This was my first Kurt Vonnegut read and although at the time I was disappointed with it, it was intrigued enough to read Slaughterhouse 5. Knowing a bit more of his style and particular world view, I got more out of that book.
At the time I read Galapagos, I found it hard to take his particular view of the future; that the human beings' large brains will ultimately be our downfall. Having read Slaughterhouse 5, I can now understand Kurt Vonnegut's particularly nihilistic world view. In the book, he shows the end of the human race except for one group of people who end up stranded on Galapagos during some kind of military/ecological disaster. They begin as civilised 20th century people and we then see their descendents in 1,000,000 years time having evolved into inarticulate seal-like creatures.
At the time of reading, I felt the need to defend the human race against such a prediction but then thought, Hey, what's the point? It interests me as much as our ancestors 1,000,000 years ago. There likely to be as much meeting of minds with those ancestors as there is with our descendents.
One annoying flaw in the book is a fact revealed by the Mandrax (a 1980s' Wikipedia-like computer programme) used by one of the characters. The book states that Charles Darwin was born in 1812. He was in fact born in 1809. I realised this was wrong when I read this statement and thought that perhaps the decline of the human race would be predicated on this factual error. Sadly, this is never picked up in the rest of the book.
Anyway, I hope this does not put anyone off reading the book - at the very least, it may lead you to other books by this particular writer.
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