Galapagos - A Novel (1985) By Kurt Vonnegut

I thought Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Galapagos would be an interesting read for my vacation in the Galapagos Islands in February.  In a way it was, but not in the naturalist or scientific genre one might think. If there were a Nobel Prize for a Morbid Sense of Humor, Vonnegut would own it.

In his novel, a new luxury cruise ship will be launched from Quayaquil (Ecuador) for an inaugural trip to the Galapagos islands. The marketing for the ship has dubbed it the “Nature Cruise of the Century” and proudly touts its initial passenger list which includes the likes of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Rudolf Nureyev, Henry Kissinger, and Mick Jagger.  The book’s narrator is the ghost of a man who died during the ship’s construction.

In the days before the ship is set to depart, a world economic meltdown begins, with countries collapsing like dominoes. Hundreds of passengers, including all of the celebrities, cancel their trips.  By the day of departure, only a handful of passengers have made their way to Quayaquil. Then, Ecuador joins the ranks of nations with collapsed economies, and Peru takes that as an opportunity to invade. As the passengers (and 3 indigenous Ecuadorian women) successfully fight their way through the city to the ship, their departure becomes an escape, not a vacation cruise. On board, they head to sea on a damaged ship with an engine but limited fuel, and a broken navigation system. Days later they will shipwreck onto a (fictional) uninhabited island in the Galapagos.

Meanwhile, a mysterious disease has broken out across the globe, disrupting human ability to reproduce, and the world’s population dies-off.  [Any similarities between this week’s Wall Street stock market meltdown and the Coronavirus pandemic are purely coincidental … one hopes.]  The narrator blames the “evolution of the human brain” as being responsible for the death of life as we know it, noting the brain had become so large and specialized that it no longer had any survival skills.

Spared from the mysterious disease, the handful of passengers on the remote deserted island -- presumably with smaller brains -- will re-populate the earth over the next millennium.

Recommendation:  Fun with bizarre, comical characters.  Not a classic.