A Voyage to Arcturus - a one-of-a-kind hallucinogenic trippy combination of epic, myth, science fiction, fantasy, Gnostic cosmology and metaphysical speculation written not in the swinging sixties but in 1920 by a British author traumatized by trench warfare during World War 1.
David Lindsay writes in a style having more in common with tales of gods and heroes from Greek mythology or the Norse epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer than Anthony Trollope or H.G. Wells (understatement) but this strange novel has been admired by and has influenced an entire list of authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis among their number. This to say, if you enjoy tales that stretch your imagination, A Voyage to Arcturus is most definitely your book.
Following oddball events during a séance and weird space travel (the softest of soft sf), a giant burly man named Maskull finds himself alone on the distant planet of Tormance. Earthing Maskull retains his full identity from beginning to end but, as he moves from land to land, region to region in Tormance, his body and even his mind will undergo stunning changes, beginning with a curious knob on his forehead, two larger knobs on each side of his neck, and a thin, soft, flexible tentacle the size of his arm in the middle of his chest.
And deep into his journey, once in another land, we read: “Maskull found that his new organs had no independent function of their own, but only intensified and altered his other senses. When he used his eyes, ears, or nostrils, the same objects presented themselves to him, but his judgment concerning them was different. Previously all external things had existed for him; now he existed for them. According to whether they served his purpose or were in harmony with his nature, or otherwise, they had been pleasant or painful. Now these words “pleasure” and “pain” simply had no meaning.”
Again, Maskull is always Maskull, however the basic way he views himself and this new world will alter in significant, sometimes eerie, ways. Certainly among the most captivating aspects of the novel.
Tormance is one weird planet orbiting Arcturus, a binary star with two suns, smaller blue Alppain and the scorching rays of giant white Branchspell. If you like bizarre flora and fauna peppering your speculative fiction, you're in for an especially treat. The first land Maskull encounters features sand the color of scarlet, bushes with black stems and purple leaves, a cup-shaped mountain, and small trees in various freakish shapes bearing hard, bright blue, apple-sized fruit. Further on, in another land, Mascall joins his guide at the time, one of a string of guides during his outer space odyssey, riding a shrowk, a bright blue flying creature with a long, snakelike body and ten reptilian legs terminating in yellow fins which act as wings.
And there's more, much more – to list several: a vast expanse where crags and mountains constantly sink down or shoot up thousands of feet at a time, a valley so overflowing with energy that new forms of plant and animal life pop into existence as fully formed adults, a sea whose water varies in density (in some spots Maskull must swim and some others where he can walk on the water's surface).
Yet David Lindsey's novel is hardly a mere pulp adventure yarn. We're face to face with the big questions: What is the nature of reality? Is what I'm experiencing an authentic world or a lesser, flawed version of some purer, truer realm? How should we act? What is the nature of evil? How pervasive is the power of love? What constitutes beauty? Where does life come from and where is life going? How do we know what we know?
Such questions are laced throughout A Voyage to Arcturus. As we travel forth with Maskull and other of Lindsay's characters, we're given a deeper appreciation of what it can mean to be alive, to be a human wrestling with Eros and Thanatos, love and death, no matter in what body or on what planet.
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Coda: This surely is one of the most complex, convoluted novels of the 20th
century - in many ways possessing similarities to those Gnostic gospels
found in Nag Hammadi in 1945. My sense is Voyage is an expression
of what Europe went through in WWI, forever changing the culture and
the character of experience. Just think, not that long before 1920,
Anthony Trollope wrote Barchester Towers in 1857. With a bit of
humor, I can just imagine what would happen if Mr Septimus Harding or
Archdeacon Grantly or Mr. Slope found themselves on the distant planet
of Tormance. The question of who will be chosen Warden of Hiram's
Hospital would be many worlds away
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