David Lindsay’s 1920s novel A Voyage to Arcturus is a great work of philosophical fiction, writes Shmuel Ben-Gad.

There is a type of literature some call philosophical fiction, in which ideas are the major, or at least a major, element, and plot and characterization are at the service of articulating or exploring those ideas.

Some particularly brilliant examples of philosophical fiction are Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson: The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky; Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley; and Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Some of the works of the respected contemporary playwright Tom Stoppard (such as Jumpers) also belong to the genre. In my judgment, one of the greatest works of philosophical fiction is the science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus, by the Scottish writer David Lindsay.

Lindsay wrote the novel while in his forties, and it is the fruit of his long consideration of metaphysical matters. It was published in 1920 and did not sell well. It was first reprinted in 1945, the year of Lindsay’s death. I think it is safe to say that it has become a fantasy classic in the years since. It influenced the novelists C. S. Lewis and Colin Wilson and it has been translated into Dutch, French, German, and Japanese. It has also been the subject of numerous scholarly analyses.

The tale opens with a séance. The attendees are mostly either sentimentally “spiritual” or curiosity seekers. The medium, Backhouse, though, is actually authentic, neither a charlatan nor a self-deceiver. He is also humble, admitting that he does not apprehend the significance of the materializations he effects. Thus the séance encapsulates one of the themes of the novel: that there is a mystery at the heart of reality that is very difficult to penetrate.

During the séance, a handsome young man is materialized, upon which an uninvited guest, Krag, enters the room and breaks up the proceedings. (Later in the book, in one of its most remarkable scenes, we see the same séance again, from a different perspective.) Upon leaving the séance, Krag approaches two other (invited) attendees: his acquaintance Nightspore, and Nightspore’s friend, Maskull. At Krag’s suggestion, the three men travel to Tormance, a planet orbiting the double star of Arcturus, to meet up with a figure called Surtur.

Maskull turns up alone upon arrival and wanders the planet. He meets a number of people espousing various philosophies. For example, the first person he meets has a philosophy of universal love. The people also have special organs that cause them to perceive life in a way compatible with their world views. Maskull even grows new organs as he adopts various philosophies himself. But worldviews are not simply espoused and embodied by people: often the flora, fauna, and landscape reflect worldviews. Although his prose cannot be said to be polished, Lindsay’s vision is vivid.

Without giving away too much of the plot, I’ll note that the central theme of the tale is articulated in a conversation between a secondary and a tertiary character (Slofork) that I except here:

“What is greater than Pleasure?”

“Pain.”

“What is greater than Pain?”

“Love. Because we will accept our loved-one’s share of pain.”

“But what is greater than Love?”

“Nothing, Slofork.”

“And what is Nothing?”

“That you must tell me.”

“Tell you I will.… He that is a good child here, knows pleasure, pain, and love, and gets his rewards. But there’s another world … and there all this is unknown, and another order of things reigns. That world we call Nothing … but it is not Nothing, but Something.”

A Voyage to Arcturus is primarily concerned with metaphysics, secondarily with morality, and, with politics not at all. This, I think, makes it a rarity, if not unique, in philosophical fiction. The work is strange, but it is not so for the sake of strangeness itself but rather, it seems to me, because Lindsay wants us to see how radical a thing it is to pierce through illusion to truth. One need not subscribe to Lindsay’s metaphysics (I do not) to find his story powerful and admire his attempt to plumb to the reality our perceptions may not see, and thus to escape the false, vulgar, and illusory.

In our current Western culture, serious discussions of metaphysical issues are almost unknown outside of philosophy departments. Even serious discussions of morality are uncommon. Think of how often current debates over abortion and homosexuality, for example, do not go deeper than arguments about what should be legal. Given this superficiality of much of the discourse of our time, that such a serious, intense work of philosophical fiction as A Voyage to Arcturus continues to be published and read is almost as amazing as the tale itself.

—Shmuel Ben-Gad