Product Description

A small group of apocalypse survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave new human race. "Vonnegut is a post-modern Mark Train. . . . Galapagos is a madcap genealogical adventure".--New York Times Book Review.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10484 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-12
• Released on: 1999-01-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From School Library Journal
YA Leon Trout, the ghost of a decapitated shipbuilder, narrates the humorous, ironic and sometimes carping decline of the human race, as seen through the eyes and minds of the survivors of a doomed cruise to the Galapagos Islands. Vonnegut's cast of unlikely Adams and Eves setting out in a Noah's ark includes Mary Hepburn, an American biology teacher and recent widow; Zenji Hiroguchi, a Japanese computer genius (who does not make it to the ship, although his language-translating and quotation-spouting computer does); his wife, Hisako, carrying radiated genes from the atomic bombs; James Wait, who has made a fortune marrying elderly women; and Captain Aolph von Kleist. Also included: six orphaned girls of the Kana-bono cannibal tribe, who will become the founding mothers of the fisherfolk after bacteria render all other women infertile. Serious fans of Vonnegut's wry and ribald prose will welcome this tale of the devolution of superbrained humans into gentle swimmers with small brains, but others may find this Darwinian survival tale too packed with ecological and sociological details that trap the story line in a series of literary devices, albeit very clever ones. Mary T. Gerrity, Queen Anne School, Upper Marlboro, Md.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
For many Vonnegut fans, Galapagos will be a disappointment. The story is set ``one million years ago, back in 1986 A.D.'' and concerns the maiden voyage of the Bahia de Darwin to the Galapa gos Islands. The narrator is a ghost, and the main characters are those involved with the cruise. As the narrative devel ops, we learn that people have evolved from having ``big brains'' that always get them in trouble, to creatures with flippersbut they keep getting eaten by sharks. The narration jumps back and forth between past and future, so that there is no real sense of what life is like in the ``present'' of the story, and it is difficult to grasp what these new hu mans are really like. Vonnegut's usual stylistic devices just don't work here. Buy for demand. Susan Avallone, ``Library Journal''
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Vonnegut is a postmodern Mark Twain...  Galapagos is a madcap genealogical  adventure." -- The New York Times Book  Review

"Beautiful.... Provocative,  arresting reading." -- USA Today -- Review

Customer Reviews

Galapagos
Whew, way out there! But what do you expect from Vonnegut? Traveling there early next year ('09); and thought I could get a few tips about the terrain. Fugetaboutit! Just amusing crazy humanity futurisms that happen to take place there...a real page turner and most amusing.

Find yourself rethinking the obvious and loving it.
When reading Vonnegut, I find myself rethinking subjects I pass over in day-to-day life without a second thought. It makes me feel enlightened, like I have some unique perspective on the world. In reality, the only credit I deserve is for my choice of reading material. Vonnegut so effectively carries his reader to a different point from which to view the world that you barely notice that you didn't get there yourself. What could be a greater testament to an author than that?

All of Vonnegut's novels accomplish the same feat, but this one does it more, or better. As this book wound down, I became sad - not because I didn't want the story to end, but because I didn't want the feeling of seeing the world from a unique place to end. Fortunately, once you put the book down, a lot of that new perspective stays with you.

This is a great book for anyone who wants to see the world in ways they haven't before. Very highly recommended.

Worse than useless, brains are dangerous!
The Irish elk died out a few millenia ago. Its antlers spanned three meters making it impossible for an Irish Elk to enter a forest to eat or escape a predator. Unfortunately, big antlers were a real turn on for female Irish elks so that sexual selection favoured males with larger antlers, which then grew and grew generation after generation until they became such a burden they drove the Irish elk to extinction.

Kurt Vonnegut's tongue-in-cheek premise is that, from evolution's point of view, our big brains are as useless and dangerous to the human race as antlers were to the Irish elk.

Our big brains help us attract mates and earn a living but they are a expensive drain on our resources: a third of the oxygen we breathe and of the calories we burn are used by the grey matter within our skull. Further, big brains make us do really stupid things (again from the point of view of the human race) like inventing nuclear bombs and other ways of killing ourselves off. One million years from now, in the novel, the members of human race have smaller brains and according to Vonnegut are all the happier for it.

The premise and development are interesting and Vonnegut really gets what evolution is all about and he understands how random contingency has a deep effect on history.

I can't quite agree with Vonnegut's conclusion that we would be better off without our big brains. It's not that he missed something in his analysis of the disadvantages of big brains, but rather without these brains we wouldn't be humans. Our fictional descendants a million years from now may be "happier" than we are, but they aren't human anymore, so who cares?

A fascinating read and an excellent illustration of how contingency and randomness shape history.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo