The New Gulliver, and Other Stories

A shipwreck brings Lemuel Gulliver, junior, to Thule, where an elderly inhabitant explains a civilisation organised around avoiding risk. Homes lie underground, travel depends on the rearrangement of atoms, and a hungry visitor discovers a dining room stocked with numbered bottles. Barry Pain gives these extraordinary arrangements the tone of a practical conversation, allowing the host's confidence in progress to become part of the joke.

The New Gulliver, and Other Stories places this imagined society beside shorter pieces, including a comic account of gardening in London. There, a fountain requires an old baby's bath hidden in a tree, while its proud designer gradually admits how much he owes to a capable workman. The collection moves between speculative invention and ordinary vanity. Its appeal lies in the gap between what narrators claim and the awkward details they reveal, making it a useful choice for readers of dry humour and unusual fiction.