A Voyage to Arcturus

Maskull attends a seance. After the usual assurances of genuineness, a spirit does materialize - really. That turns out to be the least of the evening's bizarre events, in which Maskull becomes bound up with someone named Krag and another named Nightspore. Mechanism aside, these beings carry him, willing, to a planet that circles the star Arcturus. The place holds many mysteries, among them the immanence of the world's Creator and creative forces. And, in Manichaean balance, a destructive demiurge also inhabits and shapes this world. Using a familiar narrative tool, Lindsay marches Maskull through different zones of this world, each one under the influence of some different intangible. Maskull first lands in a region devoted to - love? generosity? Although the mood is clear in narration, I don't think I know any one English word that captures it. The next territory founds its thinking on self-centeredness. Not quite selfishness, a slightly different thing, but a numbness to the feelings of others offset by active awareness of one's own desires. Next comes a land of duty, though not as simple an urge as that word suggests, followed by others. Physical changes accompany Maskull's entry into each sphere of influence. In the loving place, Maskull sprouts organs that perceive the vital principle in living things. The self-centered place replaces those with a sensory organ that detects how important each thing is to Maskull, and so on through change after change. As he wanders, like Dante traversing the Inferno, Maskull acquires his guiding Beatrice. In fact, he acquires a new one at each border - they often die, often at his hands. But, somehow, his murderous nature in each region arises from the same vicious innocence that a snake displays in crushing a rat, or a cat in tormenting a broken bird. All this just describes the first half of the book, though. The story maintains its subtlety and casual violence of mood as it approaches the godhead. Although the physical descriptions remain concrete, the spiritual transformations become more conflicted and ethereal. The book's contradiction and ambiguity, the vagueness and vividness re-emerge in my own responses to the story. I'm not really sure what I feel about it, except that I feel it very strongly. Lindsay's words imprison sensations that I find familiar, even when I have no name for them, and present them for study. This remarkable story defies easy analysis or even analogy. At the same time, it invites enjoyment with tinges of wonder. Open yourself to it. -- wiredweird

My favorite myths are Midas, Prometheus, and Brave New World. I think Arcturus could enter this pantheon, particularly in our age, when we seem only to be able to think in terms of pastiches of myths. We get several different mythical ideas in the novel, and even at the end it's unclear whether a key epiphany is real or merely a "take" of someone overly influenced by Krag (just as, say, Joiwind's views are a "take" of someone overly influenced by Crystalman).The ideas of Crystalman and Krag guide the narrative journey. Although at first it's frustrating to get so many accounts of these "characters," these shifting accounts reflect how little we know of pleasure and pain, how many disparate experiences we group under these concepts. The Crystalman grin at death reminds me of those great Dickinson lines: The heart loves pleasure firstAnd then release from painAnd then a little anodyneTo ease the sufferingAnd then-if it should beThe will of its inquisitor-The privilege-To die.Likewise, Krag/pain sets the whole narrative in motion, just as we would scarcely move on to higher achievements without pain of dissatisfaction at our present state.I love the idea of all friction, suffering, and pain being caused by the admixture of spirit and matter. The final triumph of materialism would indeed lead us to treat our bodies and moods entirely like machines and output readings; to manipulate each with any device or drug available (and thus to end the mixing of spirit and matter, and to banish all pain). The idea of the world of will created by partial absorption of spirit stream into Krystalman's matter recalls Virgil's account of metempsychosis in Hades in the sixth book of the Aeneid, where Anchises "explains the cosmos, death, and the afterlife. A divine spirit sustains the universe; mortal souls are its seeds imprisoned and contaminated by the mortal body:" Nor death itself can wholly wash their stains;But long-contracted filth ev'n in the soul remains. The relics of inveterate vice they wear, And spots of sin obscene in ev'ry face appear. For this are various penances enjoin'd; And some are hung to bleach upon the wind, Some plung'd in waters, others purg'd in fires, ...But, when a thousand rolling years are past, (So long their punishments and penance last,) Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god, Compell'd to drink the deep Lethaean flood, In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares Of their past labors, and their irksome years, That, unrememb'ring of its former pain, The soul may suffer mortal flesh again."VI. 735-751The Thomistic synthesis of Aristotelianism and Christianity tries to overcome this dualism....to endorse the mutual interdependence of souls and bodies. But of course, this kind of interdependence sometimes feels like imprisonment. (Our manner of) dancing can only exist in a world with gravity-but gravity must feel like a torment to the dancer. Similarly too death is a precondition for (our manner of) life.[I use "our ma

