Galapagos

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Summary: How does he do it?
Review: Vonnegut simply amazes me. Although this is not my favorite of his books, it is a great example of his work. He has consistently been among my favorite and most-read authors for eight years, and he never stops entertaining me and making me think. He has a great skill for presenting fascinating ideas in the most simplistic writing style one could imagine (so much so that many people find it rather annoying.) Still, his ideas alone merit the reading of his work. He has an amazing sense of humor and of the absurd, and, while much of his writing is dark and cynical, it paradoxically encourages hope. Vonnegut is a favorite of every member of the family.

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Summary: Vonnegut's best
Review: Nothing more to say. After reading quite a few Vonneguts, I have to say most of them are great, but this one's the best.

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Summary: Onr of the best books I have ever read!!!!
Review: The witty, entertaining, satirical, and hilarious porttrayal of the future of mankind and the people who made it happen captures your atention at once. The way Vonnegut captures your immagination has never stopped ammazing me. This book deffinatelly turned me into a major fan. I would recomend this book to readers of any level because it's just unforgetable.

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Summary: Well Placed Jab at Humanity in Light of Evolutionary Theory
Review: I am a newcomer to Vonnegut, and this is the first of his books I had the pleasure to read. Vonnegut takes a satirical look at modern day humanity as he places a handful of (un?)lucky castaways in the role of the future of humanity. They alone turn out to be responsible for repopulating the entire planet as the rest of humanity has fallen victim to an infertility plague in the midst of economic turmoil. Who would have guessed that future generations would speak only a single language - let alone that of a little-known cannibal tribe. This and a variety of other strange quirks of the few survivors is all that future generations will inherit and have to look back at their past. Not that they would be interested anyways, that sort of thing only intrigues the big-brains of the past.

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Summary: Counter Evolution
Review: One of the brilliant ideas of Vonnegut. The book is humorous but I felt ashamed while I was laughing. It is an anti-utopia, a dark vision of so called evolved man. I really wonder how it would be a million years later after I read this book.

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Summary: An Extention of Vonnegut's Greatness
Review: Once again, I am captivated by Kurt Vonnegut's witty and creative ways to delve into the minds and thoughts of both the reader and the character. In only the way Vonnegut can, the characters stranded on Santa Rosalia have a flair for survival, combining to become the future of the human race. You do not find out till near the end just who the writer of the tale is. It is definitely a surprise!

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Summary: A wonderful tale
Review: Although I enjoy Vonnegut, I usually find him difficult to read. This story, however, is wonderfully written and easy to follow.

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Summary: No other experience brings such a smile
Review: I found the book in a pile of trash. I'm not a degenerate, just happened to be a kizmit(?) type of thing. The book struck a nerve. It is both hilarious and thought provoking. But they say there is truth in humor. And I'm sure Mr. Vonnegut would question who they is.

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Summary: Vonnegut's Best.
Review: This is the best Vonnegut book out there. The subtle humor and bizzare situations that Vonnegut is known for come to gether perfectly. Here Vonnegut takes his scientific knowledge and, once again, applies it to a wonderful novel. The satirical comments about the evolution of man are wonderful. The attacks that Vonnegut makes on technology and incompotant people in leadership possitions is subtle and sweet. A wonderful tale, especially if you understand evolution.

