David Lindsay - A Voyage To Arcturus
Created | Updated Aug 22, 2005
David Lindsay
Biography
Novelist David Lindsay was born in Blackheath, London on the third of March 1876.His father walked out on the family when Lindsay was still young and this meant that despite his literary ambitions the families troubled finances left him unable to afford to attend university.
In 1894 he took a position at Lloyds of London, which he was to hold for twenty years. After serving with the Grenadier Guards during the First World War he married; quit his job and moved to the country to pursue his ambition of becoming a full time writer. He remained in Hove until his death in 1945.
During these years he wrote and published “A Voyage To Arcturus 1920”, “The Haunted Woman 1922”, “Sphinx 1923”, and “Devil’s Tor 1923”. He also left behind two further works, “The Violet Apple” and “The Witch”, which were finally published in 1976 when his work underwent a revival.
“A Voyage To Arcturus” is his best-known and most compelling work and is responsible for his place in science-fiction/fantasy history. Though it was first published in 1920 fewer than six hundred copies were sold and; commercially at least; Lindsay remained a failure throughout his life.
Those copies that were sold however began to take on an almost legendary status amongst science-fiction writers and fans and those few copies circulated around the community, changing hands many times and always provoking debate.
It is said that C.S.Lewis spent a great deal of time searching for a copy and that when he had eventually found and read the book he passed it to his friend Tolkein. Indeed Lindsay’s influence is apparent in both of their works. C.S.Lewis said of Lindsay
“He is the first writer to discover what
‘other planets’ are really good for in
fiction. No merely physical strangeness
or merely spatial distance will realise
the idea of otherness, which is what we
are always trying to grasp in a story
about voyaging through space………
To construct plausible and moving
‘other worlds’ you must draw on the real
‘other world’ we know; that of the spirit."
Review of ~ A Voyage To Arcturus
At first glance Voyage is a typical science-fiction novel. Ordinary man travels by spaceship to faraway planet, has amazing adventures and meets new and fantastical creatures. However this is not the traditional good versus evil type of science-fiction novel at all; rather Lindsay has used the novel and his protagonist's journey to attempt to define the very nature of good and evil themselves. The book is essentially a work of philosophy.
In order to visualise the spiritual journey his protagonist follows; Lindsay puts him through a physical journey across a strange planet, where each person he meets appears to physically represent a new and different philosophy.
The protagonist undergoes profound physical changes throughout the journey acquiring new limbs and senses which enable him to blend in more easily with the people he meets and also to make sense of a world where even the primary colours do not match those of his home. He is never a sympathetic character as he appears to be guided only by his determination to find the reason for his presence there and his behaviour whilst on this journey is at times reprehensible. The people that he meets along the way are strangely insubstantial as though they exist only in terms of their interaction with the protagonist.
Ultimately this is a deceptively difficult book to read; the prose is at times turgid and the plot seems to have no focus. The very moral ambiguity Lindsay hopes to explore makes it hard to engage with the protagonist's struggle and the reader is often left with a sense of frustration at Lindsay’s approach.Some believe that the book was Lindsay's attempt to reconcile his strict Scottish Calvinist upbringing with the philosophies he studied in adulthood.Particularly his ongoing fascination with the work of Nietzche.
Over the years the book has been at times vilified and lauded but owes its place as an important piece of science-fiction history not only for the work it inspired; but because it does what is perhaps the hardest and most important job of any novel; it makes the reader question the world around themselves and their place in it.
Arcturus was recently re-released in hardback as a special collectors edition and can be found in specialist bookstores or the usual on-line sellers.Also there are several sites with e-books.The other novels are largely unavailable but can be found second hand.
Be warned though; one sci-fi magazine carried a review last year where a reviewer said that although it had been twenty years since he first read Arcturus not a single day had passed when he didn't think about it.
Arcturus is not a traditionally great book,parts of it are pretty awful,it will drive you crazy in places and leave you wondering what it really meant ~ but it will sink it's teeth into your sub-conscious and make you think.
