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Galapagos
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Galapagos (1985) (edit title/settings)

by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

A small group of apocalypse survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave new human race.

Summary edit see section history

Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who get shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalia in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis has crippled the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on Earth infertile, with the... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who get shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalia in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis has crippled the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on Earth infertile, with the exception of the people on Santa Rosalia, making them the last specimens of humankind. Over the next million years, their descendants, the only fertile humans left on the planet, eventually evolve into a furry species resembling seals: though possibly still able to walk upright (it is not explicitly mentioned, but it is stated that they occasionally catch land animals), they have a snout with teeth adapted for catching fish, a streamlined skull and flipper-like hands with rudimentary fingers (described as "nubbins").

The story's narrator is a spirit who has been watching over humans for the last million years. This particular ghost is the immortal spirit of Leon Trotsky Trout, son of Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout. Leon, a Vietnam War veteran who is affected by the massacres in Vietnam, goes AWOL and settles in Sweden, where he works as a shipbuilder and dies during the construction of the ship, the Bahía de Darwin. This ship is used for the Nature Cruise of the Century. Planned as a celebrity cruise, it was in limbo due to the economic downturn, and due to a chain of rather unconnected events the ship ended up in allowing humans to reach and survive on Galápagos.

Kilgore Trout -- deceased -- makes four appearances in the novel, urging his son to enter the "blue tunnel" that leads to the Afterlife. When Leon refuses the fourth time, Kilgore pledges that he, and the blue tunnel, will not return for one million years, which leaves Leon to observe the slow process of evolution that transforms the humans into aquatic mammals. (The process begins when a Japanese woman on the island, the granddaughter of a Hiroshima survivor, gives birth to a fur-covered daughter.)

Trout maintains that all the sorrows of humankind were caused by "the only true villain in my story: the oversized human brain". Fortunately, natural selection eliminates this problem, since the humans best fitted to Santa Rosalia were those who could swim best, which required a streamlined head, which in turn required a smaller brain.

---From Wikipedia

Characters/People edit see section history

  • Hernando Cruz: First mate of the Bahía de Darwin
  • Mary Hepburn: An American widow who teaches at Ilium High School
  • Roy Hepburn: Mary's husband who passed away in 1985 from a brain tumor
  • Akiko Hiroguchi: The daughter of Hisako that will be born with a fur covering her entire body
  • Hisako Hiraguchi: A teacher of ikebana and Zenji's pregnant wife
  • Zenji Hiroguchi: A Japanese computer genius who invented the voice translator Gokubi and its successor Mandarax
  • Bobby King: Publicity man and organizer of 'the Nature Cruise of the Century'
  • Andrew MacIntosh: An American financier and adventurer of great inherited wealth
  • Selena MacIntosh: Andrew's blind daughter of eighteen
  • Jesus Ortiz: A talented Inca waiter who looks up to wealthy and powerful people
  • Adolf von Kleist: Captain of Bahía de Darwin but doesn't really know how to steer a ship
  • Siegfried von Kleist: Brother of Adolf and carrier of Huntington's corea who temporarily takes care of the reception at hotel El Dorado
  • James Wait: A 35-year old American swindler
Show all 13 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “... Back then had a brain weighing about three kilograms! There was no end to the evil schemes that a though machine that oversized couldn’t imagine and execute. So I raise this question, although there is nobody around to answer it: Can it be doubted that three-kilogram brains were once nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race? A second query: What source was there back then, save for our overelaborate nervous circuitry, for the evils we were seeing or hearing about simply everywhere? My answer: There was no other source. This was a very innocent planet, except for those great big brains.”
  • “The more you learn about people, the more disgusted you’ll become… Like the people on this accursed ship, my boy, they are led by captains who have no charts or compasses, and who deal from minute to minute with no problems more substantial than how to protect their self-esteem.”
  • “Both people have to work at a relationship… If just one works on it, you might as well forget about it. It’s just no good, and whichever one does all of the work winds up the way I did, feeling like some kind of fool all the time.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people’s actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be.
    Highlighted by 50 Kindle customers
  • “Like the people on this accursed ship, my boy, they are led by captains who have no charts or compasses, and who deal from minute to minute with no problem more substantial than how to protect their self-esteem.”
    Highlighted by 40 Kindle customers
  • What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heartbreak: the oversize brain. That cumbersome computer could hold so many contradictory opinions on so many different subjects all at once, and switch from one opinion or subject to another one so quickly, that a discussion between a husband and wife under stress could end up like a fight between blindfolded people wearing roller skates.
    Highlighted by 37 Kindle customers
  • About that mystifying enthusiasm a million years ago for turning over as many human activities as possible to machinery: What could that have been but yet another acknowledgment by people that their brains were no damn good?
    Highlighted by 35 Kindle customers
  • “I’ll tell you what the human soul is, Mary,” he whispered, his eyes closed. “Animals don’t have one. It’s the part of you that knows when your brain isn’t working right. I always knew, Mary. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, but I always knew.”
    Highlighted by 31 Kindle customers
  • “My boy,” he said, “you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles—champions every one.”
    Highlighted by 31 Kindle customers
  • It was all in people’s heads. People had simply changed their opinions of paper wealth, but, for all practical purposes, the planet might as well have been knocked out of orbit by a meteor the size of Luxembourg.
    Highlighted by 30 Kindle customers
  • Thanks to their decreased brainpower, people aren’t diverted from the main business of life by the hobgoblins of opinions anymore.
    Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers
  • Why so many of us a million years ago purposely knocked out major chunks of our brains with alcohol from time to time remains an interesting mystery. It may be that we were trying to give evolution a shove in the right direction—in the direction of smaller brains.
    Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers
  • Oaths are but words, and words but wind. —SAMUEL BUTLER (1612–1680)
    Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers
Show all 13 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

The thing was: One million years ago, back in 1986 A.D., Guayaquil was the chief seaport of the little South American democracy of Ecuador, whose capital was Quito, high in the Andes Mountains.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Delacorte
Country: U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1985
ISBN: 0-385-29420-4
Page Count: 295

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3572.O5 G3
  • Dewey: 813.54

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