Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon and St. Peter sit in a bar in the Great Hereafter discussing, among other things, Vonnegut’s 1985 novel Galapagos.Isaac: [Looking at Peter] What are you laughing about?Peter: You know. [laughing]Isaac: It’s still funny, after all these centuries, that me, a self described atheist and humanist, finds himself here in the Great Hereafter?Peter: Yep, still funny.Theodore: Well, it’s like Kurt’s book Galapagos, where Kilgore Trout’s son Leon is a ghost a...

Have you heard of Charles Darwin? Irish elk? Antonio José de Sucre? Ikebana? Rudolf Nureyev? Jackie Kennedy Onassis? The Kanka-bonos—I don’t think so, as Vonnegut has made them up. Blue-footed boobies? Vampire finches—the list goes on. No? Well, crack open Galápagos, and you’ll be in the dark no more. Gorgeous and meditative and funny and circuitous, you may just finish it feeling like you’ve stimulated the big brain that is to blame for every single problem in your life. You’re your own worst e...

I can imagine Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had a really good time writing this—humans evolving into seal-like creatures with flippers and beaks and small brains. And of course, with small brains they are no longer capable of carrying out the elaborate and monstrous and extremely wicked acts of their big-brained warmongering ancestors. Even if their pea brains could muster up the idea of building weapons of mass destruction, or even your basic shiv, could you imagine trying to do this with slippery flippers...

As a fan of sarcasm, cynicism, pessimism, and nihilism (yup, I'm fun at parties), as well as an absurdist plot, I'm a smitten-kitten when it comes to Vonnegut. However, I'm not in love with Galapagos. In deep like? Yes, but, for me, the gold standard when it comes to Vonnegut is Cat's Cradle, followed by Mother Night. I did, however, like Galapagos better than Slaughterhouse-Five.Galapagos is set one million years after 1986, when the world as we know it ended and, through a series of fluke even...

"When all was said and done, the creatures of the Galápagos Islands were a pretty listless bunch compared with rhinos and hippos and lions and elephants and so on." Leon Trotsky Trout is as dead as a dodo but is nevertheless the incorporeal narrator of a story that is told a million years into our future.Trout recounts a sequence of evolutionary events that begin in 1986, as a bunch of bipedal misfits gather in Ecuador for 'The Nature Cruise of the Century.' Looking back at humankind, from a

One million years in the future, a man recounts humanity's origins in the Galapagos islands.This was the third Kurt Vonnegut book I've read and my third favorite. Actually, it reminds me of one of Grandpa Simpson's rambling stories that circles back on itself, only with novel-y bits like themes and messages and such.Galapagos is part satire, part cautionary tale. There's a shipwreck on Galapagos and it turns out those people are the only ones who can reproduces. I'm pretty sure this is mentioned...

Mr. Vonnegut puts to use a hyper imagination with Galapagos. This book is about big brains. Big brains, like big boobies, regularly get in peoples way. Fortunately, I have neither. They are in peoples way when riding a crowded bus, or crowded elevators or when actively engaged in a sport. And evolution. This book is about big brains, boobies and evolution. That's about all a person needs to know before reading Galapagos... after all, it's not likely you were going to write Beethoven's Ninth Symp...

Galápagos, Kurt Vonnegut Galápagos is the eleventh novel written by American author Kurt Vonnegut. The novel questions the merit of the human brain from an evolutionary perspective. The title is both a reference to the islands on which part of the story plays out, and a tribute to Charles Darwin on whose theory Vonnegut relies to reach his own conclusions. It was first published in 1985 by Delacorte Press.Main characters:Leon Trout, dead narrator and son of Kilgore TroutHernando Cruz, first mate...

“In the era of big brains, life stories could end up any which way. Look at mine.” When I finish novels by Haruki Murakami or Kurt Vonnegut, I'm not always sure what I've read. That was definitely the case with Vonnegut's Galapagos. It was thought-provoking and I laughed a number of times. Did I understand it, though? For Vonnegut, nothing is serious. At the same time, these not serious parts are what most of us view as supremely important. When Vonnegut writes about the solution to overpopulati...

