Talk:Cat's Cradle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to narrative novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the General Project Discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
Tasks you can do: Novels WikiProject • (Novels, Novellas, Novelettes & Short stories) Announcements and open tasks (watch • edit • discuss) → Please help with tagging articles! Critique (Featured Article): A_Series_of_Unfortunate_Events - "10 achieved" Wikipedia wide peer reviews: no reviews currently Novels WikiProject Peer reviews : Master and Commander Improve: The Body in the Library • Furies of Calderon • Wolf Brother • The Monk • The English Patient • Bones of the Moon • More... Create: Dover Beach • Black Cocktail • Blackthorn Winter • London, 1850 • More... Novel without Infobox (auto list): many novel articles do not have an infobox - and need one (auto generated list) - may need expansion of article too Our Collaboration Department is continuing with one more title Adam Bede for the current month. Get collaborating on the article and also look at nominating other titles to be considered. The new article Fictional locations now exists - as a companion article to Fictional characters - but it is still a stub and could do with plenty more imput to improve it. Another new article A Taste for Death (P.D. James novel)‎ now exists - but it is also still a stub and could do with plenty more imput to improve it. A new Infobox exists to support the growing number of "Short Story" articles that are tagged as part of the project - take a look at it and comment on it's talk page. I would suggest we use it for "Short Stories and "Novelettes" and leave the main "Book infobox" for "Novels" and "Novellas". New hitlists added to the main worklist. List of literary works with eponymous heroes List of literary works with eponymous heroines Pages that only exist as redirects: Men at Arms changes

Contents 1 What does a karass have to do with God's Will? 2 Non-Fictional Ice-9 3 Modest Mouse 4 Allegory? 5 Hoenikker-Oppenheimer connection 6 spoilers

[edit] What does a karass have to do with God's Will?

I don't understand the definitions of karass and granfalloon. What do they have to do with God's will? I'd say a karass is a set of people with a characteristic propetry in opposition to a granfalloon which is just a meaningless arbitrary set of people.

Here's how it is described at http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=karass - "A group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner, even when superficial linkages are not evident." If I remember correctly (it's been a long time since I read the book) the people in the karass find themselves sometimes acting out of their ordinary character, yet in concert to accomplish a goal; a goal unknown to any of the members of the karass (that's what makes it "God's will"). You hang out with a certain bunch, but can't really figure out why that particular group is "right" for you, but you feel good about it nonetheless. - Bevo 22:40, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Non-Fictional Ice-9

Text previously included the following, which I'm fairly sure is wrong. Evidence to the contrary anyone? Palfrey 20:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

---

Non-fictional Ice-9

There is a real substance also called ice-9 named after Kurt Vonneguts fictional Ice-9 because it has many of the same characteristics except that it doesn’t chain react as the fictional ice-9 does. The non-fictional Ice-9 is used in the oceans off the coast of Alaska to build cheap oil mining platforms. These oil mining platform can even be sailed down to tropical climates without melting and the Ice-9 is harder and stronger than steel. I found this in Reader’s Digest.

---

The bit on Richard Kelly may be off. See http://richard-kelly.net/news/2005/7-6-2005.html.

[edit] Modest Mouse

" * The band Modest Mouse recorded a song entitled Secret Agent X-9 which appeared on the album Sad Sappy Sucker." Why was this removed?--TheCooperman 12:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Why shouldn't it have been removed? - 128.113.149.85 23:37, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Allegory?

Is there any criticism that suggests that ice nine is allegorical for something?

[edit] Hoenikker-Oppenheimer connection

The several paragraphs outlining possible similarities between Felix Hoenikker and Robert Oppenheimer seem to be extremely speculative and to me most of the points seem like quite a stretch. Is such a long discussion of this possible connection even necessary? Michael Sappir • (Talk) 15:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I wish that people would stop changing Teller and Ulam to Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer even has a speaking role in Cat's Cradle, although is not identified by name on page 25 of Cat's Cradle. Hoenikker *is* a composite of Teller's psychopathic personality and Ulam's odd manifestations of OCD. The research is so basic as to be unnecessary. Slagathor

[edit] spoilers

There is no "end spoilers" banner. That needs to be here.