A Minor Masterpiece; A Flawed Edition

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	• A Voyage to Arcturus (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) David Lindsay Bison Books, 2002 - 274 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Every review of value.

Those who read it during their "formatory" years were left with an indelible imprint, some remembering the characters and scenes decades after reading this book. The same can be said for PK Dick's "Ubik" and "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" among others. To review Arcturus in any other way (eg literary) would be like a chemist reviewing an excellent wine from a chemist perspective without ever tasting it. As someone once said "there is a difference between knowing and knowing about." Regarding the movie suggestion, maybe Tim Burton could pull it off.

Lindsay, genius, genius, genius

It would be hard to add much to the foregoing reviews. Suffice it to say that the book is genius. it requires several rereads and its better approached when you are over thirty.

Words like unique are often used about the prosaic. This book is, indeed, unique.

If you can get hold of the Savoy edition you will savour the true beauty of the work in a suitable package; a beautiful edition. If you collect books I wouldn't pay an arm and a leg for the insipid first edition, a small Gollanz hardback, with brittle, flimsy paper.

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Not a journey for everyone

Lindsay offers an imaginative diatribe against a world hopelessly blind to it's true spiritual nature in A Voyage To Arcturus. The "hero" is Maskull, but he represents Everyman, and the world he visits is Tormance, which is Earth in disguise, stripped of it's nuances and complexities. Tormance is a world of physical and psychological extremes circling the larger of the twin suns comprising the star Arcturus.

Maskull is on a quest for the truth, but it's more a result of compulsion than volition. He and his companion Nightspore are summoned by the mysterious Krag to make the journey because Surtur has returned to Tormance and compels them to follow him. Who Surtur is will be discovered much later, as will the identities of Krag and Nightspore. Maskull arrives on the south of Tormance alone and somehow knows he must head north. His ultimate goal will be to find the realm of Muspel, under the mysterious blue Alppain sun, where Surtur's true nature will be revealed. Until he gets there, he must deal with a world ruled by Crystalman whom many confuse with Surtur. This world is dominated by the blazing white sun called Branchspell. On his journey, he will interact with various strange inhabitants of Tormance who will in some instances strengthen and help guide him, but in others, frustrate him and expose his human weaknesses. It is all a necessary preparation for his ultimate test.

Lindsay tries to offer us some strong medicine for the spirit and he couches it in beautifully descriptive prose. This is really not a book for Science Fiction or Fantasy buffs, although it could be categorized as belonging to those genres. It uses some wildly original ideas to philosophize about the nature of humanity, like Dante did in The Divine Comedy or Swift did in Gulliver's Travels, but on a considerably less ambitious scale. The characters are purely symbolic so you can't truly identify with them, and Lindsay's basic view on Man's nature is pessimistic. You have to buy into his philosophy to truly appreciate this book.

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A Minor Masterpiece; A Flawed Edition

I first read this philosophical fantasy back in the 1960s or early '70s. I was overwhelmed by it then, but a year or two later when I went to reread it, the book had disappeared. (Doubtless an unreturned loan to a friend.) When I learned the book was back in print, and in several aditions, I wasted little time in buying it. I now realize that I was right the first time. The novel is (at least!) a minor masterpiece.

I will not get into details of the plot which centers on a journey of a man from earth across Tormance, a fictional planet circling the fictional two suns that make up the star we know as Arcturus. There, he searches for truth and has a series of fantastic adventures--some of them murderous--that entail the growth of extra limbs and organs whle his beliefs change as violently as his body.

It was only the edition I have (Wilder Publications) that made me hesitat before giving this bood the five stars it richly deserves. The many misprints include misspelled words, sentences with words missing, poor punctuation, etc. etc. One major typographical stumbling block was having hyphens the same length as dashes. The most curious flaw, however, was placing the name, Frank R. Stockton at the top of left hand pages facing the book's title which was correctly placed at the top of the right-handed pages. A little research told me that Stockton wrote fantasies for children--which probably explains the suggestion at the front of this edition that parents discuss with their children how views on race have changed since the book was written. An otherwise strange caution since "A Voyage To Arcturus" is not a children's book nor is there any mention of race in it.

In summing up, I would say do get this magnificent novel, but try to avoid the Wilder Pubications edition. There are many other editions listed in Amazon and they can't all be as flawed as this one.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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 what makes us human and unique. After a strange interstellar journey, Maskull, a man from Earth, awakens alone in a desert on the planet Tormance, seared by the suns of the binary star Arcturus. As he journeys northward, guided by a drumbeat, he encounters a world and its inhabitants like no other, where gender is a victory won at dear cost; where landscape and emotion are drawn into an accursed dance; where heroes are killed, reborn, and renamed; and where the cosmological lures of Shaping, who may be God, torment Maskull in his astonishing pilgrimage. At the end of his arduous and increasingly mystical quest waits a dark secret and an unforgettable revelation. A Voyage to Arcturus was the first novel by writer David Lindsay (1878?1945), and it remains one of the most revered classics of science fiction. This commemorative edition features an introduction by noted scholar and writer of speculative fiction John Clute and a famous essay by Loren Eiseley.

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