Rewritten after rereading in July 2012.This darkly humorous satire starts with a world financial crisis in 1986 (hopefully that’s where the similarity with current times ends), leading to WW3 – though it’s not really about either: it’s fundamentally about adaptation. A million years in the future, the only “humans” left on Earth are the descendants of a small but diverse group of survivors of a Galapagos islands cruise, and they are more like seals than 20th century humans. Most of the story is

The serene Galapagos Islands, named after the famous giant turtles, discovered there, almost 600 miles west of impoverished Ecuador, ( in a remote part of the vast Pacific) the small nation, that owns them, was made famous by scientist Charles Darwin, when the " HMS Beagle," a British Royal Navy, surveying ship, visited these bleak, isles, encompassing 21, in number, not counting more than 100, minuscule peaks, breaking the surface, of the sometimes cold, deep blue waters, in 1835, strange anima...

FINALLY. A Vonnegut book I didn’t like. I didn’t think it were possible!Narrated by the million-year-old ghost of Kilgore Trout’s son (Trout being the obscure science fiction writer whom Vonnegut fans will undoubtedly recall from such books as Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse-Five), Galápagos tells the story of the end of human civilization as we currently know it. Which is, incidentally, a million years before Trout’s telling of it. And by this description one might expect to be highly...

Galápagos is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical tribute to Charles Darwin. The narrator of the tale is a ghost existing for a million years and witnessing everything from the beginning to the end.“Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissures, is everywhere covered by stunted, sun-burnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life. The dry and parched surface, being heated by the noon-day su...

"In this era of big brains, anything which can be done will be done -- so hunker down."-- Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos Trying to stay a couple books ahead of my son as I re-read Vonnegut. I haven't read much since those years between 13 and 18 when I seemed to burn through Vonnegut books again and again. He was one of those few writers I ever read twice (Dickens, Shakespeare, and Hugo are a few others). So, now as an adult I am approaching these books again. God I love this man. I love his hopeful,

Humans, one million years in the futureWhat would happen if, due to a virus that prevents women from reproducing, all but a handful of humans die out? In which direction would evolution go if we suddenly had to live without modern technology?This is something I sometimes wonder about. If a virus suddenly wiped out nine-tenths of us, or some idiot wannabe dictator slammed his tiny hands on that big red nuclear weapon button because someone hurt his feelings and tweeting a childish tantrum just wa...

“They figure they can’t do much of anything about anything anyway, so they take life as it comes.”One of Kurt Vonnegut’s most enviable talents as a writer was his ability to mock and celebrate humanity. Often times he would do this in the same sentence. It is a skill that only the best satirists possess. “Galápagos” is a novel tinged with darkness, but not the bitterness that would envelop Vonnegut later in his life/career. In “Galápagos” I really like the unique idea of modern (in this novel th...

Stephen Jay Gould used to assign this novel to his students at Harvard. Probably for some introductory paleontology course or other. Since I admire SJG’s essays I’ve always wanted to read Galápagos. Two things: most if not all of Vonnegut’s novels feature a highly intrusive narrator—God-like—marshaling his patterns. E.M. Forster doesn’t hold a candle to Vonnegut for sheer intrusiveness. Second, Vonnegut uses a relentless list of referents—in this book, big human brains, natural selection, marine...

"The only true villain in my story: The oversized human brain." So to me Galápagos (a series of islands off the coast of Ecuador) is a kind of environmental symbol. I’ve never been there, but it emerged for me (and many of us) decades ago as one of many pristine places where eco-diversity thrives. Very old tortoises! Iguanas! Finches galore! I know Charles Darwin was the guy that catapulted the place to international fame, and that it is still much written about and researched and visited. Since...

“Just about every adult human being back then had a brain weighing about three kilograms! There was no end to the evil schemes that a thought machine that oversized couldn’t imagine and execute.”No “so it goes”, but “and so on” does make the occasional appearances. This quote represents what appears to be the basic theme of Galápagos. The “big brain” is humanity’s downfall. Though I believe Vonnegut means something more subtle than that.Galápagos is about a group of survivors of an apocalypse af...

Absolutely adored the central conceit of this novel: In the midst of the death of the human species, a pocket of "humanity" manages to trundle on for at least another million years into the future, but the caveat being that these far-flung descendants are forever marooned on an ashy isle of the Galapagos where they have devolved into furry small-brained creatures with flippers--and the species and the planet couldn't be better off for it! The conceptual remove from its characters will probably t...