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Summary: A New Garden of Eden
Review: Kurt Vonnegut wrote the book Galapagos in the year1986 as a satire of the human race, making many contentions about what is wrong with it and showing some of these effects. He presents a new society of humans which will result from a million years of evolutionary change due to an isolation of our species in the Galapagos islands and a near extinction of all humans. Vonnegut's work is a satire in which he shows what he thinks is wrong with the human race. He is trying to show how many of the actions humans take are unneccesarily created by what he considers our oversized brains. Among Vonnegut's focuses are love, war, murder, death in general, and insanity. He believes that everything about our society has become sick and over-complicated. He tells the reader that "This was a very innocent planet, except for those great big brains." (pp. 9) Throughout the book, he shows how each of the above problems in our world are things that happen to humans only because of ideas that their big brains give them. For instance, he presents a man who has made a career out of making women think they are in love with him, and then running off with their money. If it weren't for love, these women would have never had this problem. Vonnegut contends that love is an illusion created by our big brains, which may be true. However, in Vonnegut's new and improved human race which has much smaller brains, love does not exist, and mating is only for reproductive purposes. He is very wrong in saying that people would be better for this, because although love brings problems, it also brings a lot of good things. Vonnegut's new human race spends all its time fishing for food and basking in the sun. He rids of every problem humans have today through evolution, which makes people almost like fish. They are able to stay underwater for extended periods of time before coming up. He also creates humans who have sense of individuality. All people look alike, and since people have small brains and no need for relationships of any kind, it doesn't matter that people can't even tell each other apart. They have no sense of history, or of who they are. Vonnegut does not seem to think that these are things that humans need. Vonnegut's story is believable, and could very well happen. It involves ten people who are stranded on the island of Santa Rosalia and never found. At the same time, a bacteria on the mainland begins eating human ovaries, so that no more humans are born, and the race as we know it becomes extinct. The ten people on the island begin to reproduce, and evolve through time to eventually become what Vonnegut believes is the ideal society one million years from now. Humans are isolated to islands forever, because their small brains restrict them from building any type of boats, and even if they were able to swim to South America, they would get the bacteria and be unable to reproduce. This book definately helped me to understand man's origins. In a way, it was the opposite of learning history which is supposed to help us understand human nature and to learn from that and not make the same mistakes again. It is taking a story from the future and using it to understand the past. Vonnegut's tales from Santa Rosalia, which are mixed in cleverly throughout his buildup towards the ship's departure, make me wonder if human life began the same way. His story centers around an older man and woman who are on the island along with six young girls. It could be that such a situation happened with Adam and Eve, who could have had six daughters before Eve became unable to reproduce, then when the girls became old enough, Adam inseminated them. I don't know the real history since I've never read the bible, not that I think that would have anything to do with how it really began. Another reason it could be similar to the beginning of humankind is that communication was strained because the older people, who spoke English, could not understand the Kanka-Bono language spoken by the young girls. The first humans on our planet presumably did not yet have a language to speak, and had to develop their own methods of communication. Also, I learned a lot from Vonnegut's narratives about how people's brains shrunk over time so that their heads could be more streamlined and they could swim better. It involved Darwin's Law of Natural Selection, to which Vonnegut often referred. It was interesting to put that law into modern-day terms. It's interesting to hear to what humans may evolve rather than from what we have evolved. The evolutionary ideas put forth by Vonnegut throughout the book are very interesting and informative. However, what I don't agree with is Vonnegut's assertions that these evolutionary changes should happen. It may be that the future human race which Vonnegut puts forth is merely an exaggeration of what he envisions, and that he uses evolution simply as a tool for change so that he does not have to spend too much time talking about how social changes will occur. The point is that Vonnegut seems fed up with every part of human life and yearns for something much simpler. I can agree with him only to the point that war, crime, deceit, and murder are behaviors which humans don't need to have. However, I disagree with everything else. I think that life needs to be complicated, because it gives people options. We are allowed to live our life however we choose, and every person chooses differently. People need to be able to think, to communicate, and to understand different things about themselves, others, and life. We all need to be individuals. Although I did not agree with many of Vonnegut's opinions, I must say that I enjoyed the book. It is an interesting idea to think about, and Vonnegut presents the events in a very creative way. Vonnegut's style of presenting ideas more than one time did get irritating at times. For instance, he told the reader three or four times that in the future, humans will have short life spans due to killer sharks and whales. Also, every time he refers to an action a person performs, he says it is due to their big brains, and states matter-of-factly that people in the future have no need for such a behavior because they are not capable of thinking and therefore performing the action. Despite such annoyances, Vonnegut's style was funny and entertaining. This book should be read as an introduction to any course on Sociology that is taken, and by anyone who is interested in people, society, and psychology. Vonnegut has such intense ideas of what is wrong with humans and society, and these ideas should be given consideration. They may not always be accurate, but they give quite a commentary on what is wrong with humans and what needs to change.