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A Voyage to Arcturus

by David Lindsay, John Clute (Introduction), Loren Eiseley (Afterword)

3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 · rating details · 822 ratings · 126 reviews

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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Apr 23, 2012 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Nov 29, 2012 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, philosophy, fantasy-horror

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 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 know of this odd cookbook?)

It is particularly apt that A Voyage to Arcturus is as strange as the way I first came to learn of the book. What I thought at first was a science fiction novel (based solely on its title) turned out to be a spiritual quest that is just happens to be set on a distant planet named Tormance that circles Arcturus, which in the book is a double star consisting of Branchspell and Alppain. With two companions, Krag and Nightspore, the hero Maskull takes a voyage to the distant star, where he is deposited in the middle of a red desert with no one else in sight.

For the remainder of the book, Maskull travels from south to north on Tormance, going through several lands, and having strange encounters with a wide variety of natives, who all seem to live in isolated pockets spread across the different lands. On his quest, which takes five days, Maskull finds love, murder, adventure, religion, and death:

He was a naked stranger in a huge, foreign, mystical world, and whichever way he turned, unknown and threatening forces were glaring at him. The gigantic, white, withering Branchspell, the awful, body-changing Alppain, the beautiful, deadly, treacherous sea, the dark and eerie Swaylone's Island, the spirit-crushing forest out of which he had just escaped -- to all these mighty powers, surrounding him on every side, what resources had he, a feeble, ignorant traveller from a tiny planet on the other side of space, to oppose, to avoid being totally destroyed? ... Then he smiled to himself, "I've already been here two days, and still I survive. I have luck -- and with that one can balance the universe.

In the end, the experience of reading Arcturus is as different from the sci fi genre as Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha or The Glass Bead Game.

I wonder whether my appraisal of this book will change over time, as it has for Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, which I now feel like downgrading. A book like this one leaves a powerful aura behind it which sometimes lasts, and sometimes doesn't. I rather suspect that the aura of Lindsay's book will last, if for no other reason that it is such an original. It is a book that reflects its Scottish author's feelings about the recently concluded horrors of the First World War. The book starts in Victorian London and quickly moves to outer space, but the adventures of Maskull could take place anywhere in a world that has come loose from its moorings.
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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

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Jan 18, 2013 Randolph Carter rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, fantasy

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

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Dec 10, 2008 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, transcendent-experiences

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
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 Pullman's His Dark Materials earlier this year, I had a feeling that it reminded me of Voyage... and after poking about on Google for a bit, I was interested to find an interview where Pullman said Lindsay was indeed one of the people who had influenced him most. So if you like Pullman, that might be a reason to check this out.

Like Pullman, Lindsay is interested in the really Big Ideas. Who are we, what is the point of life, is there a god, does he care about us? That sort of thing. He presents his very unusual take on it in the form of an allegory, a sort of Pilgrim's Progress on acid. Here's how it starts. The hero arrives on a planet which I think is supposed to be orbiting the star Arcturus, but this is where any pretense at mainstream science-fiction is abandoned. He finds he's grown a tentacle-like thing, which sprouts out of his chest, and is capable of spreading warm, fuzzy feelings towards anyone it touches. If I remember right, it's called a magn (like "magnanimous", I suppose). But if you now think that Lindsay's message is all sweetness and light, you are about as wrong as it's possible to be. Next thing we know, his magn has become a tough third arm, which can reach out towards other people and suck the life from their bodies. And the book's barely got warmed up yet.

