Although I haven't seen this one, I doubt it was picked at random. "Laputa"
in "Gulliver's Travels" was a flying island, levitated by a huge magnet.
Given the title of the anime, it's hard to believe it's *not* a tribute to
Swift.
In an interview, Miyazaki said it was, but I only have a text file of it...
I don't know where it was published.
Thought as much. Thanks for the confirmation.
had. One very odd thing. The Laputans made very, very good telescopes and
Gulliver reports viewing Mars through one and seeing two small moons.
That's how many moons Mars actually has and they are quite small ones... the
odd things is that this was nearly fifty years before astronomers discovered
the moons of Mars. It's generally accepted that Swift just made a lucky
guess. (?)
Not so much a guess as a correct answer based on a false method. At the time,
the number of moons discovered seemed to follow some mathematical progression
-- I forget the specifics -- and the only violator was Mars, which had no known
satellites at the time. The progression required 2 satellites for Mars, so he
plugged that in, and made the obvious explantion that they were too small to be
seen with Europe's telescopes.
-- Bob, who spent his junior year at Princeton writing papers on Swift...