Amazon.com: Cat’s Cradle: Books: Kurt Vonnegut
I wound up writing this review because recently, in a flight of fancy, someone conjectured that perhaps in other 
parts of the universe silicon forms four bonds, making ring structures – similar to the carbon-based benzene ring that is the basis of all organic materials – possible. My question was whether silicon-based amino-acid analogues would “teach” the silicon in this part of the universe to form the same kind of rings. Carbon-based DNA teaches raw amino acids how to make more DNA, so that begs the question of whether such structures would propagate.
Ice-9 does just that.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle isn’t quite as absurd as it seems.
Ice-9 is a form of ice with a different structure than regular ice. It is frozen solid at room temperature. Further, when it comes into contact with 
liquid water, it causes the water to freeze into more Ice-9. Given that 4/5ths of the earth’s surface is covered by ocean, and that our bodies are mostly made of water, you can probably deduce that keeping the Ice-9 in a thermos where it can’t come in contact with other water is an important plot element.
A seed crystal is often necessary to initiate a phase change or precipitation, so it is conceivable that Ice-9 could initiate a catastrophe. The science fiction part is that we haven’t discovered a form of water that is solid at room temperature.
Incidentally, there’s not much danger from oxygen-breathing silicon-based life forms because instead of exhaling carbon dioxide they’d exhale glass. They won’t be bothering us here on earth when they show up.
However, electricity-breathing silicon creatures like the semiconductor nodes that make up the Internet could be a threat. Google’s server network has almost – not quite, but almost – reached a level of complexity where consciousness and intention are possible.
Some reviewers on amazon.com thought that Ice-9 
was a metaphor for the atom bomb. Since the possibility of thermonuclear armageddon was so over-arching in real life at the time I first read the book, I didn’t place any emotional emphasis on that subtext. After all, it wasn’t necessary to know that Godzilla was a metaphor for the atom bomb and the damaging effects of residual radiation in order to enjoy his antics.
Cat’s Cradle was a fun social commentary that didn’t benefit at all from atomic metaphor. Ice-9 was merely a plot device, a Deus-Ex-Machina that brought about the natural consequences of great social granfalloons.
Bokonon isn’t the first religion founded by a science-fiction author, either, but that’s another topic for another day.
Like all of Vonnegut’s books, Cat’s Cradle looks at society and personalities and relationships with a new, slightly mad perspective. It is hard to walk away from Cat’s Cradle without re-evaluating the Granfalloon that is organized religion, or any other carefully-crafted social institutions.
Bad Behavior
Member of American Mensa, Ltd.
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Potential Threat To The Nation
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