It's uneven, and some bits make more sense than others, but no one else has written anything quite like it. And even if you don't agree at all with the ending, it's extremely memorable. Is that what life's really about? Damned if I know. But Lindsay's answer makes at least as much sense as most of the mainstream ones, and it's refreshingly simple.
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Dec 16, 2012 Yadel rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 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 dreams do, and Maskull follows them with the same oblivious certainty of dreamers. An eventful, and remembered, night of dreaming will include episodes disjointed from one another, characters we’ve never met but who we know and understand, and actions that we will without knowing why, all of which a Voyage to Arcturus also includes.
In his attempt to describe the indescribable, Lindsay endows Maskull with a succession of sensory organs which perceive countless combinations of adjectives. While this attempt works on some levels, there is never a moment of sublime understanding that language is an impossible tool with which to convey what he needs to. These moments occur frequently in Shakespeare, and it’s that frustration that gives a glimpse of the depth of what Shakespeare’s characters were trying to convey but couldn’t.
While I can understand why some might experience “religious terror” reading the novel, I did not. Instead, too many times I found myself trying to rationalize or excuse Lindsay’s narrative mistakes. The novel’s structure and its unimaginative language hindered the overall effect. I can imagine experiencing something like aesthetic wonder had the novel been an epic or play of beautiful prose. Had that been the case, Krag’s final line would have really been terrifying. But ultimately, Maskull’s quest for authentic reality is one which no longer interests me, and Lindsay did not manage to enchant me into considering it again. Maybe had I read it last year I would have formed a different opinion. Maybe in the future I will read it again and see it in a different light. There are some awesome passages, and Voyage To Arcturus is a novel which some people will find infinitely meaningful. I recommend you read it, if only to see if you’re one of them, but for most, myself included, the overall effect will be one of indifference.
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Dec 10, 2012 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 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. Instead, the subject of the novel is a psychological journey made by the central character Maskull, something which could be described as a post-Freudian The Pilgrim's Progress, although it is much looser in structure than Bunyan's allegory.

The idea that travel towards the sound of the drums of Muspell is like a journey to the source of life is clearly present, but many of the encounters on the journey seem to be more or less arbitrary fantasy on Lindsay's part, even if the events are inspired by his ideas about the mind, particularly the battle between duty (and the pain which accompanies it) and pleasure (which brings guilt).

It is the strength of the descriptions which grips the reader, Lindsay conveying the complete otherness of Tormance vividly. It is a newly created world, with everything still in the process of developing towards the fixed forms equivalent to Earthly scenery (so that we have new colours, animals appearing out of thin air, Maskull developing new limbs and sense organs appropriate for each experience). Lindsay's writing is a tour de force of the imagination, a benchmark to aspire to for any would-be describer of the alien.

The novel was a flop when first published, but later picked up admirers including C.S. Lewis. His science fiction, which is rather more mainstream, is clearly influenced by A Voyage to Arcturus; both Out of the Silent Planet and, even more so, Perelandra bear clear traces of Lindsay. Maskull lacks the morality Lewis gave to Ransome, and so his actions are harsher - he kills a fair number of people in the novel, for a variety of reasons. It is hard to think of anyone else who has been directly or obviously influenced as much as Lewis, though any fantasy novelist able to create vivid descriptions would be a possibility.(less)

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Sep 20, 2012 Tomek Piorkowski rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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Jun 29, 2012 Noah rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, science-fiction

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

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Apr 17, 2012 Jean-marcel rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 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 up on some of the elements I missed or befuddled me the first time through. I found the novel affected me in a profound way and that my mind keeps returning to it in a haunted, fascinated way.

A Voyage to Arcturus doesn't have many of the elements modern readers look for in books. It's a sort of allegorical tale, written in 1920 by Scottsman David Lindsay. It was his first novel, and when it was released sold very few copies. It did however attract the attention of both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R> Tolkien, and in fact the former has claimed that A Voyage to Arcturus was the book that convinced him that it was possible to write "science fantasy" tales as vehicles for spiritual messages and metaphor. The book is fairly heavy on the symbolism, but it doesn't come across at all as heavy-handed because of the otherworldly nature of the setting and the simultaneously alien but very human nature of the characters.

The first five chapters take place on the Earth that we all know, and introduce us to lindsay's very singular observational powers. His characters mostly exist to make points about the human condition, sometimes snide, sometimes beautiful. None of them are really developed or three-dimensional, but they don't really need to be, since the story doesn't exist to facilitate the characters growth; it's more like the other way round.

The tale begins at a seance at the house of an ostentatious rich Englishman, who has hired a medium who claims to be capable of precipitating physical manifestations of bodies from the spirit world. This he does, to the consternation of the guests, and the fascination of the strange late arrivals to the gathering, the curious and adventure-hungry Maskull and the intense, coldly enigmatic Nightspore. Just as the guests begin to marvel at this strange, tangible materialisation, a brutish, and uncouth figure, whom nightspore apparently knows as Krag, bursts into the room, unsettles the guests and ... breaks the neck of the materialised spirit, whose face suddenly alters to assume a ghastly, hideous grin that chills all present. Nightspore and Maskull follow Krag out into the street after Krag promises to show Maskull the world from whence the strange manifestation came. This world is apparently Tormance, the single planet encircling the binary star Arcturus, a world that seems to draw Maskull with magnetic compunction that he can or will not resist, even when a terrible voice in the night declares that the journey will mean his death.

