Voyage to Arcturus
I have been asked why I admire David Lindsay’s VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, a novel written nearly a century ago, and read, as far as I can tell, only by CS Lewis, Harold Bloom, and me. No fitter word can I find that those I have written already in an unpublished (and quite possibly unpublishable) essay I wrote called ‘The Lament of Prometheus.’ This is the opening of the essay, and it can tell you what I liked about the book. I would have to write far more to tell you my misgivings or reservations.
It is with no fear of serious contradiction that I call A Voyage to Arcturus the most imaginative in literature. No mainstream book can compare for sheer, headlong imagination with a science fiction book, because imagination is the stock-in-trade of science fiction. Mainstream books may be more realistic, possess a more tightly woven plot, or enjoy characters more true to life, but no one will seriously maintain the sensation of sheer awe and wonder which springs out of science fiction to have any superior in the mainstream.
A Voyage to Arcturus stands to science fiction as science fiction stands to the mainstream: no other author else has dared such simply striking, mind-stretching, awe-inspiring, sublime absurdities as David Lindsay. From the description of new sense impressions to the depiction of unimaginable new primary colors by means of the mood they inspire, to the invention of a third positive sex unknown on earth, Lindsay challenges the reader to imagine the unimaginable.
Add to this his gigantic world, sweltering under the titanic, gravity-inducing white sun Branchspell, and the mysterious, soul-destroying, blue sun Alppain; add again the new virtues unknown on earth, like the sharing of ichors purer than blood to lighten the pressure of gravity; add again new vices, such as the ‘sorbing’ of weak wills by the stronger nature; add also new forms of art, as a palpable music played on the surface a spouting lake of liquid metal, whose wild rhythms cause pain instead of pleasure; add again the green nutritive waters that bear human weight in Poolingdred, or the multicolored waterspouts of the Sinking Sea whose differing densities do not; the mountains that appear and disappear in sudden horrific landslips in Ifdawn Marest; the self-creating plant-animal life-forms of Matterplay, or the glass-leafed trees of the Lusion Plain with their cool shadows made of brightness; the awesome vision of Surtur, his eyes aflame with more-than-life; the walking pillars of lightning stalking the paths to Sant; the solemn monochromatic underworld of Threal; the green snow (whose higher melting point than the snows of Earth render it warm even to the bare foot) of the mystic pinnacles of Sarclash; the passion-fogs surrounding the top-heavy mountain peaks of Lichstorm whose masses cling to each other by perverse magnetic force; add again the time-visions where temples yet unbuilt appear; the horrid human experiments of Crimtyphon; the strange body-thefts of Tydomin; the drum taps of Sorgie; the light of Muspel more real than reality: add together all this into one triumphant, strange, sad symphony, and you have a book so magnificent in its inventiveness, so original, that words fail.
This imagination is wild, heady, extravagant. The book itself is cryptic, lyrical, grim, and astonishing beyond measure: it is like a fever dream. It is also a Gnostic puzzle, a vision, an allegory, and a challenge hurled at all convention, a gauntlet thrown down at the reader: it is a book in rebellion against all others.
Whether it is good or bad by the ordinary standards of novels, I will not even pause to comment, because no such comparison can be made. This book stands entirely by itself, and shares its genre with no other. Some might complain the language is awkward, but no: the language is hypnotic, direct, masculine. The words may not be comely, but they follow nature. Even after all these years, I still feel the spell.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
