Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Every once in a while, I return to an author that is more or less the reason I write novels…
Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, Welcome to the Monkey House (and a whole lot of other books) dropped Galapagos on us later in his career, perhaps even at the height of his powers.

The unnamed narrator is looking back from a million years from now…back to 1986. When a tour to the Galapagos islands (on the Bahia De Darwin) paradoxically will lead to the beginning of the new human race…the one with smaller brains and shorter lifespans.

Is humanity worth saving? Discuss.

It is a Gilligan’s Island Minnow trip with the Professor and Mary Ann...
Anyway, there was a part with a song that they were singing and I just naturally sung it in my head to the Gilligan’s Island theme…
It was quote from Charles Carryl (1842-1920)
A capital ship
For an ocean trip
Was the Wallowing Winnow Blind…
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the Captain’s mind.
The man at the helm was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow…
And often it appeared, when the weather had clears
That he’d been in the bunk below.
There is an extinction level event at the time of the tour…and the crew of the Bahia De Darwin is all that is left of humanity… we will re-evolve and lose these big brains that haven’t been doing us such good anyway…

“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.”

—I read this and I think about AI and Elon Musk and all the tech bros who want to make AI books and music and it just seems like Vonnegut was on to something, as he usually was… this was 1986 in real life, too.

As in most of his books, his style is conversational and commentative. He simply describes the action and comments on it. You either like it or you don’t.

We can’t all write Beethoven’s 9th.
That is an inside joke.
*Kurt Vonnegut.







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