In a desserted observatory in Scotland, where Krag claims their pilgrimage will begin, are bottles containing "back rays", encapsulated fragments of light that travel back to their source of origin instead of outwards. Krag uses these to seemingly power the ship that takes the odd company to Tormance. Unfortunately for Maskull, he blacks out during the journey, and when he wakes, he is on Tormance, all alone.

The rest of the novel takes place in the most compelling, alien of settings. Maskull travels throughout the lands of tormance, having found that he has acquired new sense organs that completely alter his perspective and allow him to love and sympathise and sense the magnificence of the world around him. However, what he soon learns is that on Tormance, inhabitants discard and grow sense organs of differing functions constantly, depending on what locale or society they inhabit. He journeys northward, following the taps of a rhythmic drumming sound that seems to originate neither on Earth or Tormance itself, but which seems to emanate from a specific direction all the same. He meets a large host of characters, all with their own distinct philosophical outlooks and ideologies. Many times throughout the novel does Maskull's mindset change as he comes under the influence of the various Tormancians, and many of his encounters are deadly, spiritual, and sometimes achingly beautiful. Lindsay obviously has a profound love of the senses, of aesthetics, and understands sensuality and sexuality to a startling degree. In fact, I found certain parts of this book to be highly erotic in a strange and subtle way. Every nuance, every breath of air on Maskull's face, every bar of music or budding leaf, is described in
the most beautiful and vividly enthusiastic detail. At one point, after drinking the water from a sacred stream and becoming conversant with the working of his first new sensory organs, Lindsay describes Maskull's experience as "a symphony of the senses", and in fact, the whole book reads like this, even the chapters taking place on earth. There are so many instances where Lindsay describes a person being overwhelmed or overcome by the power of music, or natural beauty.
The book is a vast, sprawling symphony of wildness
where a man has the unenviable but awesomely challenging task of describing whole new senses, colours, mindsets and feelings within the pages of a short
novel ... only to dash it all into pieces at the end of the book ... sort of.

I won't be spoiling too much by saying that the impression one gets at the novel's conclusion is painful. You will probably feel most uncomfortable, depressed, and alienated, assuming you understand the ramifications behind it, for despite Lindsay's glorious attention to detail; despite his beautiful revelations and poignant descriptions of love of various kinds, the god of Tormance is the source of the hideous, mindless grin that adorned the face of the "murdered" spirit, that indeed strikes the face of everyone who dies in Tormance ... and there are many corpses, for Maskull, in spite of good intentions and a soul that is struggling to attain purity, cannot seem to stop killing.

This is ultimately a work of gnosticism, which may surprise people reading this up to this point. It is a commentary on the nature of good and evil (yes, I know, there are so many of those, but this is definitely more than worth a read, or two, or three), and the answers it suggests and questions it poses are not very pleasant. Yet, if you're like me, you won't be able to stop cogitating on the book long after you've read it. You will find yourself continually coming back to certain passages, pondering the meaning of various interactions, and agonising over the ending. This is a strange, bizarre book, unpaletable to many, I suspect, but painfully beautiful to others. If you are at all interested in early science fiction or gnosticism ... or even are thinking that all you want is an extremely trippy adventure story, I recommend at least attempting to crack the mysteries of A Voyage to Arcturus. It might just alter the way you think about things. It's available online from the fine folks at Project Gutenberg, but also in a beautiful (but expensive!) hardcover edition from Savoy Books.(less)

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Mar 27, 2012 Aaron Arnold rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, read-in-2011

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

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Sep 12, 2011 Juushika rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: status-owned

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 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 fever dream of exploration, metaphor, and metaphysics, but its dry voice is often its undoing, removing the reader too far from its universal aspirations. Lindsay's voice is so distant and dry that not even his vibrant landscape can enliven itbut that landscape is vibrant, alien, and thought-provokingly strange, with a sprinkling of images that linger in the imagination. His protagonist is alternately brutal and blank, with a changing character that reflects all but encapsulates nonehe's a figure, not a person, and offers little for the reader to grasp on to. These aspects create an unexpectedly sterile story, one that's too easy to put down and to find distance from, although it's otherwise remarkably easy to read despite its density. It also enables Lindsay to reach an uneasy balance between exploring his concepts and leaving that exploration to the reader: not one that encourages reader involvement and internalization, but one that often remains at a cool distance and leaves the reader unmoved.

