h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks ~ let me know what you think if you track a copy down.

I think there are some on sale online on www.amazon.com
Thats were I'm headed anyway

In Chapter 12 a legend has hator talking to the creator, and saying
that he wrapped himself in pain to keep himself
"as far away from you as possible" He went on to tell shaping
"You are the dreamer of impossible dreams."
I find this reminiscent of Arthur O'Shaunneys poem Ode.
It says in part:
"We are the music makers, we are the dreamer of dreams...
We built Ninevah with our sighing and Babel itself with our mirth.
And o'er threw them with propheying to the old of the
new worlds worth.
Each age is a dream that is constantly dying - or one that is coming to birth"

Going to have to check that out ~ it does sound similar.
When was it written ~ do you know?

I believe that it was late 19th century (perhaps 1880) will have to google him to be sure. I remember none of his other poems amounted to much but this made several anthologies.

here is a copy of the complete poem
http://www.bartleby.com/103/6.html
best wishes -shagbark

Hi pixel,

Before I go deeper with this there's one thing that struck me. Would it be possible in the first line or two to briefly state who Lindsay was, and what a Voyage to Arcturus was?

I'd never heard of him or the book before, and I had to read for a paragraph or two to find out that he was a writer and this was one of his books - rather than an album or piece of music for example.

It would help ease the reader into the intro a little bit

In my opinion you do a ggod enough job saying who the manb is; although it might be more clear if instead of saying it was his most compelling work to say "most compelling book"

perhaps you could satisfy the expectation problem by starting the article with the words: Novelist David Lindsay was...
I just finished reading the novel and while spoilers have no place in h2g2 articlesI wanted to let you know that I found this book to perhaps have the same relationship to Pilgrims Progress that
Davinci code has to the Passion of the Christ.
In both cases you have false doctrine creeping in.
In this case the false doctrine is that God will allow you to be tempted above what you are able to bear. From what you have said in the introduction Lindsay had a hard life and this may have clouded his view of things so he longed for an end to the road he was traveling. We all tire of life sometimes but like the travelor in Pilgrim's Progress we look for heaven to be our final destination.
In Voyage to Arcturus a destination was beyond the highest mountain but the protagonist gives up on that goal and dies in the company of
those who brought him to that strange world. I won't reveal here why he made that choice but will instead go back to the analogy of Pilgrim's Progress where the protagonist states
"I saw then that there was a way to hell even from just outside the gates of the Celestrial City".

having looked once more at your article I find the sentance "He was never a sympathetic charect5er- he lied and murdered his way across the planet to much like a spoiler. The reader will figure this out for themself when they get a copy. Just as you can leave out the ending.

by ending I do not mean the ending to your piece, I mean the part here Krag and Nightspore are once more alone following the death of the one they brought to Arcturus.

Hi all ~ been offline for a couple of days so just catching up.
Will change the first line.
I used work rather than book because he did publish or try to publish some philosophical treatise as well as the novels.
I think i will take out the line you mentioned shagbark

I hope you make it to the EG. Scouts lately have been very picky.

Thanks for the best wishes ~ it would be nice.
Well i've been reading all the comments on the PROD threads and figure i've got off lightly.Everyon's been pretty nice to me here.
It's only a first attempt and i'm nothing if not persistant, so if this one isn't right maybe the next one will be.

Are you still working on this?

pixel*Keeper seems to have elvised (last posting May 24th), so I propose a move to the flea market, as it looks like there's enough here to form the basis of an edited entry. Any seconds?

To the Flea Market with it.

well,Pixel, it looks like that's the way the cookie crumbles. For what it's worth John Bunyon's masterpiece "The Pilgrim's Progress" doesn't have an entry in the EG either.

The science in the book is totally unconvincing, but I doubt very much if the author cared. His intention seems to have been to use the "voyage to another world" plot as an allegory for some kind of philosophical journey. I think this is what particularly drew C.S. Lewis to the book - he used the same idea in his adult books as well as his Narnia ones. The book is a real mindtwister - I agree with the review that I just can't get it out of my head. It poses more questions than answers: Just who are Maskull and Nightspore? Why does Nightspore appear at Maskull's death or is he a part of Maskull that survives? How do Krag, Surtur, Shaping and Crystalman relate to one another? Why does the sight of Alppain have such an effect on Maskull? Where do all these names come from anyway? And if the world is good partly refracted into evil, how can we know which is which? AAAAaaaaarrrrrggghhh!!!! It's a brilliant but baffling book. It's also very violent for 1920. I found my copy in a second-hand shop. Not sure how common they are, but a site like Alibris or Abe or similar should be able to find a used copy quite easily.