10 h 30 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 258 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 258 pagesAbout this book
What if every person you meet on another planet offers a different truth—and changes who you are?
A séance in a London drawing room opens the way to a strange journey. Maskull, restless and hungry for truth, follows the enigmatic Krag toward Tormance, a planet circling Arcturus. His companion Nightspore joins the voyage. But when Maskull wakes on this distant world, he finds himself alone beneath an unfamiliar sky.
On Tormance, land, sky and body keep changing. Joiwind and her husband Panawe offer warmth and open feeling; Oceaxe prizes power over tenderness. Each encounter tests Maskull’s sense of good and evil. In David Lindsay’s science fiction novel, the search for truth becomes a struggle with desire, identity and the illusions that make life bearable.
What you’ll discover
- A séance in London Enter a drawing room where a restless seeker stands at the threshold of an extraordinary voyage.
- A world that changes Explore Tormance, where shifting landscapes and bodily transformations unsettle everything Maskull thinks he knows.
- Competing visions of goodness Meet people whose opposing creeds turn each encounter into a test of belief.
- Tenderness against power Discover the contrast between Joiwind’s open warmth and Oceaxe’s hard, clear-minded view of life.
- Questions without easy comfort Follow a dream-like quest that asks what pleasure, pain and desire reveal about reality.
Who will love it
For readers who love fantasy that asks big questions, dream-like journeys and encounters with opposing beliefs, and for anyone curious about the roots of modern science fiction.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A séance opens the way
- Maskull wakes alone on Tormance
- Each meeting offers a different creed
- Pleasure, pain and a trail of the dead
- Two powers behind the world
- A story told like a dream
Who’s who
- MaskullA big, impulsive man from Earth who travels to Tormance, hungry for a truth that ordinary life has never given him.
- NightsporeMaskull's companion at the séance, who joins the voyage to Arcturus and is bound up with its purpose.
- KragA stern, enigmatic figure who first speaks to Maskull of Tormance and draws him toward the journey.
- JoiwindA gentle woman of Tormance, living with her husband, who shows Maskull a life of warmth and open feeling.
- PanaweJoiwind's husband, a man of Tormance who meets Maskull early on and is changed by the encounter.
- OceaxeA hard, clear-minded woman who prizes power over tenderness and offers Maskull a very different view of life.
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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A Voyage to Arcturus
by David Lindsay · 1920
Maskull travels to Tormance, where changing bodies and rival beliefs draw him into a quest for truth.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
A séance opens the way
The novel opens at a séance in London. A medium is about to call up a spirit, and among the guests is a man named Maskull, a large, restless fellow. With him is his friend Nightspore. A third man, Krag, is also in the room, and he cuts the evening short in a way that sets the tone for all that follows.
The evening is odd, a mix of the ordinary and the unsettling. Lindsay writes the scene with a plain eye, so that the supernatural arrives without fuss. This matters, because the book will keep asking you to accept the impossible as simply what is there.
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What is A Voyage to Arcturus about?
It follows a man named Maskull who travels from Earth to Tormance, a planet of the star Arcturus. There he meets people with opposing beliefs and searches for the truth behind the universe.
What are Muspel and Shaping in A Voyage to Arcturus?
They are two opposed ideas in Lindsay's myth. Muspel stands for a pure, original reality, while Shaping is the force that makes the world of bodies, desires and pains that we know.
When was A Voyage to Arcturus written?
It was published in 1920 and was David Lindsay's first novel. It is fiction, not a true story, though it carries a serious philosophical view of the world.
The author
David Lindsay
1876–1945 · Scottish fantasy novelist
David Lindsay (1876–1945) was a British novelist of Scottish ancestry. He was born in London and died in Hove, Sussex. He wrote A Voyage to Arcturus, published in 1920, and The Haunted Woman, published in 1922. He worked in insurance before serving in the British Army during the First World War.
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