Yet Voyage is in its way a success. It reads almost like poetry, and can be approached in the same way: by skating over it, bamboozled but affected and intrigued, or by digging into and dissecting it in the attempt to make sense of its madness. Clute's strong introduction to this imprint is an aid towards the latter goal, but even taken on its own the novel's final pages are sufficiently strong to cap off the story with something solid, if not simple. There's nothing simple to be found here, but there is plenty in the way of rich food for thoughtsometimes too rich, sometimes as stale as the book is dated, sometimes made unsatisfying by the book's determination to deny its own conclusions, but an promising cornucopia nonetheless. I found A Voyage to Arcturus to be a long, slow, strange journey, but on the whole it's one I'm glad to have taken: cerebral to the point of dry, but still intriguing and wholly original, this may not be pleasure reading but it is worth picking up. I recommend this particular edition (Bison Frontiers of Imagination from the University of Nebraska Press) with certain caveats, however: the introduction is strong, but I counted 20 typos and even from a small press, that's unacceptable.
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May 28, 2011 Nick Tramdack rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 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", an insight, experienced during Maskull's epiphanies
-165: in a book full of unexamined, Platonic assumptions, this line is welcome relief: "With his racial prejudices, Maskull found little beauty in it, yet beauty there was, though neither of a masculine or feminine type..." [about Leehallfae, who by the way uses a 3rd-gender pronoun, ae.]
-182: "a hitherto unperceived bend" in a path opens up, cool way to move the action quickly
-183: "Maskull felt the fresh, mysterious thrill of mingled pain and rapture of one who awakes from a deep sleep in midwinter and sees the gleaming, dark, delicate colors of the half-dawn." Rare moments like this, where the language returns to earth, seem to display David Lindsay's talent even more than the worldbuilding.
-193: could be a proverb, "Give luck a slack rein."
-195: "Maskull then obtained his first near view of the mysterious light, which, by counteracting the forces of Nature, acted indirectly not only as elevator but as motive force." I love these scientific explanations that don't really explain things.
-220: I detect in this scene with dying Sullenbode, with the near-encounter with a mystic power in a wasteland full of pillars, and then the sudden death of a woman, an influence on the ending of Wolfe's Claw of the Conciliator...
"He flew toward her, and bent over her body.... His worst fears were realized. Life had departed.
Beneath its coating of mud, her face bore the vulgar, ghastly Crystalman grin, but Maskull saw nothing of it. She had never appeared so beautiful to him as at that moment."
-242: I was about to throw the book away but Lindsay managed to turn it around somehow. Unfuckingbelievable...
"He comprehended at last how the whole world of will was doomed to eternal anguish in order that one Being might feel joy."(less)

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Dec 20, 2010 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

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

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Aug 02, 2011 Jeff Miller rated it 3 of 5 stars

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

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Mar 04, 2011 Graham Worthington rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Apr 24, 2012 Don rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Sep 27, 2012 Tommy Carlson rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 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 speculative fiction like you've never seen. Ummm, read.

Now, let me note that I'm not saying the book is good. I don't think it is. It's not well written. The characters are not compelling. The dialogue is more stilted than you can imagine. And the plot is basically that this guy goes to a planet orbiting Arcturus, where he walks around, meeting other people who expound on their various philosophies. I honestly can't tell if the author loves these various takes on the nature of reality or whether he's satirizing them.

Personally, I found the philosophy boring. There's way too much it's naturally so to cover up bald assertions. There's also a bunch of assertions about the natural roles and attributes of the various sexes. Yeah, I know, it's written in 1920. Still, so much of it is just groan-worthy. At one point, gravity is described thusly: "The great body of the earth is continually giving out female particles, and the male parts of rocks and living bodies are equally continually trying to reach them. That's gravitation."

Plus, as I mentioned earlier, it's all presented via the most stilted language one can imagine.

You can get a good overview of the plot at Wikipedia's entry for it but don't go read the entry if you're planning on reading the book.

Wait... what? Why would you read it if I'm telling you how awful it is?

Because, as I also said, it's a f***ing crazy trip, man! The best description of it is one I saw in a GoodReads review: "If a 14 year old who was really into Gnosticism were asked to invent the science fiction genre, this would be the result."

There are all these really weird parts, with bizarre descriptions of the planet, the denizens, the twin suns of Arcturus, and the nature of reality. It's like being on acid while simultaneously listening to baroque prog-rock and conversing with stoned Philosophy undergrads.

