Opaque and bizarre. The book begins as a light, pulpy sci fi piece, but soon veers into fantasy, philosophy, and preaching.

On a whim, a young man travels to a planet near the star of Arcturus and meets numerous people who all have different views on the meaning of life. There are pseudopods, third eyes, extra colors, flying dragons, and musical lakes. There is also a lot of violence, sexism, and walking. (No wonder Tolkien liked it!)

Oddly enough, this book most reminded me of "The Little Prince," but with significantly less charm. By the end, I was frustrated with the book's sermonizing and disagreed with its cosmology, at least as far as I understood it.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2711953.html

This SF novel from 1920 is about a chap called Maskull who is rather mystically translated from a Scottish observatory to the planet Tormance, orbiting the double star that we know as Arcturus, where he meets various inhabitants for deep and meaningful conversations, and ends up killing most of them at the end of their respective chapters. It clearly inspired C.S. Lewis, who took a lot of concepts from this for Out Of The Silent Planet and Perelandra, except that frankly Lewis did it better, by having vaguely interesting characters and by using comprehensible philosophical dilemmas - both being areas that A Voyage To Arcturus falls down on.

Tolkien also loved the book; Wikipedia quotes Colin Wilson and Clive Barker as singing its praises. I find it difficult to enjoy because I have read a lot of the better, later stuff that it inspired. In that sense, perhaps it's a hidden taproot text for the mid-century British SF writers, unconstrained by any need to be loyal to the (hazy) scientific facts, free to think romantically and even morally about other worlds. Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman quote a critic of an early splatter film as saying "It's like a Walt Whitman poem—it’s no good, but it’s the first of its type and therefore deserves a certain position." I felt a bit like that about A Voyage To Arcturus.

Unreadable.

Weird yet fascinating... I can definitely see how this work inspired Lewis's Space Trilogy. I definitely prefer Lewis's rendition, but enjoyed this story. I never read sci-fi, so I don't know how this compares to other books in the genre.

I actually really enjoyed this. The characters aren't super fleshed out, and the prose isn't the best I've ever read (but was by no means bad or even just average), but those are two things which I think are definitely forgivable for a philosophic, allegorical, speculative fiction novel. It was reminiscent of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, yet set in the wonderful and strange world of Tormance. This book made me think, feel, imagine, wonder, and empathize with the characters. I don't think there's too much more you can ask from a book like this. I can definitely see the strong influence it had on Lewis's Space Trilogy. I would recommend it if you have any interest in speculative fiction.

Quite a read. Kind of sci-fi, kind of fantasy, kind of internal mindscape and 'feelscape'. A lot of symbolic stuff going on, philosophical in an indirect and mystical way, the success of which we can all debate. I'm not sure, but depends on the reader, and worthwhile for most who are game to read this kind of stuff all the same. Definitely a unique work (though I haven't read Lyndsay's others, which I'd be happy to do). One of the 'lost classics' of the early 20th century, almost, though probably not quite, perhaps. Lots of movement, transformation, shifted and differently-illuminated perspectives, changing environment and meanings of environment, impulse and inevitability, murder, fate and ridiculous luck, the banality of mortality and the relativity of meaning, and all also kind of focused subtly on that 'interspace' of relationships and pushing and pulling of power and weakness and will and submission and breathing into and parasitically sucking out of. The whole mess of life and the motion of the universe perhaps, simultaneously meaningful and harshly indifferent. Perhaps an early attempt at something along the lines of imagining our universe by stepping outside of it, or turning it inside out, perhaps, or both and more, with a splash of previously never-seen colours. Maybe a bunch of nonsense, but quite readable and thought-provoking nonsense all the same.

Evidently this book was both over my head, and not for me.

I love sci-fi with "meaning." I love journey stories. I love journeys to strange planets. I even can tolerate philosophy if it's properly "story-fied."

Arcturus attempted all of these, and for me falls incredibly short on each. It's usually agreed that this book's prose is mediocre. I'd add that it's not redeemed by its substance. I have no sympathy with gnosticism, which apparently Lindsay did, so I'm biased in that way. But I did not find anything inspiring about the characters or the story/journey. So for me this functioned like the bald preaching of worldview wherein the attempt at story elements could have melted away altogether and not much would have changed. I might have been listening to some hippy New Age philosopher expound on the meaning of the universe (zzzzzzzz....), climaxing in utterly abstract imagery that doesn't do its job well. So with the occasional exception of Arcturus' landscape descriptions, the mythopoeia just failed for me.

The two closest analogs to A Voyage to Arcturus are probably C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet, and George MacDonald's Phantastes. Neither is my favorite by its author, but both far exceed this one in the profundity of meaning, and in the story-vehicle that houses the meaning. Don't even consider comparing Arcturus to Dante's Comedy.

To end on a positive note, I did think there were moments of wit and wisdom to be enjoyed. It is not all zero-star slog. Arcturus is influential and plenty of people love it, I'm just not one of them. You might be.

The mind blowing ending is worth the plot-emaciated slog. In fact, the ending is earned through the vexing difficulties of the story. I think you're meant to be exhausted right alongside Maskull by the last chapter, desperate to find answers to life's deepest questions and frustrated by the ellusive drugery of the whole all.

By last third of the book, I wasn't even phased by the hypnotic LSD-resonant landscapes anymore. The way a child finds wonder in every new moment on Earth, I began this book delighted by the fire it lit in my inner eye. By the end, I was jaded by the interstellar opulance, yearning to find some meaning in the insessant brutality of Tormance, right beside the protagonist. Yet, the last few pages gripped me and shook me into a cognitive frenzy made more intense by my prior resignation. Perhaps that's what David Lindsay wanted.

I don't think I've ever read anything so incoherent that made so much sense on a visercal level as the finale of this book. I'm strongly considering a reread.

I read this book in high school or college, but don't remember much about that reading. I didn't care for it much this time. The structure is unsatisfying, but that's part of the nature of the beast for a 'philosophical novel.' But I found the philosophy repetitive, silly, and full of non-sequiturs. Further, the atmosphere of the book, both in the style of writing and also in the atmosphere of the planet Lindsay is describing, was oppressive and constricting.

Πιστεύω πως είναι δύσκολο να δεις το μήνυμα του Λίντσεϊ διότι ακόμα και αυτός κατά τη διάρκεια της ιστορίας δε το ξέρει κάνει ερωτήσεις και προσπαθεί να καταλήξει σε συμπεράσματα όπως και ο πρωταγωνιστής ο Μάσκαλ. Στο τέλος αυτό που πραγματικά σου δίνει είναι τροφή για σκέψη, σε ωθεί να βρεις μόνος σου τί σημαίνει η ιστορία. Πολύ καλό βιβλίο ωστόσο τραβάει παραπάνω από όσο θα έπρεπε ιδικά στη μέση, το προτείνω αλλά σίγουρα δεν θα αρέσει σε όλους.