100 books like Galápagos

As a librarian, I loved how books were deemed a threat in this work. Through fear-mongering and keeping people distracted by technology, people are imprisoned by ignorance without access to books. I particularly enjoyed the symbolism in the robotic murder dog—it can hunt down anyone and can find you anywhere.

Living under that level of technological threat searches for what it means to be human that much harder—but vital. But my favorite idea is that the knowledge we carry collectively has the power to save our humanity.

No sci-fi noir list is complete without this book by Philip K. Dick. It’s the basis of the movie Blade Runner, but significantly different in tone and content. I love it because it deals with moral and ethical issues around how we deal with the real and imitating things in our world.

As the title implies, it’s a book full of questions, and the answers aren’t always easy.

One of the things I love about this book is that it takes us back to 1831, when Darwin was just an obscure 22-year-old, following his passion for natural history by embarking on what would be a five-year circumnavigation of the globe. I get the impression he would be a fascinating, if exhausting, travelling companion since he is relentlessly curious about everything and everyone he sees.

My favorite chapter is on the Galápagos archipelago because Darwin is trying to do descriptive justice to the unearthly basaltic lava landscape, as well as unique flora and fauna. I find there’s an immediacy to his writing which gives me the sense of looking over his shoulder as he describes all the elements of unfamiliar ecosystems, trying to puzzle out what they can possibly mean. 

This story and its questions of eugenics and our place in society really horrified me, not because it was unbelievable, but precisely because it was far too real. The genetic superiority/inferiority, coupled with social indoctrination into our “advanced” society, made me meditate a great deal on what it means to be human.

What are humans without societal pressures? The way Huxley looked at the costs of freedom was really compelling. And in so many ways, he accurately predicted the destructive side of the social microscope that we all live in today under social media.

Andy Weir was one of my favorite sci-fi authors the moment I finished reading The Martian, so I had to read his first contact novel as soon as it was published. As a hard science fiction fan, I appreciated that the author “did the math” when describing problems that arose and the solutions that were implemented during a do-or-die mission to save the Earth.

Having said that, math was one of my least favorite subjects in school, but the author made the technical details easy to understand and very interesting. I also appreciated that the extraterrestrial was written to be alien in so many aspects instead of relying on an often-used human-like alien trope.

Many people don't realise that the Galápagos Islands are inhabited. Settlers began to arrive in the middle of the 20th century. Before that, there were pirates, convicts, and oddballs, then pioneers from Europe.

In the 1930s five brothers, the Angermeyers, arrived, fleeing Hitler's Germany. I met Johanna Angermeyer, whose father was one of those brothers. Little did I know the amazing story behind how she got there. Johanna grew up in California, her mother once married to an Ecuadorian pilot. He died in a plane crash, then she had a romance with one of the brothers in Quito, but he died too.

She decided to visit the Galápagos Islands with her mother. They stayed, living a Robinson Crusoe life. Her story tells how hard it was. Later, Johanna met a British sailor and decided to settle. He was crew on the first sailing boats that took tourists around the enchanted… show more.

When I was in the Galapagos, I volunteered to help scientists study the finches on Daphne Major Island. There were just two of us on an island surrounded by sharks. Every Darwin's finch had been ringed, and I had to observe what they ate. It was an experience that has left an indelible mark on my psyche.

The research was part of a project by Peter and Rosemary Grant, who spent twenty years following in Darwin's footsteps. Not only did they demonstrate the robustness of his theory, but they also showed that the process works in decades, not millennia.

Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch is a Pulitzer Prize-winning summary of Grant's work. He manages to eloquently summarise number-crunching academic work for the layman. It is a rare achievement to write an unputdownable book about science. 

When I first arrived in the Galápagos, I thought the plants consisted of a few drab cacti and thorn bushes. As I explored, I discovered that the unique flora was as fascinating as the reptiles and birds.

There are giant prickly pears, tree-like sunflowers, and rare orchids in the humid highlands. What I could have used was a good field guide to the plants. Conley McMullen has produced just that (albeit after I left). Now, when I go back, I can take this invaluable guide with me. He covers the endemic plants as well as some of the many exotic introduced flowers. Some have become invasive pests, such as the mora blackberry, and guava fruit.

As the conservation organisations turn their attention to restoring the islands to what they once were, this book is still of great value.

I had known the authors for decades, as friends and neighbors, so when their book came out it took me by surprise, even more so when I discovered just how outstanding it is. This is a remarkable blend of meticulously researched historical facts about the life of the great 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin, combined with sensitive commentary by retracing his Galapagos experiences step-by-step, as well as his life before and after. Every page is engaging, delving deep into his thoughts through his notes and correspondence, and his personal observations and how they led to his revolutionary theory of evolution.

I can barely remember when, as a child in the mid-1960s, I met a young couple of biologists who had just spent a year living in a tiny camp among the seabirds of Galapagos, devoid of contact with the outside world. Part diary, part behavioral field notes, Bryan’s enduring book, Galapagos, Islands of Birds has just been rewritten and expanded into a brand-new edition by his widow, over 50 years later — a charming and timeless volume.