#brobdingnag

These are the warring islands of Liliput and Blefuscu. There Swift has Gulliver explore what humanity would look like if it were very, very small: and Gulliver eventually builds himself a boat and escapes, with some miniature sheep and cattle and other curiosities to make his fortune at home.

We arrived in the Downs on the 13th of April, 1702.

But that same year Gulliver departs on another voyage (I stayed but two months with my wife and family, for my insatiable desire of seeing foreign countries, would suffer me to continue no longer) and on the 20th day of June, 1702, in the Adventure, Captain John Nicholas, a Cornish man, commander, bound for Surat Gulliver leaves to explore the world.

About a year later, after various dispiriting incidents. the ship puts in at a land strange to them, to take fresh water on board. Gulliver goes off to explore, and is left behind - he sees the crew fleeing in terror.

Gulliver is marooned in Brobdingnag for over two years, where everything is very large. There Swift has Gulliver explore what humanity would look like if an Englishman were very, very small. Gulliver is quite happy living among the giants of Brobdingnag, who treat him kindly, build boxes for their pet to live in, and a special box to travel in, with a ring at the top for the convenience of transport. In September 1705, a Brobdingnagian bird picks up the box, flies away with it, and drops it into the ocean: where Gulliver is rescued, and has great difficulty in understanding that he is now of normal size with respect to the people who surround him. He reaches home in June 1706, and - quite understandably - his wife doesn't want to him to go to sea again.

But in August 1706, having been offered a very good post, Gulliver is off again: and while this voyage goes better, Gulliver is captured by pirates in summer 1707, and abandoned at sea in a small canoe. He finds an island where he can make shift to stay alive on eggs and fish, and thinks he will die there.

And then a spaceship arrives.

I turned back, and perceived a vast opaque body between me and the sun moving forwards towards the island: it seemed to be about two miles high, and hid the sun six or seven minutes; but I did not observe the air to be much colder, or the sky more darkened, than if I had stood under the shade of a mountain.

On the mountain live people who are exclusively interested in mathematics and music, astronomy and politics. Not that politics affect them, but they love talking about politics.

As we find out, the flying island is where the king of the country lives, and his court, and they live by tribute from the cities on the ground. If a city won't give tribute, the king has the island shut off the sun to that city by poising the island over it: and if they continue to resist, by dropping rocks on it.

Gulliver leaves the flying island and explores the subject country for a couple of years, which enables Swift to explore what humans would be like if they lived in a country devoted to science and mathematics, run by a king who can destroy a city on a whim. It's not a very nice place to live, Swift assures us, more for the science than for the tyrannical king.

Gulliver goes home, leaving Laputa in 1709, via Japan and the Netherlands, made really wealthy by some generous gifts from this benighted country which values knowledge and rational thought above anything else.

Gulliver arrives home in April 1710, and leaves home again in August 1710, this time having been offered a position as ship's captain.

If we consider that in 1703, Gulliver's shipmates marooned him, and in 1707, his crew cheerfully go off to be pirates, leaving Gulliver to be abandoned alone in a small boat, it will not surprise you to learn that after only eight months of Gulliver as their captain, the crew mutiny, and Gulliver is, once again, dropped overboard in a small boat with only a few days' supplies. It's April 1711, and Gulliver is once again looking for somewhere safe to land.

He finds a land which is inhabited by intelligent horses, whose name for themselves is Houyhnhnm, whose cattle are speechless and naked humans, referred to by the Houyhnhnm as Yahoos.

And there, at last, Gulliver is entirely happy. The horses decide that while he looks like a Yahoo - a human being - he is clearly intelligent and has speech: they treat him kindly, and he decides to live there forever.

This enables Swift to explore how entirely filthy and disgusting he thinks humans are:

Upon the whole, I never beheld, in all my travels, so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy.

Swift, via Gulliver, is in raptures over the wholesome and rational living arrangements of the horses, and in horrors of disgust about the filthy way in which the humans live.

Gulliver tells us: No man could more verify the truth of these two maxims, “That nature is very easily satisfied;” and, “That necessity is the mother of invention.” I enjoyed perfect health of body, and tranquillity of mind; I did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries of a secret or open enemy.

Horses who have met Gulliver agree that he is a human who behaves very well, almost as well as a horse. But the horses who have simply heard that a respected horse is keeping a human as a pet, are appalled by this, and exhort the horse who is keeping Gullliver to get rid of him.

The horse decides to let Gulliver try to build a boat and escape in that way, and Gulliver builds a kind of coracle, out of tanned human skins, with a sail also made of human skin: in February 1715, having lived among horses for nearly four years, Gulliver sets sail for human lands.

He reaches home at last on 5th December 1715. He has not now lived at home for more than a few months at a time since April 1699. His wife is apparently pleased to see him - and Gulliver, having learned to loathe and despise other humans in four years among horses, recoils from her embrace in disgust.

This fantasy covers 16 years of voyaging, and ends with Gulliver gradually learning to be a human again, though he still prefers horses.

This book - three hundred years old next year - is in many ways horrible, casually racist, casually sexist, and yet - it is the ground and seed from which so many other fantasies were grown.

You can read it on Gutenberg: