65th out of 284 books
—
350 voters
A Voyage to Arcturus
A stunning achievement in speculative fiction, A Voyage to Arcturus has inspired, enchanted, and unsettled readers for decades. It is simultaneously an epic quest across one of the most unusual and brilliantly depicted alien worlds ever conceived, a profoundly moving journey of discovery into the metaphysical heart of the universe, and a shockingly intimate excursion into...more
Paperback, 274 pages
Published
April 1st 2002
by Bison Books
(first published 1920)
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Loses a star solely through my inability to understand what exactly transpired within and, with the passing of the years, my inability to recollect sufficiently to ponder it anew. Like everything truly excellent, it begins with a séance and an assortment of oddball characters ere the reader finds himself with the protagonist, Maskull, newly awoken upon the gravity-juiced planet of Tormance and, thus, in orbit about the plasmatic sphere known as Arcturus. It is at this point that the infamous Mag...more
How I first came to learn about David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus was in a strange cookbook I saw in the early 1970s written by a hippie who decided to use as the heading of each page a recommended book title. One of the books was this one, but it took me over forty years to get around to reading it. I remember liking many of the cookbook author's recommendations, and my library is full of them; and yet I cannot remember the name of the cookbook or its author. (Does anyone reading this review...more
Aug 06, 2011
Erik Graff
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
any willing to be challenged in their core beliefs
Recommended to Erik by:
high school friend
Shelves:
literature
This is one of the most incredibly eccentric, surprising and challenging philosophical fantasy novels ever written!
The Scottish writer David Lindsay died in 1945. He is usually regarded as a fantasy writer. While he wrote a great deal, most of his works have been hard to find, out-of-print, neglected. Voyage to Arcturus is the exception, having become a bit of a cult classic and reprinted again and again in paperback editions.
The title suggests science fiction. It is not. Arcturus is a device, a...more
The Scottish writer David Lindsay died in 1945. He is usually regarded as a fantasy writer. While he wrote a great deal, most of his works have been hard to find, out-of-print, neglected. Voyage to Arcturus is the exception, having become a bit of a cult classic and reprinted again and again in paperback editions.
The title suggests science fiction. It is not. Arcturus is a device, a...more
I hated this novel. It's really not a sf novel. It is some sort of philosophico-religio-fantasy acid trip (I know it's clumsy) with a sf framework to set up the fantasy. Ultimately it espouses some sort of gnostic reality for the universe.
Did Lindsay really personally believe this? If not, what is the point of this clumsy dull, ultimately pointless, novel? Maskull's adventures are laughably unlikely: after a sf setup that transports him and two "friends" to the Arcturus system, he traverses all...more
Did Lindsay really personally believe this? If not, what is the point of this clumsy dull, ultimately pointless, novel? Maskull's adventures are laughably unlikely: after a sf setup that transports him and two "friends" to the Arcturus system, he traverses all...more
Apparently David Lindsay said once that he would never be famous, but that as long as our civilisation endured, at least one person a year would read him. I think he was probably right. This is not a well-written book, and there is very little character development - but it is full of amazing, larger-than-life ideas, and some of it will stick in your mind for ever. At least it has in mine, and looking at the other reviews I think a fair number of other people felt similarly. When I read Philip P...more
Reading Voyage I’m stuck in the embarrassing position of knowing too much to find the novel illuminating and not enough to make any sense of it. The first thing anyone who reviews Voyage to Arcturus mentions is that it does not include any of the traditional markings of a successful novel. In fact, Maskull’s quest falls under Forster’s definition of story as opposed to plot. Events happen in succession but there is no link that binds them together. Instead the narrative unfolds in the same way d...more
Originally published on my blog here in August 2001.
A Voyage to Arcturus is one of the great eccentric novels which helped influence the development of science fiction without becoming part of its mainstream. (Other examples include The Worm Ouroboros and, more like Lindsay's writing, The House on the Borderland.)
The title alone would lead one to expect a story about space travel, like those written by Jules Verne, say, but the novel is not about the journey to Acturan planet Tormance at all. In...more
A Voyage to Arcturus is one of the great eccentric novels which helped influence the development of science fiction without becoming part of its mainstream. (Other examples include The Worm Ouroboros and, more like Lindsay's writing, The House on the Borderland.)
The title alone would lead one to expect a story about space travel, like those written by Jules Verne, say, but the novel is not about the journey to Acturan planet Tormance at all. In...more
A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay, is a very trippy sci-fi fantasy horror novel with a strong dark philosophical undercurrent. If that sentence scares then it's best to stay away from this book, but if you don't mind the surreal and philosophical explorations in your fantasy stories, then this cult classic is very much worth a look.
The story revolves around an earthling, Maskull, who is teleported to the world Tormance in the star system Arcturus. Tormance is divided into several nations, b...more
The story revolves around an earthling, Maskull, who is teleported to the world Tormance in the star system Arcturus. Tormance is divided into several nations, b...more
I'm not really sure what to make of this book. My response through reading it was that it was a book of sinister beauty and one that attempted to walk a fine line between utter destruction and eternal life. Nor do I think I would ever phrase a response in such a way again, but Lindsey's writing leads one to such thoughts and modes of response. But now that I have finished I find that my response is utter distaste and complete dismay. I won't suggest that I fully understand the philosophy, but if...more
I am really enamoured with "weird" or fantastic fiction from the early 20th century. I'd been hearing much about this elusive, mysterious book for quite some time, and noted with considerable pleasure that opinions on the book were completely polarised. It seemed that readers either loved this book or could barely stand to finish it. So I went and read it, and let me say for starters that this book was an experience I'll never forget. In fact, I've begun it a second time, reading aloud, to pick...more
Star Maker was practically normal compared to this, easily the weirdest sci-fi book I've ever read, and at 1920 one of the oldest apart from the foundational H.G. Wells/Jules Verne stuff. In fact it's so weird that it's not really science fiction at all, more like a series of crypto-parables about gnostic mysticism (the author was apparently a strange variety of Scottish Calvinist, but I don't think John Calvin would have approved of a lot of what goes on in the book) that just happens to be set...more
Swept from Victorian England to a distant planet, everyman Maskull begins an epic journey of discovery through that alien environment towards its metamorphic gods. A third of the way into his journey, Maskull encounters a violently sexual woman, murders her husband, demands her obedience, and then has her sing a song while they travel. Its "words were pure nonsenseor else their significance was too deep for him" (113). The same can well be said of this entire book. A Voyage to Arcturus is a fev...more
Sort of wearying, but the final payoff is worth the effort. Pseudo-gnostic secrets make for a planetary romance that's hard to outguess in this classic of Scottish SF in the dark tradition of James Hogg.
-107: "The storm gathered. The green snow drove against them, as they stood talking, and it grew intensely cold. None noticed it."
-110: "They hate pleasure, and thus hatred is the greatest pleasure to them." [about Sant - is this Krag's doctrine? I forget...]
-134: cool use of the word "apercu"...more
-107: "The storm gathered. The green snow drove against them, as they stood talking, and it grew intensely cold. None noticed it."
-110: "They hate pleasure, and thus hatred is the greatest pleasure to them." [about Sant - is this Krag's doctrine? I forget...]
-134: cool use of the word "apercu"...more
The first time I read this book might have been thirty years ago. I've been picking up a lot of books from my shelves lately, realizing that I read them ages ago and don't recall all that much from the experience. I do remember finding the style of this to be somewhat stilted at times, but I think I assumed then that it was more contemporary and American than a book written by a Scottish author in the 1920s. I enjoyed the book thoroughly on the second read and would recommend it to the adventuro...more
I have often seen SF author and Catholic convert John C. Wright reference the book "A Voyage to Arcturus" by Scottish writer David Lindsay on his blog. He is a fan of the book, but not the Gnostic philosophical undertones that underlie this novel. So I gave it a shot and found it quite interesting in its combination of SF, Fantasy on a philosophical landscape. Most of the novel takes place on a planet with two suns and as the main character explores the planet he encounters different people and...more
Little known by other than connoisseurs of the strange and mysterious, this odyssey of the questing human spirit is well worth the patience it takes to cope with the opening chapters, which lumber considerably as the author prepares us for the meat of the story. But once our characters reach Tormance - a planet circling the star Arcturus - the adventure begins in earnest, in a world where the spiritual takes physical form, and our hero Maskull battles a zoo of tempters and diverse philosophies a...more
Science fiction fantasy from 1920 of the inward sort. Very metaphysical. Calls to mind one of my favorite writers, Octavia Butler (Lilith's Brood), who like author David Lindsay, was influenced by George MacDonald (Lilith). You don't need to remember a lot of your Northrop Frye to figure out that all the mountains, gardens, caves, and furnaces in this novel are taking you deep into Old Testament territory. The helpful introduction states that Lindsay believed that "the Subline is not a metaphysi...more
So, one day, I had run out of science fiction to read. So I headed over to Project Gutenberg and browsed around for some old skool sci-fi. Basically, I grabbed copies of anything I thought had an interesting title.
One that caught my eye was A Voyage to Arcturus, from 1920. It sounded like it might be some sort of hard sci-fi about, well, a voyage to Arcturus. If not hard sci-fi, maybe at least firm sci-fi?
Could I have been more wrong? Nope! This book is a f***ing crazy trip, man! It's wild-ass s...more
One that caught my eye was A Voyage to Arcturus, from 1920. It sounded like it might be some sort of hard sci-fi about, well, a voyage to Arcturus. If not hard sci-fi, maybe at least firm sci-fi?
Could I have been more wrong? Nope! This book is a f***ing crazy trip, man! It's wild-ass s...more
Of the stranger books I've come across, this has to be strangest, and while the title and initial chapters suggest that this may be a work of dismissive Science Fiction / Fantasy, it is decidedly not.
