Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors of all time. Few even come close to the affection I feel for that dead old man and his pall malls.

The way each story unfolds and what it represents is always done in this clear, no bullshit, no time for pleasantries, miasma of honesty. There’s so much humor and humility and cleverness; his political opinions and his stances, his morality is never vague. And he doesn’t come off as pretentious in his storytelling –in fact pretentiousness and how boring it is is a huge theme.

I also, and this is a personal jab at myself, absolutely buy into the mix of sci fi and speculative fiction. I’m pretty sure that when I was little I also was convinced I lived in a space zoo. So. I’m doing great. Don’t worry about me.

Free will versus predestination; prophecy and its inscrutable, annoying, cloying certainties; and, the nature of time are massive themes in most of Vonnegut’s stories and I very much jibe with that.

Which brings us to: I recently reread Cat’s Cradle and I wanna talk about it.

It might be my favorite of his books.

As the man says: see the cat, see the cradle?

I realized sometime in January, Cat’s Cradle kind of fundamentally hits the nail on the head for me. And it is presented in exactly the way it has to be to get its point across. I mentioned some time ago that that’s the key to a well written murder mystery —that the audience doesn’t see an alternative option that would suit the story better. Vonnegut couldn’t kill god in any more perfect a way than he does in Cat’s Cradle.

It does that thing I love of telling you one story, presenting you one plot contrivance early on which seems so different from the ride and destination that you end up on. You tumble along with the characters into an impossible scenario and you turn around and squint at the beginning, at the person you used to be before you ended up here. And yet—and yet how could you have ended up anywhere else?

And what better way to end a book than by ending the world, laying on a mountain, and pointing your finger up at god? If that doesn’t tell you everything about humanity, what does?

Please, if you haven’t, read as much Vonnegut as you can find.