20 works of upbeat science fiction to brighten your day

Cats Cradle (Cover image via Dell Publishing)

8. Cat’s Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut may seem like a strange pick for a list focusing on the sunnier side of science fiction. His work is satirical and funny, to be sure, but it often has a morbid streak. Vonnegut himself often seemed as if he were somehow disappointed in us, as if we were not living up to our full potential. If nothing else, in Vonnegut’s writing, humanity often appears to be more than deserving of his acidic humor.

But just because someone is capable of playing a downbeat note doesn’t mean that they are devoid of joy or curiosity. Even when Vonnegut recognized that something as central to someone’s life like their religion is logically bankrupt, he saw that it could help them make it through life.

That’s a large theme in Cat’s Cradle, the 1963 novel written by Vonnegut. It begins with John, an average man writing a book somewhat tangentially about the bombing of Hiroshima. He interviews relatives of Felix Hoenikker, a fictional scientist who helped to develop the atomic bomb.

While interviewing Hoenikker’s children, John learns that the late physicist developed a substance known as “ice-nine.” Essentially, it is an alternative form of water that remains crystalline at room temperature. When it comes in contact with standard water, ice-nine acts as a seed crystal that turns the liquid into yet more ice-nine.

Hoenikker intended this substance to be a tool used by the military when crossing water-logged terrain. However, John learns that the siblings have been selling off bits of their father’s ice-nine to benefit themselves. A dictator uses the substance to commit suicide; the ice-nine he used then kills a doctor who examine the dictator’s remains. At one point, someone fumbles the dictator’s corpse into a body of water, which quickly turns all the seas, rivers, and groundwater into ice-nine.

Oddly enough, neither John or any of the other survivors show the kind of despair you might expect. In ridiculous fashion, they are cheerful about the plentiful resources now available to them. Yes, that’s because most of humanity is now dead. But, thanks to a new religion known as Bokonism, many of them accept it as, more or less, fate. It’s a dark ending, to be certain, but one that has a strange optimism behind it.