David Lindsay's "A Voyage to Arcturus" is difficult to categorize. The book has been labeled "Science Fiction/Fantasy," but it is much more. The novel's hero/Everyman Maskull starts out on a journey to the planet Tormance, but is quickly separated from his two traveling companions. Maskull's journey takes him on an unusual search for the discovery of the truths of the planet and of his own being. He meets several unusual but memorable characters who are so interesting they could each become the subjects of their own novels. The entire book deals with a search for the truth and the struggle between good and evil...and it's not always easy to distinguish which character is on which side. This is a vast over-simplification of the story. The novel is rich, bold, and imaginative. The reader has absolutely no idea what is about to happen next as the story moves. I found the unpredictability (especially in light of current novels) very refreshing. Several reviewers are hoping for a film version of the book. Some novels should never reach the screen and this is one of them. First, no studio could produce the special effects necessary to bring the novel to the screen without cheapening the story. Second, I don't want to see George Clooney running around attempting to contemplate the meaning of life while playing a caricature of Maskull. Don't wait for the movie...read the novel and enjoy.

David Lindsay is one of the twentieth century's greatest and least appreciated geniuses. This, his first book, is also his best known, although it's debatable whether the science-fiction/Tolkien-fantasy crowd, into whose hands it has generally fallen, quite have the measure of its overarching ambition and audacious vision. Tormance, a planet of the star Arcturus, is a young world where raw particles of life flow and are trapped in the creations of Crystalman, the god of the visible world. Maskull, a human being, comes to Tormance from Earth and embarks upon an epic journey towards Muspel, the source of all genuine life, which is in constant danger from Crystalman's vulgar machinations. Maskull meets a succession of characters whose various philosophies and points of view represent the stages of his own spiritual progress, until finally he sheds his "Maskull" (mask, shell) self and awakes to the truth which Crystalman's world keeps hidden. The fight goes on, a fight in which pain is an ally and "nothing will be done without the bloodiest blows." This summary cannot begin to convey the complexity of this work nor do justice to its vast scope or the astounding variety of its invention. As he travels through the book's epic landscapes Maskull constantly mutates, growing new eyes, new arms and new organs, seeing new colours and encountering a member of a third sex. Almost everyone he meets soon dies, killed either by Maskull himself or by their own inability to evolve as he does - bloodiest blows indeed. Lindsay's prose is pedestrian and often clumsy, but always clear and never verbose; the story moves quickly, its most complex ideas given concrete shape rather than conveyed through abstract discussion. A Voyage to Arcturus is neither science fiction nor fantasy, but a vision in words, as raw, bleak and powerful as a Scottish mountain. The problems it raises are deathly serious and forever immediate.

I was handed this book years ago by a friend at school, who had in turn been given it by another. I read it, passed it on to a friend and later found out that it was then read by several others before being lost without trace. It is an unforgettable book, extraordinarily rich in imaginative and descriptive brilliance, about one man's journey through a far-away world which may in fact be the mirror of his own psyche. While the writing can be at times turgid, it is more often inspired; the author has a great gift for description, and the various tableaux he describes remind one of the best bits of Tolkien, although perhaps even more evocative. But this is no "Lord of the Rings". Rather than enacting a classic tale of epic heroism, Lindsay takes us on a gripping journey through a planet where good and evil are not only locked in struggle, but cloaked in impenetrable disguise. It is the hero Maskull's task to unmask the truth, and thereby attain his own redemption. The real genius of this book lies in its ability to defy prediction. At no stage does the reader have the slightest inkling of where the narrative might be heading, or how the threads might eventually tie up; but one is nevertheless compelled to read on. A definite must-read for all sci-fi and fantasy buffs; would also be enjoyed by visual artists, psychoanalysts, anyone interested in pagan religion, or just anyone who likes great descriptive writing.