Lindsay's Arcturus: Classic Sci-Fi
David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus: Far-Off but Close to Home
"A Voyage to Arcturus" is an adventure that starts on planet Earth and goes to the planet Tormance, where the hero Maskull encounters various alien intelligences.
“A Voyage to Arcturus” is a finely tuned sci-fi classic. The work of speculative fiction sets forth a rich and imaginative sci-fi backdrop against the philosophical musings of its author, David Lindsay.
Critical Success and an Independent Film
The book was written in 1920 and sold only about 600 copies. Over the years, it has been read by various titans of the fantasy world, including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and was apparently well-liked by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. One well-known critic, Colin Wilson, has credited the book with being the greatest novel of the 20th century.
More recently, the book has spawned interest from college classrooms to the Internet. There is a trailer available online from the 1970 independent film that was based on the book. Also, a CD soundtrack based on Arcturus has been made and is available at CDBaby.com. The University of Nebraska Press came out with a Bison Frontiers of Imagination Commemorative Edition of the book in 2002.
Gnostic and Ascetic Themes
The book has made a considerable comeback over the years. It has a brilliant opening scene of a séance in which some of the main characters are introduced to hair-raising stuff. Lindsay’s style is almost like that of a documentarian, which lends credibility to the séance episode as well as the rest of the novel.
Eventually, the main character, Maskull, goes to Tormance, a far-off planet of the binary star Arcturus. Interesting names abound in the book. Tormance may be a combination of torture and romance, and it is ironic that a star would be named Arcturus, conjuring up the cold polar regions where the sun in our solar system has least influence.
Arcturus is all about Maskull’s struggles and successes on Tormance. Through meeting various alien creatures, he learns about himself. Many times through accident or on purpose, Maskull kills the creatures. He learns about Joiwind through his blood exchange with her. She also has a tentacle called a ’magn’ which is used to love more what she already loves and to begin to love what she does not.
Many of the encounters on Tormance relate to issues of ascetic principles. At one point, for instance, he writes how love must come to a climax. After the climax, if the love is to again increase, it must be fueled by sacrifice. The notions of sacrifice and asceticism recur and are meant to offer, perhaps, the best (or the only) option available to many of the characters.
There is also a complex set of relationships between the gods mentioned in the book. In a gnostic style, Lindsay allows various characters to speculate on different gods and their relative successes or lacks: shaping, Surtur, Crystalman, and Muspel. These gods seem to correspond in certain ways to the Judeo-Christian all-powerful God, the devil, Jesus Christ, and others.
In his most black and white statement about good and evil, Lindsay writes: “Muspel was fighting for its life… against all that is most shameful and frightful - against sin masquerading as eternal beauty, against baseness masquerading as nature, against the Devil masquerading as God…” (Arcturus, 267). But the book goes on to say that the name of this god Muspel on earth is nothing other than ‘pain.’
A Voyage to Acturus: Philosophy Meets Action
What makes Lindsay’s book so imaginative and rather unique is its bold “go where no man has gone before” mentality. The book allows the reader to explore a wide range of human values and imaginative scenarios in a pace that is action packed.
“A Voyage to Arcturus” was Scottish author David Lindsay’s first book, which he published in his 44th year. His other books include “The Haunted Woman,” “Sphinx,” and “The Devil’s Tor.”