Published in 1920, the book hails from a strong lineage of allegorical-journey stories. Think of the travails of Candide or better yet, of Gulliver's Travels. While the aforementioned books were of a political nature, A Voyage to Arcturus speaks about something more primal: how does one define meani...more
Published in 1920, the book hails from a strong lineage of allegorical-journey stories. Think of the travails of Candide or better yet, of Gulliver's Travels. While the aforementioned books were of a political nature, A Voyage to Arcturus speaks about something more primal: how does one define meani...more
Just about the one good thing I'd say about the book is it's a non-stereotypical kind of speculative fiction. Although it might be best categorized as "fantasy", there are no wizards, magic spells, swords, dragons or elves. It doesn't fall into any "formula" or such.
On the other hand, the writing style is somewhat old and Lindsay probably had below average for professional writing skill even in his own day. The main character has scattered talks to other characters on topics one might call philo...more
On the other hand, the writing style is somewhat old and Lindsay probably had below average for professional writing skill even in his own day. The main character has scattered talks to other characters on topics one might call philo...more
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This is a weird one. Very hard to place or describe, and not analogous to anything I’ve read before. I don’t know if it would have seemed more or less out-there in 1920.
In a sentence; after some preliminaries, an Earthman named Maskull wanders through the bizarre landscapes of a planet called Tormance, encountering unfamiliar belief systems and their non-human (?) adherents, and budding or losing new limbs and sense organs to reflect this, or to assist with these new ways of thinking.
I know almo...more
In a sentence; after some preliminaries, an Earthman named Maskull wanders through the bizarre landscapes of a planet called Tormance, encountering unfamiliar belief systems and their non-human (?) adherents, and budding or losing new limbs and sense organs to reflect this, or to assist with these new ways of thinking.
I know almo...more
Oct 06, 2012
Ivan
added it
I suspect this book might have been the source of some of the ideas for the film "Avatar", but it is much more interesting, though definitely not everyone's cup of tea. "Perelandra" by C. S. Lewis is the nearest thing to it I've ever read, but I never finished that book as I didn't get on with it.
Neither pure SF nor pure fantasy, it's a highly imaginative allegorical account of a spiritual quest. An odyssey that retains the reader's interest by virtue of its richness of invention, strangeness, a...more
Neither pure SF nor pure fantasy, it's a highly imaginative allegorical account of a spiritual quest. An odyssey that retains the reader's interest by virtue of its richness of invention, strangeness, a...more
This book is far from perfect. The writing is clumsy, the character development is implausible and often non-existent (leading to confusion over their motives and occasional disinterest), and the character and place names are ridiculous to the point of distraction. That said, the story is so utterly inventive and unique (especially considering that it was written post-WWI), and the ending so powerful that it will remain with me for a long time. Lindsay crafted what on first glance appears to be...more
If a 14 year old who was really into Gnosticism were asked to invent the science fiction genre, this would be the result. It's bizarre, poorly-written at times, and filled with awkward pronouns like Nightspore and Spadevil, but its oddities only make it more fun to read and add to its originality. The craziness of the plot was what originally attracted me to the book. Wikipedia gives a much clearer synopsis than I can (spoiler alert):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_voyage....
A Voyage to Arcturu...more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_voyage....
A Voyage to Arcturu...more
A man named Maskull is taken by two companions on a trip beyond his wildest dreams - to a planet orbiting the star Arcturus. Waking up alone in a body that has changed to include new external organs - an arm-like projection from his heart and a hole in his head that senses others' feelings. Bereft of his companions, he begins making his was across the planet in search of Surtur - a god-like being. From a couple who are so pacifistic that they live on water in order to avoid consuming even a part...more
This book ultimately deals with David Lindsay's view of metaphysics. According to the foreword, he believed in a very real spiritual reality whereas the reality of "beauty" we as humans experience is false; and he believed that everyone has a "spark" of some sort of god in which one can experience an awakening in which pain is inevitable. The main character of the book, Maskull,goes through many adventures and encounters many beings which represent many ideas(and he certainly covers much ground....more
Feb 15, 2012
Alex Sarll
added it
Certainly not a bad book, and in places an astonishingly powerful one, but you never quite escape the sense that it was written in green ink. Apparently an inspiration on CS Lewis' SF trilogy, and it shows, though the theology here is far more idiosyncratic (I would love to know if Chesterton read it, and if so, what he thought). Also, if you have a single feminist button, this will press it, repeatedly. Though one could draw one's own conclusions about why that might be given appropriate prepar...more
I couldn't help but read some of the other reviews of this 1920 novel by David Lindsay. I was glad to find out I wasn't the only one hard pressed to describe it. I'm not even going to bother with a plot summary since there is basically nothing that could be considered a plot. I'm not sure what the "rules of writing a novel" were in 1920, but if there were any, Lindsay ignored them.
I was attracted to this novel because I read that critic and scholar, Harold Bloom, had written a sequel (which he n...more
I was attracted to this novel because I read that critic and scholar, Harold Bloom, had written a sequel (which he n...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fantasy at its fullest | 4 | 23 | 27 jan. 17:46 | |
| Pre-Tolkien Fantasy : Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay | 3 | 18 | 09 nov. 07:29 |
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
David Lindsay (1876-1945) was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where hi...more
More about David Lindsay...
David Lindsay (1876-1945) was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where hi...more
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updated 23 avr. 15:29