The future of evolution is devolution, apparently, like a flightless cormorant's wings or an equatorial penguin's lack of girth, I suppose. Sometimes nature has to devolve in order to survive. A million years hence, in Vonnegut's estimable imagination, humans will have left behind their land-dwelling abodes in favor of the sea, and their "big brains" will likewise be no more, as they will have reverted to their animal-like origins before achieving a state of self-awareness. It's an odd sort of apocalypse, one which ended the human experiment - apparently nature has returned us outliers to our original state, one of harmonious perfection with the planetary whole. Or so it seems.
This is yet another odd bird (!) from Vonnegut, who seemingly blames humankind's ills on our constantly humming brains, which has resulted in our extinction, albeit one resulting from a slow and methodical demise. The premise of the story is likewise odd: in the wake of a global economic collapse, a handful of unlikely survivors make it to the isolated Galapagos islands to begin life, but not civilization, anew.
Written in the mid-eighties, at the height of the Cold War, when a global apocalypse was a real possibility, Galapagos serves as a warning to the world, but, I fear, that as with many of his other novels, not very many will "get it." Satire of this sort is so far beyond the general population as a whole, even the literary sort who may have been inclined to pick up a book or two of his, that I fear that the message is lost to all but a select (and disillusioned) few. That may also be KV's tragic legacy: he was just too damn smart for his own good.
Case in point: Here, the topics of war and death are more sub-themes: his critique of the human race is all the more overt, however, as his book, serving as something as an homage to Charles Darwin (like the good humanist he is!) places the blame for the collapse of human civilization and the possible extinction of life on earth squarely on human shoulders, suggesting that homo sapiens is little more than an evolutionary deviation, one easily subsumed and corrected by nature, as soon as it has the chance to once again gain a foothold. The narrator states, in fact, that "the only true villain in my story: the oversized human brain."
Once human folly has provided a narrow window of opportunity, a global pandemic renders all humans infertile, aside from those stranded survivors on the islands, who are the only ones able to reproduce. Unfortunately, due yet again to human folly (specifically a mutation caused by radiation damage wrought by the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima), humans devolve into an entirely new animal, one covered in fine hair, apparently semi-aquatic and able to catch fish, with a streamlined body and flipper-like hands. The "Nature Cruise of the Century" is one, indeed.
All this is recounted by an unlikely narrator, as well: none other than the host of Leon Trotsky Trout, son of the great science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. Leon is a Vietnam Veteran, and, as such, has some pretty definitive ideas about the human race of the past as well. In fact, Leon dies during the construction of the Minnow, or, rather, the Bahia de Darwin, which ferries the castaways to their final destination before the great blue tunnel ushers them to the hereafter. I think I would have gone with Trotsky himself: it seems a more rational fit.
I much prefer the Vonnegut novels that are more grounded in reality than these highly creative, albeit rather fantastic, sci-fi, inverted fairy tales, which do indeed have a moral. I get that they're satire, and are also quite humorous at times (although this one less so than several others I've read thus far), but the aforementioned approach makes them more poignant and impactful. I still enjoyed this, for the creativity and for the overall message: evolution has doomed us to destruction, and there is precious little our oversized brains can do about it.
--------NOTABLE PASSAGES--------
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.
Thanks to their decreased brainpower, people aren't diverted from the main business of life by the hobgoblins of opinions anymore.
To the credit of humanity as it used to be: More and more people were saying that their brains were irresponsible, unreliable, hideously dangerous, wholly unrealistic - were simply no damn good.
When I was alive, I often received advice from my own big brain which, in terms of my own survival, or the survival of the human race, for that matter, can be charitably described as questionable. Example: it had me join the United States Marines and go fight in Vietnam. Thanks a lot, big brain.
This episode made me sorry to be alive, made me envy stones. I would rather have been a stone at the service of the Natural Order.
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine-
A sad, sour, sober beverage-by time
Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour,
Down to a very homely household savour
-Lord Byron
This is yet another odd bird (!) from Vonnegut, who seemingly blames humankind's ills on our constantly humming brains, which has resulted in our extinction, albeit one resulting from a slow and methodical demise. The premise of the story is likewise odd: in the wake of a global economic collapse, a handful of unlikely survivors make it to the isolated Galapagos islands to begin life, but not civilization, anew.
Written in the mid-eighties, at the height of the Cold War, when a global apocalypse was a real possibility, Galapagos serves as a warning to the world, but, I fear, that as with many of his other novels, not very many will "get it." Satire of this sort is so far beyond the general population as a whole, even the literary sort who may have been inclined to pick up a book or two of his, that I fear that the message is lost to all but a select (and disillusioned) few. That may also be KV's tragic legacy: he was just too damn smart for his own good.
Case in point: Here, the topics of war and death are more sub-themes: his critique of the human race is all the more overt, however, as his book, serving as something as an homage to Charles Darwin (like the good humanist he is!) places the blame for the collapse of human civilization and the possible extinction of life on earth squarely on human shoulders, suggesting that homo sapiens is little more than an evolutionary deviation, one easily subsumed and corrected by nature, as soon as it has the chance to once again gain a foothold. The narrator states, in fact, that "the only true villain in my story: the oversized human brain."
Once human folly has provided a narrow window of opportunity, a global pandemic renders all humans infertile, aside from those stranded survivors on the islands, who are the only ones able to reproduce. Unfortunately, due yet again to human folly (specifically a mutation caused by radiation damage wrought by the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima), humans devolve into an entirely new animal, one covered in fine hair, apparently semi-aquatic and able to catch fish, with a streamlined body and flipper-like hands. The "Nature Cruise of the Century" is one, indeed.
All this is recounted by an unlikely narrator, as well: none other than the host of Leon Trotsky Trout, son of the great science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. Leon is a Vietnam Veteran, and, as such, has some pretty definitive ideas about the human race of the past as well. In fact, Leon dies during the construction of the Minnow, or, rather, the Bahia de Darwin, which ferries the castaways to their final destination before the great blue tunnel ushers them to the hereafter. I think I would have gone with Trotsky himself: it seems a more rational fit.
I much prefer the Vonnegut novels that are more grounded in reality than these highly creative, albeit rather fantastic, sci-fi, inverted fairy tales, which do indeed have a moral. I get that they're satire, and are also quite humorous at times (although this one less so than several others I've read thus far), but the aforementioned approach makes them more poignant and impactful. I still enjoyed this, for the creativity and for the overall message: evolution has doomed us to destruction, and there is precious little our oversized brains can do about it.
--------NOTABLE PASSAGES--------
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.
Thanks to their decreased brainpower, people aren't diverted from the main business of life by the hobgoblins of opinions anymore.
To the credit of humanity as it used to be: More and more people were saying that their brains were irresponsible, unreliable, hideously dangerous, wholly unrealistic - were simply no damn good.
When I was alive, I often received advice from my own big brain which, in terms of my own survival, or the survival of the human race, for that matter, can be charitably described as questionable. Example: it had me join the United States Marines and go fight in Vietnam. Thanks a lot, big brain.
This episode made me sorry to be alive, made me envy stones. I would rather have been a stone at the service of the Natural Order.
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine-
A sad, sour, sober beverage-by time
Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour,
Down to a very homely household savour
-Lord Byron
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