So, y'know, it's free to download if you want to spend a few hours going What the F***?
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May 25, 2009 Charlie Fan rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 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 meaning in the universe? What is the relation of what we feel to what actually is?

Ostensibly, we have a curious protagonist offered a chance to visit a strange planet orbiting a distant binary star system. He eagerly takes up on the voyage and is transported to the other realm; what ensues is a fantastic philosophical debate on the nature of good and evil, the role of existence, and the true nature of man.

In all honesty, I cannot pretend to understand even a fraction of what transpires. My attempts to relate it to known texts, biblical or classical, fall short. But that could only be because I lack the memory or intelligence to recall my past associations with those literature.

When our hero wakes on the planet, he is alone and has inexplicably gained the function of several new appendages. As he progresses through the various continents and countries, he meets characters, seemingly more knowledgeable than the last, each directing him forward, compelling him closer to what he seeks (which is the creator of the planet or what he has associated as God on Earth but in truth neither is or isn't). His appendages either gain new functions or fall off completely. And invariably, many of his hosts perish through his actions.

I venture my meager understanding of the conclusion that the author may have wished to impart: that the thoughts of humankind is resplendent in emotions, but only pain truly defines them. The first land that the protagonist comes to, he feels great affection for his hosts, but that feeling is amorphous. In the final land, he falls in love with a singular being and by then he is already so close to the truth, this emotion is sharp and distinct, made real by his proximity to pain.

It is important to mention that "love" is perhaps only one aspect of the novel, maybe of primary importance. I do not believe it is love as in "romantic love" but love as in the good within. If you are curious about this book, there are many resellers on Amazon offering it for cheap. The best thing this book does is rid oneself of preconceived notions. It will make you think.

Upon finishing this book, I came to see myself as a void of malleable putty. Each significant event has attempted to mold me, but I return to the same darkness, to the same formlessness. I believe that is akin to the journey of the protagonist. Though he is shaped and changed much, he returns inevitably to the same mold because the truth was within the whole time.

In any case, it is a mind fuck.(less)

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Jun 10, 2010 David rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative-fiction

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

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Feb 11, 2013 Oliver Charlesworth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 04, 2012 Andrew Walter rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 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 almost nothing about Gnosticism, which apparently informs a lot of the (heavy) symbolism in this book. The way it was handled reminded me a lot of watching a Jodorowsky film; everything is very intense and people act in violent, often unpredictable ways, but it never feels random enough to be written off as pretentious. The themes seem to be love, death, morality, and ethics. You won’t have to be religious to understand that there are deliberate questions being posed here, simply open-minded.

I first read this because of the references to Lindsay’s imaginary colours (Jale, Ulfire and Dolm) in the audacious CARCOSA supplement for Original Dungeons & Dragons (McKinney 2008), and this lead to expectations that meant I didn’t really get into it at first. I was expecting early science fiction or fantasy adventure. Despite the amazingly weird settings the protagonist walks through, this isn’t really SF. There is almost no “action”, and the feel is contemplative, not escapist.

There’s a lot of talk about why this isn’t a more appreciated book (especially among sci-fi/fantasy enthusiasts) but now I’ve read it, I think it’s clear why. It doesn’t really resolve things for the reader, and lastly the writing is undeniably crappy. I’ve got a lot of time for bad writing if the author has strong ideas or unique visuals to share-and this is definitely the case here-but this is poor even by genre fiction standards. The pacing isn’t very good, and you’re presented with all the ideas all at once in each of the sprawling, allegorical debates.

Arguably this makes the dreamlike, fairytale narrative more otherworldly, but it’s going to put people off. Stick with this if you want to be challenged and read a book that will mean different things to everyone. I feel like I missed a lot, and it’s only around 280 pages. Very fitting cover on the Gollancz edition.
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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

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Aug 05, 2009 blake rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: scifi-fantasy-horror

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

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Jun 08, 2012 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Mar 30, 2013 Mariannne rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, dead-author-genre-challenge-2013

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

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Jan 24, 2012 Justin Wiggins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Jan 09, 2013 John Utech rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: abandonded

Made it 1/3 of the way through this book right up to the sentence, "He applied the drude first to his magn, and then to his breve."

1 like · like · see review

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

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Oct 20, 2012 Matt Hiebert rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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About David Lindsay

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 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 his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult & spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He & his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper & their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly & express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam & Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald, & modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism & magic realism. Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts & has recently been re-released. Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life & career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage & deep revision of Arcturus. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.

Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003

Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005(less)

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