I was the ghost of a ghost ship. I am the son of a big-brained science fiction writer, whose name was Kilgore Trout.
It certainly helps—though by no means is it essential—to know that the narrator of this novel is the son of a character who appears much more prominently as a character in other works of fiction by Vonnegut. Readers familiar with those previous novels will learn some useful information about the extended Trout family in the Vonnegut multiverse, but Galapagos is not a novel about that particular relationship. Consider the fact that the narrator of this novel is intimately connected to arguably what is Vonnegut’s most famous character as a kind of icing to be enjoyed. The cake beneath can stand on its own quite easily, however.
There was a portrait of Darwin behind the bar at the El Dorado, framed in shelves and bottles -- an enlarged reproduction of a steel engraving, depicting him not as a youth in the islands, but as a portly family man back home in England, with a beard as lush as a Christmas wreath.
Leon mentions his dad by name about three times in his story. By contrast, Charles Darwin pops up about ten times as often. Those familiar with the story of Charles Darwin’s fateful voyage aboard a ship called the Beagle will not find this surprising since the title of the novel more than hints at the significance of the Father of Evolution. The novel is not a story about Darwin, to be sure, but the reader whose knowledge of evolution stops with the facile understanding of the term “theory” as applied to scientific research should be prepared to learn a little something here and there.
Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galápagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next -- and on and on.
Much more important to know is that Leon’s narrative takes place a million years in the future. By this point human evolution has kind of taken an unexpected turn. That whole primate thing has given way to a creature more closely resembling a seal. Even worse: somewhere along the line the evolutionary imperative took a sharp left turn to away from increasing cranial capacity and toward a reduction of the same. Big brains don’t exist anymore. Maybe a stable genius or two but fortunately they are not part of the story. What's important to realize is that things are different. Quite different. Well, maybe not all that different.
Major Cortez had made what was called a million years ago "an honest mistake."
Explosions. Fire. Devastation. Major Cortez has not made an “honest mistake.” One of the reasons for Vonnegut rose to popularity is that he was dealing in irony long before irony was cool and way, way before it was the dominant mode of discourse. “An honest mistake” in this particular context is an example of Vonnegut’s subtle yet viciously precise sense of the ironic. This is a line that—with a name change—could appear in nearly every novel Vonnegut ever wrote.
