Galápagos
A novel
by Kurt Vonnegut · first published 1820
50% recommend50% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Satirical science fiction tracing human evolution over a million years from a single 1986 event in Ecuador. Readers call it a quick, easy read and a good entry point into Vonnegut's work.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Observed by a ghost of the Vietnam War for one million years, the descendants of survivors of a cruise to the Galapagos Archipielago prove Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The ghost of a shipbuilder tells the story of an ill-fated cruise to the Galapagos Islands.
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If you guys have not read Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut (finished it this week), you should. Its about the evolution of the human species over the next million years turning on very specific events in Ecuador in the year 1986, and the common…
on “Family trees: Tracing the world's ancestor” ↗…years we'll be very different - perhaps our overweight brains will have shrunk, and we'll no longer be curious about silly things like the origin or final fate of the Universe. You might enjoy Vonnegut's Galapagos, if you've not read it. It's a quick and easy read like most of his books.
on “A step-by-step guide to our solar system’s demise” ↗The older I get, the wiser the conclusions of Vonnegut's Galapagos seem. Shamelessly stealing from Goodreads, which shamelessly stole from the book itself: “Just about every adult human being back then had a brain weighing about three kilogrammes! There was no end…
on “To Stay in Love, Sign on the Dotted Line” ↗I have a couple: - The Gulag Archipelago & Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn - Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut - Autumn in Peking by Boris Vian
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗The Outsider - Albert Camus Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut On the Road - Jack Kerouac Animal Farm - George Orwell
on “Ask HN: What book/s have you read more than once?” ↗…- but the novels listed in the article are a good starting point. VALIS is where you go once you're prepared to have your mind melted and reformed. Baudrillard's Simulation and Simulacra Vonnegut's Galapagos Anyway. Time for me to go stare at the pink laser beam.
on “Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans” ↗…forward Vonnegut, but a) he's often not classed as a sci-fi writer for some reason, and b) I personally think he's at his best when his sci-fi tendencies are kept to a minimum (Dead Eye Dick, Bluebeard, Galapagos, which is as more fantasy than sci-fi if one must stick a genre label on it). I'd class Atwood as similar to Vonnegut in this regard, but even more so—her sci-fi work is just OK, from what I've seen of…
on “Choose your reading carefully” ↗Those are my three favorite Vonnegut novels. Nice choices :-) I'd second my sibling poster's recommendation of Galapagos, if you haven't read that one. Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle are probably his two most widely-read and widely-referenced books, so if you haven't read those yet and you're still on a Vonnegut…
on “Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?” ↗> Galapagos Yes, I read it. There's a twist in the tail that nobody should spoil. I haven't yet encountered anything by Vonnegut that I didn't enjoy reading. I want to re-read Breakfast of Champions. My first encounter…
on “A step-by-step guide to our solar system’s demise” ↗For that one, look away from The Last Question, and toward Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut. I think, as long as we're talking about finite time, life would have to be pretty incredibly bad to make me want to end it.
on “Can we live 1000 years?” ↗Slaughterhouse-Five, Galapagos, Sirens of Titan Basically, any Kurt Vonnegut book that isn't Cat's Cradle (good but overrated). Bias note: I'm still young, but these shaped me easily.
on “Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?” ↗Vonnegut when read carefully. Slaughterhouse-Five, Galapagos, and Sirens of Titan are three of the better ones I have read. They all connect tangentially to the same universe, so reading more Vonnegut also has cool pay-offs and tie-ins.
on “Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?” ↗…Dance and The Elephant Also Vanishes, but I think he’s got some others. Along the lines of magical realism, Kurt Vonnegut seems like a great recommendation too. His books incorporate a bit more sci-fi - Galapagos, Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan, slaughterhouse five, …
on “Ask HN: Sci-fi recommendations by non-western authors?” ↗…some of us an advantage over the majority of the rest of us. It is truly a scary thing that AI has only this "reasoning", and none of the other characteristics that all animals have. Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos and Peter Watts Blindsight have different, but very interesting takes on this concept. One postulates that our reasoning, our "big brains" is going to be our downfall, while the other postulates that…
on “Anthropic ditches its core safety promise” ↗…limit the objective reality, but I hypothesize it does limit the ability of the perceiver to easily manifest their own non-objective reality here in this "real world". Strangely enough, I just picked up Galapagos by Vonnegut yesterday and he's presenting a similar concept and I'm curious to see where he goes with it. I've been remiss in reading more of him. When you are going in or exiting a VR or gaming existence,…
on “Virtual Reality Can Leave You with an Existential Hangover” ↗