The New Gulliver, and Other Stories

"The New Gulliver, and Other Stories" by Barry Pain is a compilation of imaginative stories that probably came out in the late 1800s. The stories are all about adventure, what society is like, and what it means to be human, mostly following Lemuel Gulliver, Jr., as he travels and meets strange things on an island that makes him rethink what civilization really means. When the story starts, Gulliver is a sailor who gets shipwrecked and ends up on the Island of Thule. Right away, he meets a weird creature that shows him how the island's society works, and that's where he starts learning about a civilization that's grown in really weird and unusual ways. As Gulliver moves around his new home, he finds out about the strange habits of the people who live there, like how they've gotten rid of sex completely and only eat pills, which makes you wonder about what happens when a society becomes so controlled and sterile. The story turns into an interesting discussion about what progress really is, what happens when you have people from different social classes, and the difficult questions that the characters in this weird place have to deal with.