to invest finances into the country on the eve of it's long-standing president's impending retirement, Norman is given the reigns on the project to bring the nation up to twenty-first century standards. Shalmaneser is used to plan a program of development that will improve the economic output and standard of living in Beninia, with financial gains for the company in access to a key shipping port and by providing labour for a mid-atlantic mining project owned by the company. The rest of the story thread deals with themes of racial politics, the growing divide between rich and poor and neo-colonialism of the third world by mega-corporations, albeit in a slightly less cynical flavour than one might expect from reading the surrounding stories. When Norman travels to Beninia, he is enchanted by the people who live there and is fascinated by the reasons why the small nation had not already been gobbled up by colonialism and the greed of it's bigger, war-mongering neighbours; later developments at the end of the novel reveal that the people living there contain a gene mutation that causes a pheromonal signal of pacification. Meanwhile, Donald's worst nightmare comes true and he is called up for service in the south-east asian country of Yatakang, a military dictatorship at odds with the US. Yatakang has claimed that it's top medical researcher, Dr. Sugaiguntung has just discovered a breakthrough in genetics that allows for parents with un-desirable genes to have perfectly healthy babies (in fact ones even superior to the regular stock). The claim has caused political pressure in the US because citizens have demanded that their government also make such treatments available to them. Donald is "eptified" (a sort of mental programming) in the art of assassination and sent into Yatakang with the secret cover of a reporter to either prove Dr. Sugaiguntung's claims false or return fruitful research data into the hands of the US. By an act of fate, Donald saves Dr. Sugaiguntung from a mucker, and indebted to Donald, the doctor confides that the claims are false, that the current dictatorship of Yatakang forced him to make the claims for political reasons, and agrees to defect to the US. When the doctor has second thoughts at the final stages of a lengthy and bloody attempt to steal him from the country, Donald's eptified killer instincts kick in and he accidentally kills the doctor. Donald is left a broken man, never able to return to normal society and never able to repair the psychological damage wrought by his eptification.

Brunner creates some pretty decent extrapolations from the 1960s to the present day; he was very close in his population estimate and managed to capture well the themes of growing divide between rich and poor, mega-corporations vs. the third world, media monopoly/control of social opinion; other predictions such as eugenics legislation and the hysteria and social disorder following over-population are not quite as accurate but still convincingly portrayed. Political meddling in the third world by superpowers is a definite theme of the novel, perhaps reflecting the war-by-proxy politics of Vietnam and the cold war, within which timeframe the book was written. The use of the "context", "the happening world" and "tracking with close-ups" chapters is really nice, and to me is what makes the book. Brunner paints a vivid tapestry of life in his dystopian future through the snippets of minor character's lives, snatches from newspaper articles and screenplays for television ads and pop-music videos. The continuity chapters started off well and built up the interest and tension but both Norman and Donald's story threads had reasonably disappointing endings. I didn't really see the point in threading together the stories at the end and the "revelation" of the genetic explanations for the "Shinka effect" seemed a bit far fetched; I didn't really get the point. Also, there were characters like Bronwyn which seemed to be important to the story, like she might be a counter-agent, but then were just abandoned. The book is is bit difficult to follow and work through for the first couple of non-continuity chapters, but you get the hang of it after a while. Brunner's prose gets a bit challenging to follow at times, particular in the opening sentences of some chapters .. he has this habit of placing the context of the sentence right at the end so sometimes you find yourself having to re-read the sentence a few times to make sense of it.

Overall, an interesting and ambitious work that is worth reading because it's intelligent and different, and gives a nice insight into the new-wave science fiction genre.