Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.

Gulliver’s first impression is that the island people are strange. They have peculiar mannerisms, such as keeping their heads tilted to one side or the other with their eyes looking in different directions, one up and one inside. These people also wear odd, ill-fitting clothing with imprints of the moon, stars, and musical instruments. They appear aloof; they need reminders to talk, which are provided in the form of what he calls “flappers”—effectively noise-making devices used to snap people out of their daydreams.

Gulliver is brought to the king, where he learns that he is in the kingdom of Laputa. The king is in the midst of a long meditation and Gulliver waits until this concludes before they converse. He learns that the people are highly absorbed in astronomy, math, and music and their means of communication is built on these subjects.

However, for a society built extensively on mathematical skills, nothing the Laputans build or create actually shows a practical application of these skills. Their clothing does not fit and their buildings are haphazardly constructed. The Laputans are also terrified of an apocalypse that could come from a collision with a comet. Lastly, Laputan women are promiscuous: They regularly cheat on their husbands, who are too caught up in abstract thinking to even notice or care.

Gulliver describes how the floating island is constructed, revealing a highly complicated design which allows the island to float and also to collect rainwater. There is a loadstone built into the center of the island which allows the king to descend closer to the ground without landing on it. The island is only allowed to float over land that is within the king’s control.

Gulliver then describes how the king is able to stifle any attempted uprisings in his kingdom. First, he moves the floating island over an area where strife occurs. This positioning starves the residents below of sunlight. Second, if the first option fails, he is able to drop the island right on top of the insurrectionists. The king tells Gulliver that the second option is only used in rare circumstances and that the threat of it is the best deterrent.

Gulliver soon becomes bored and feels neglected by the Laputans, who only want to talk math and science with him. He is allowed to leave the floating island to go to Balnibarbi. He travels with a lord named Munodi, who is not highly regarded by his fellow Laputans because he believes there is more to life than math, astronomy, and music.

Munodi and Gulliver visit the capital city of Lagado, which Gulliver finds disappointing due to the apparent rampant poverty. They arrive at Munodi’s estate, which impresses Gulliver. Munodi informs him that his estate is a remnant from a previous era, before residents left for the floating island. When they returned from the island, they founded an academy that sought reform in all domains, including in the way farming was done and how buildings were constructed. The practical approach was supplanted by new-fangled approaches that were more dependent on abstractions.

Gulliver is given a tour of the Lagado academy. Much of what he observes is pseudoscience that has no practical purpose, such as turning cucumbers into sunbeams and turning human excrement back into the food it started as before being eaten. During his tour, Gulliver becomes a little sick and visits the doctor onsite, who treats patients by using a bellows that he sticks in their rectums to draw wind out of the body. Gulliver then visits another part of the academy where the speculative experimenters reside, one of whom is working with a machine that randomly reorganizes words. The professor then collects the new sentence formations into larger texts, which he claims will “give the world a complete body of all arts and sciences” (107). Lastly, Gulliver describes another professor who advocates for the complete cessation of all verbal communication as it theoretically damages the lungs, which in turn shortens the lifespan.

Gulliver visits another academy where the professors discuss politics and social concerns. Gulliver is dismissive of their ideas, although in this case, what the academy argues is favorable to equality, justice, and meritocracy. Gulliver actually comes to pity these people for their ideas. Gulliver finds one person who asserts that if a political body is effectively the same as an individual body, it can be susceptible to the same kind of ailments—therefore, the prescriptions for rectifying the ailments should be the same. For example, the man mentions how those in a prince’s entourage seem to have problems with their memories. To rectify this, the man proposes a solution where members of the prince’s inner-circle are pinched, pricked, and have their feet stepped on to help them remember things. Gulliver listens to another professor explain a peculiar idea for anticipating crimes against the state which involves analyzing excrement. The idea is that a man is most serious and intent when going to the bathroom. Gulliver offers his own ideas to the general discussion, referencing an experience he had while in Tribnia: In this case, officials target adversaries and plant evidence that they then use against them to prove guilt.