Ice Nine

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The link is to a page about the scientific qualities of ice, which relates to Ice Nine, which Kurt Vonnegut invented for his novel Cat’s Cradle. I had a serious collision with Vonnegut’s novels in the winter of 1975, during which I worked the graveyard shift in a Shell Station in San Francisco. Huddled overnight on a chaise lounge with an electric heater at my feet, I read Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five and the rest of them in the wee hours, waiting impatiently for the man driving the donut truck to stop in for a fill up.

I didn’t realize then just how fabulously kind it was that he dropped off still-warm donuts nearly every night I worked, though I certainly appreciated them. I appreciated Vonnegut then, too, though he later became more of an activist gadfly model than a writer model for me.

Maybe it’s time to read Cat’s Cradle again.