John Macmillan Brown (1846–1935)

In the vein of Gulliver's Travels the protagonist journeys to a fog bound archipelago and discovers various islands each run on different philosophies.
There are four or so major islands, run by what i would describe as liars, communists, warmongers and sensualists. Then each of these islands takes anyone they deem mad and sends them to another island filled with people who share their madness or extremist views.
So you have islands populated by nothing but anarchists, another by journalists, others by religious extremists of one kind or another, one filled with book critics another by people who value pedigree above all else, another by people who will always argue the opposite of what you say, others who will always agree with whoever seems the most popular, another with those who think they can talk to the dead etc.
That last one is one of my favorites, the community has divided into two groups the traditionalists who build creepy castles to attract ghosts and the modernists who say you don't need all that stuff and ghosts are perfectly happy turning up in a modern kitchen and communicating by knocking on the underside of tables, provided you only ask questions everyone knows the answers too. Its funny stuff.
Not as well characterized as Gulliver's Travels but lots of ideas and it also has a certain internal logic, theres a fairly reasonable explanation why this place exists and how such weird communities manage to survive. So nothing as sci-fi-ish as laputa or liliput.
Overall i just really enjoyed it.
Also theres a second-part or sequel which i'm definitely going to read at some point its called Limanora, the island of progress.… (mehr)