Gwen Stacy + Kurt Vonnegut

Since I live in the time-delay world of paying huge amounts of $$$ for cable, and thus never go to the movies anymore (sigh) and never use Netflix or rent DVDs (because of stated indebtedness to the cable bill), I just watched The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).

A few days later I had to watch it again—it is quite good except for the manipulation of the details of the origin story that does mostly keep the essence of the myth intact—mainly because I spotted something interesting while Gwen Stacy sat outside at lunch in an early scene of the film.

And, yes, she is holding a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle:

A damned fine if-not-wonderful novel that has a bit of a web motif:

But also it is a cautionary tale about science. Dr. Felix Hoenikker enters the novel as a father of the atomic bomb, inventor of ice-nine, and personification of the division between science and morality:

After the thing [atomic bomb] went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, "Science has now known sin." And do you know what Father said? He said, "What is sin?" (Cat’s Cradle 17)