| Sumario: | Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle is an apocalyptic story of scientific research gone awry following its divorce from ethics. John, Vonnegut's protagonist and narrator, tells the story of how 'pure research' and hubristic technological development utterly destroy the world through unforeseen consequences. At its core, science fiction has always been a genre eminently concerned with the moral ambiguities created in the wake of speculative science. Even while looking temporally forward, these themes reach back to classical antiquity, and many of the genre's formative works brim with classical allusion and intertext. In this essay, I examine a previously unexplored nexus between science fiction and the classics, which similarly summons Greek poetry in a critique of futuristic science. With this intertextual reading of Cat's Cradle, I argue that the novel's narrative is structured in part through the geography of Homer's Odyssey and that Vonnegut offers a cautionary rereading of Homeric epic. Finally, I situate Vonnegut's revaluation of the Odyssey in its broader context of post-World War II Homeric receptions, with particular attention given to Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's critical reading of Odysseus' thirst for knowledge and enlightenment.
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