Galapagos: A Novel (Delta Fiction)
by Kurt Vonnegut
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kurt VonnegutEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-01-12
ISBN: 0385333870
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780385333870
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Galapagos: A Novel (Delta Fiction)
Book Review: Worse than useless, brains are dangerous!
Summary: 5 Stars
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
Summary of Galapagos: A Novel (Delta Fiction)
Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, America?s master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry?and all that is worth saving.Classics Books
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