Arqtiq: A Story of the Marvels at the North Pole

by Anna Adolph

Described by author Liza Daly as a "strange masterpiece of outsider art," Arqtiq is a bizarre, borderline hallucinatory work of feminist utopian fiction. Equal parts sci-fi adventure, philosophical tract, and pro-Symmesian pamphlet, Anna Adolph’s strange, self-published novella centers its narrative around an aviator (also named Anna) who, along with a ragtag group of family and friends, charts an expedition to the North Pole in a retro-futuristic airship of her own invention. There, Anna and her crew travel into the hollow earth, encounter a race of telepathic giants, and uncover secrets about God and the universe. Written in a style that teeters somewhere between modernist abstraction and amateurish enthusiasm, Arqtiq almost defies comprehension. It is a maddening and oftentimes incoherent tale that nonetheless fascinates with its unhinged imagination. It is perhaps one of the most exuberantly surreal and dreamlike works of utopian fiction from this era.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

Mrs. Anna Adolph was born Ann Elizabeth Eddy in 1841. Following her mother's death in 1875, she joined her father in California and married Charles Adolph. She died in 1917.

Further reading.

Reviews

[Shannon Couey · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are no words to describe this book. I did not give this book 5 stars because of the quality of the writing or the stylistic choices of the author. Both are terrible. Truly terrible. It is incomprehensible and painfully confusing. However, if you want to enjoy a good laugh, read passages out loud to a friend. The absurdity of the plot and of the jarring stylistic "choices" leave the reader asking, "What in the actual f$%#?!"

There is little to be gained from the novel in substance. But...but, if you are really into weird "science fiction" that depends heavily on the fantastical, then this laugh-inducing narrative is for you.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

the daly quote "strange masterpiece of outsider art" really sums this one up, the prose style is unlike anything i've read and feels almost childlike in places. feels like a lucid fever dream, which it is in-text, with lots of bizarre and surreal imagery that feels both incredibly personal and almost completely lacking in coherent substance. something that is meant to be experienced rather than read as a story with a plot or political tract. would be a good candidate for psychedelic illustrations. daly's background research on the author is incredibly detailed and worth reading as much as the novella is

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was so weird, disjointed, and awkwardly written I actually had trouble following what was going on while listening to the LibriVox audiobook. Arqtiq is a Hollow Earth novel that was self-published in 1899. Worth reading only as a curiosity and example of the utopian fiction of the Progressive Era that includes Mizora: A World of Women , Looking Backward: 2000-1887 , and Herland , absolutely none of which have aged well.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Be warned, this dreamlike trance of a tale is less of an adventure across the North Pole or the frozen tree holding the Earth together, and more of a series of religious revelations. They are honest and align with our nightly elastic dreams, so they appeal to the truth that is grey, and may be seen as an extension of the common consciousness bred by the stars.

[David]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqtiq

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

This sci-fi novella from 1899 is near unreadable and, after describing more and more unlikely scenarios, ends limply with the narrator waking up from a dream. It's a shame, because I was really excited by Wikipedia's description of it as a "feminist utopian adventure novel," in which a woman invents a flying machine and uses it to discover a utopian civilization living underneath the North Pole!

I've read plenty of books from the 1800s, and the sentence fragments and bizarre uses of punctuation in this book are not indicative of the era, nor do they seem to be someone playing with language - it just seems poorly written. I could follow the overall narrative arc, but I found the writing very hard to make sense of. A woman goes with her husband, her father, and (inexplicably) her friend's young daughter, the friend seemingly unconcerned about sending her child off on a mission to the North Pole in an untested flying machine. Upon reaching the pole, they discover and are welcomed into an underground city of giants. The narrator becomes obsessed with whether or not these giants are Christians and makes several attempts to convert them. Her husband, an atheist, goes around giving lectures on the wonders of American science and thought. The giants find these small explorers equal parts adorable and mystifying, and they enjoy carrying the Americans around on their shoulders or in their pockets and startling them with sudden, unexpected movements. Toward the end the narrator volunteers herself for a mission without entirely knowing what she's signing up for, and ends up traveling to the center of the earth and then into outer space inside some kind of globe, all the while having revelations about the composition of the earth and the stars.

Wikipedia makes a brief comparison between this story and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a book I read last year and had mixed feelings about, and I have to say that the Poe novel is a far better and more coherent story than Arqtiq is, and that's saying a lot given how off-the-rails Poe's novel gets at the end.