Disclaimer

Everything presented here has been taken almost verbatim from Kurt Vonnegut's brilliant novel Cat's Cradle with only minor and occasional paraphrasing to suit the context. I should take a moment to stress that, it is not my work, it is Vonnegut's, I have only quoted and organised a little. I have received letters of praise for my work, which while nice, are really aimed at the wrong person unless they refer solely to the web presentation and not the content.

I have been intentionally discreet regarding the origin of these words, making no mention of Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle, or fiction anywhere other than here in this disclaimer. This is a deliberate attempt on my part to engender in the otherwise uninformed reader the feeling, for as long as possible, that this is not a work of fiction, which of course it is. I have added a gleam of realism, or officialdom so to speak by hiding all reference to Vonnegut, his book and fictionality within this disclaimer.

If Bokononism in any way interests you, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you read Cat's Cradle, which puts the religion into a much more colourful, complete and worthwhile context along with many other ideas on science and politics.

Kurt Vonnegut has an impeccable talent for presenting the farcical side of life in a way that is at once amusing and thought-provoking. I suggest you read some of his works. This material is reproduced here without the permission of the author, and thereby represents a flagrant breach of copyright law I guess, though it may fall within reaonable length limits allowed for purposes of review. I would certainly argue the case. Nothing was profited in presenting it here, and nor is it expected to impact in any way negatively upon sales of Vonnegut's works. Indeed the aim is purely to share some wonderful ideas and perhaps to promote Vonnegut's style and works.

All the same, if any disapproval of such were expressed by any interested parties, not least of all Mr. Vonnegut himself, this material will necessarily be removed. No one has any desire to offend, steal, plagiarise, or wind up in court, least of all me.

As a final note, if it isn't already perfectly clear, Bokonon and his teachings, are entirely fictional do not confuse any of it with reality ... busy, busy, busy.

P.S. These pages on Bokononism have been on-line since 1995 when during the second semester of my masters degree I found myself spending 24 hours of my day (less the time it took to cycle home to sleep and cycle back, walk up to the burger king grab a burger and walk back) in the office slaving away on a somewhat overloaded degree. Bleary eyed and unable to muster the discipline to leave the ofice and enjoy a little of the sunshine outside without arousing feelings of guilt, I re-read Cat's Cradle with a highlighter and subsequently tapped in, over some months (as a side-line and distraction for a mind numbed by my university chores), the highlighted texts encompassing every reference therein to Bokononism. They were at the time the only pages InfoSeek (the Google of the day) would list on a search for Bokononism. Now there are more ...