23 h 48 minAudiobook6 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 584 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 584 pagesAbout this book
What if a whole society chooses to evolve—and makes self-improvement the rule of life?
Hidden in the South Pacific, Limanora is an island where science, ethics, and planning guide human progress. In Godfrey Sweven’s Limanora: The Island of Progress, an unexpected castaway records his encounter with a civilization that treats improvement as a shared task, rather than something left to chance.
Through this outsider’s eyes, the island becomes a challenge to the world he knows. Scientific knowledge changes work, while disciplined conduct shapes communal life. But near-perfection comes with sacrifice. This 1903 utopian novel asks what people must give up to advance—and who gets to decide what a better society means.
What you’ll discover
- Progress by choice Enter a community that makes its own improvement a deliberate, collective task.
- Science beyond drudgery Explore the hope that practical knowledge can lift the burden of exhausting work.
- Evolution with ethics Consider a vision in which human advancement demands changes in conduct as well as knowledge.
- An outsider’s searching gaze Follow a castaway whose encounter with Limanora exposes his own limitations and his homeland’s flaws.
- The cost of perfection Weigh the appeal of harmony against the sacrifices demanded by disciplined self-betterment.
Who will love it
Readers who love imagined societies, early science fiction, flying machines and big questions about evolution, ethics and the future. Anyone who enjoys a narrator guided through a strange world will feel at home.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A stranger wakes in a jeweled palace
- Education reads dreams and rebuilds the person
- A people who rest, fly and bury the past
- Machines tame earthquakes, storms and invaders
- Science is also art, medicine and architecture
- Heaven, hell and the literature of the future
- Law without lawyers, and a quiet senate
- Death, ethics and religion without temples
- A strange world told to miners
Who’s who
- The narratorA yachtsman who reaches the island and is trained as a citizen, longing to understand its ways and to belong.
- ThyrielHis guide, friend and chosen partner, brave, gentle and gifted, who helps him learn flight and the island's ideals.
- NoolaA long-exiled man who returns with the narrator, hoping to be taken back after a hundred years of self-discipline.
- OolmoAn ancient sage who guides the young pair through the valley of memories and teaches the island's history.
- ChoktrooJock Drew, once the narrator's cabin boy, now a cunning conqueror who sets out to master the Isle of Devils.
- AmiralnoAn elder whose work belongs to the island's science of weather.
- OorielThyriel's cousin, a powerful young worker who shows the narrator how the valley of force is guarded.
- The miners' storytellerOne of the miners who shelter the stranger and write down his tale.
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- Audiobook
- 23 h 48 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 6 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in, 584 pages: 18,95 USD when you start free, 24,95 USD on its own.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in, 584 pages: 27,95 USD when you start free, 32,95 USD on its own.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Limanora: The Island of Progress
by Godfrey Sweven · 1903
A shipwrecked sailor wakes on a hidden island where people fly, read minds and plan their descendants.
Over 20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What would it feel like to wake in a palace of living light, among people who have remade the human body and mind? Godfrey Sweven's Limanora is the tale of a yachtsman who reaches a hidden island ruled by science, flight and a ruthless ideal of progress.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A stranger wakes in a jeweled palace
The story opens as a man wakes in a room of shining crystal. Perfume, music and a strange new energy fill the air, and he feels stronger than ever before. He has been shot into the sea with his friend Noola, who came from the island long ago.
A silent host leads him to a floating seat made of compressed air and explains what has happened. Wise men and medical families have tested his mind and nerves with instruments called cerebrometers. They judge him thousands of years behind them in body, yet rich in imagination, honest and humble, with a deep passion for progress.
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What is Limanora about?
A yachtsman reaches a hidden Pacific island whose people live by science, flight and a constant drive for progress. He learns their schools, machines, laws and beliefs, and tells the story to miners in New Zealand.
Who wrote Limanora?
Godfrey Sweven is the author of Limanora.
What does the word Limanora mean in the book?
It is the name of the island, whose people call themselves Limanorans. The book gives many words from their language, such as irelium for their metal and Fialume for the valley of memories.
The author
Godfrey Sweven
1845–1935 · New Zealand utopian novelist
Godfrey Sweven was the pen name of John Macmillan Brown (1845–1935), a New Zealand academic born in Scotland. He moved to New Zealand in 1874 and taught at Canterbury College in Christchurch. Under this name, he published Riallaro in 1901 and Limanora: The Island of Progress in 1903. He died in Christchurch.
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