Read about another book on the list.Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift
No collection of skyborne fantasies would be complete without mentioning Jonathan Swift’s seminal masterpiece. Gulliver visits Laputa, a floating civilization that blindly pursues science without purpose, and the methods and results are at once amusing and slightly terrifying. Many readers cite the Laputian tactic of dropping rocks on rebellious earthbound cities as one of the first conceptualizations of airborne warfare. Like a lot of the elements in Swift’s novel, Laputa’s DNA is entwined with pretty much any modern piece of speculative fiction that features a flying city, castle, or society.
Gulliver's Travels appears on Lindsay Taylor and Suzanne Smith's list of ten favorite fantasy realms, Conn Iggulden's top ten list of books about tiny people, Antonio Carluccio's list of his six favorite books, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the top imaginary meetings in literature and ten of the best vegetables in literature; it is one of Neil deGrasse Tyson's 5 most important books.
--Marshal Zeringue
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