Biography
Novelist David Lindsay was born in Blackheath, London on the third of March 1876.His father walked out on the family when Lindsay was still young and this meant that despite his literary ambitions the families troubled finances left him unable to afford to attend university.
In 1894 he took a position at Lloyds of London, which he was to hold for twenty years. After serving with the Grenadier Guards during the First World War he married; quit his job and moved to the country to pursue his ambition of becoming a full time writer. He remained in Hove until his death in 1945.
During these years he wrote and published “A Voyage To Arcturus 1920”, “The Haunted Woman 1922”, “Sphinx 1923”, and “Devil’s Tor 1923”. He also left behind two further works, “The Violet Apple” and “The Witch”, which were finally published in 1976 when his work underwent a revival.
“A Voyage To Arcturus” is his best-known and most compelling work and is responsible for his place in science-fiction/fantasy history. Though it was first published in 1920 fewer than six hundred copies were sold and; commercially at least; Lindsay remained a failure throughout his life.
Those copies that were sold however began to take on an almost legendary status amongst science-fiction writers and fans and those few copies circulated around the community, changing hands many times and always provoking debate.
It is said that C.S.Lewis spent a great deal of time searching for a copy and that when he had eventually found and read the book he passed it to his friend Tolkein. Indeed Lindsay’s influence is apparent in both of their works. C.S.Lewis said of Lindsay
“He is the first writer to discover what
‘other planets’ are really good for in
fiction. No merely physical strangeness
or merely spatial distance will realise
the idea of otherness, which is what we
are always trying to grasp in a story
about voyaging through space………
To construct plausible and moving
‘other worlds’ you must draw on the real
‘other world’ we know; that of the spirit."
Review of ~ A Voyage To Arcturus
At first glance Voyage is a typical science-fiction novel. Ordinary man travels by spaceship to faraway planet, has amazing adventures and meets new and fantastical creatures. However this is not the traditional good versus evil type of science-fiction novel at all; rather Lindsay has used the novel and his protagonist's journey to attempt to define the very nature of good and evil themselves. The book is essentially a work of philosophy.
In order to visualise the spiritual journey his protagonist follows; Lindsay puts him through a physical journey across a strange planet, where each person he meets appears to physically represent a new and different philosophy.
The protagonist undergoes profound physical changes throughout the journey acquiring new limbs and senses which enable him to blend in more easily with the people he meets and also to make sense of a world where even the primary colours do not match those of his home. He is never a sympathetic character as he appears to be guided only by his determination to find the reason for his presence there and his behaviour whilst on this journey is at times reprehensible. The people that he meets along the way are strangely insubstantial as though they exist only in terms of their interaction with the protagonist.
Ultimately this is a deceptively difficult book to read; the prose is at times turgid and the plot seems to have no focus. The very moral ambiguity Lindsay hopes to explore makes it hard to engage with the protagonist's struggle and the reader is often left with a sense of frustration at Lindsay’s approach.Some believe that the book was Lindsay's attempt to reconcile his strict Scottish Calvinist upbringing with the philosophies he studied in adulthood.Particularly his ongoing fascination with the work of Nietzche.
Over the years the book has been at times vilified and lauded but owes its place as an important piece of science-fiction history not only for the work it inspired; but because it does what is perhaps the hardest and most important job of any novel; it makes the reader question the world around themselves and their place in it.
Arcturus was recently re-released in hardback as a special collectors edition and can be found in specialist bookstores or the usual on-line sellers.Also there are several sites with e-books.The other novels are largely unavailable but can be found second hand.
Be warned though; one sci-fi magazine carried a review last year where a reviewer said that although it had been twenty years since he first read Arcturus not a single day had passed when he didn't think about it.
Arcturus is not a traditionally great book,parts of it are pretty awful,it will drive you crazy in places and leave you wondering what it really meant ~ but it will sink it's teeth into your sub-conscious and make you think.
