Galápagos

Galápagos
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Kurt Vonnegut
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Delacorte Press
Publication date	1985
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-385-29420-4
OCLC Number	220388927

The novel Galápagos is Kurt Vonnegut's look at evolution. It was first published in 1985 by Delacorte.

Plot summary

Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who get shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalía 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 Rosalía, 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 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.

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 which would help the human race to 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 human race 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 Rosalía were those who could swim best, which required a streamlined head, which in turn required a smaller brain size.

Adaptations

In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of Galapagos, narrated by Jonathan Davis (audiobook narrator), as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.

References

• Moore, Lonnie. "How Humans Got Flippers and Beaks", New York Times 6 October 1985, section 7, page 7.
• Vonnegut, Kurt. Galápagos. New York: Dell Publishing, 1999. ISBN 0385333870.