Scan barcode
A review by nate_s
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
2.0
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.
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.