Read some books about epic and otherworldly voyages this month; had a great time.

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (1920) follows a man named Maskull as he journeys with two companions to the planet of Tormance, which orbits the double star of Arcturus. He awakens planetside to find himself abandoned by his companions, and strikes out on his own through the weird and wild landscape, nominally to find the god of that world, but often setting out just to the next landmark on the horizon. Along the way, he encounters (and generally kills) many strange and unique folk, most of whom attempt to sway Maskull to their mode of philosophical or religious thinking.

This book is wild. Tormance feels truly alien in its weather patterns, flora and fauna, and social norms. Each new region Maskull travels to has new customs, new social orders, new configurations of organs on humans (various extra sensing organs on the head, and/or an extra limb sprouting from the belly). There are new colors, and new forms of water. With Maskull’s first meeting of an inhabitant of Tormance he is shown how to use his new head organ for telepathy. It’s the most interesting and believable description of telepathy I’ve ever encountered in text, and felt like a livable experience and way of being.

Maskull’s adventures through Tormance and the people he meets are all deeply compelling. I found it quite funny that Maskull has a truly wondrous meeting with Joiwind, and promises her that he will do no harm to another living creature without at least thinking of her and her gentleness. He then almost immediately gets embroiled in a murder plot, and virtually everyone he meets comes to a horrible and violent end, often by his hand. I don’t think that’s quite a spoiler, it’s really the pitch for the book, as well as the explorations of different schools of philosophical thought that often proceeds the violence.

As a point of minor but deep delight, this novel from 1920 features neopronouns! Leehallfae is one of the many companions Maskull briefly acquires in his travels across Tormance, and Leehallfae uses ae pronouns, as a being of a third sex.

Then he experienced another surprise, for this person, although clearly a human being, was neither man nor woman, nor anything between the two, but was unmistakably of a third positive sex, which was remarkable to behold and difficult to understand. In order to translate into words the sexual impression produced in Maskull’s mind by the stranger’s physical aspect, it is necessary to coin a new pronoun, for none in earthly use would be applicable. Instead of “he,” “she,” or “it,” therefore “ae” will be used.

While Tormance may be an alien planet, the people who populate it are still human, as is Leehallfae, who comes into the story to alter the path of Maskull and the narrative with as much force as any other character. It’s neat world-building detail, explained with the same level of matter-of-factness and brevity as the new colors of Tormance. It’s just a way people can be.

I also particularly enjoyed the episode getting to and exploring Swaylone’s Island. The island emits a music which draws people to it, who then never return and likely die. Maskull accompanies a woman named Gleameil to the island. The mystery and mounting dread of this section were delicious, and Gleameil was a refreshing character – straightforward, stoic, and dauntless. Many of the people Maskull had encountered before then are duplicitous, mysterious or violent so Gleameil stand out as a unique woman of Tormance. The pattern of the story thus far looms large over her and Maskull, but I was rooting for her nevertheless. The whole novel had that quality to it – it shows you the shape of what it’s doing early on, but it is never less of a wild ride for it. While the plot often consists of getting to the next visible landmark on the horizon repeated over and over, the journey there is fantastical and engaging each time.

If I may be so bold as to critique one of the most influential science fiction books of all time, I really did not enjoy the opening! I felt the seance had too many characters who ultimately existed for just the seance scene, and that it dragged in attempting to set up to the rest of the novel. The form that appears at the seance and the later reveal about the form really paled in comparison to the other wonders happening in the book. Spiritualism was beginning to grip England post-WWI, so I understand why this scene is here – it sets the story in what was then the modern day and was a topical and, perhaps ironically, grounded way to guide the reader into the book. But reading it in 2024 I was a bit frustrated with it. Wildly minor complaint. If you too, for some unknown reason have no patience for seance scenes, push through like I did, this book is really worth it. An immediate favorite, one of those books that rewires the brain and expands the possibilities of storytelling.

I was so stoked about The Voice in the Night last month that I read more of William Hope Hodgson’s work, namely The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” (1907). The narrator is one of a group of survivors, all sailors, who have launched in two lifeboats from the ship Glen Carrig. As the group searches for salvation, their travels bring them into contact with all sorts of ocean-bound horrors.

I really, really loved the first two-thirds of this book. The locations the survivors visit are so fresh, so new, and so horrific. The island with the alien plants and the slow unraveling of the mystery of the ship in the creek and what happened to her inhabitants, the continent of entangling seaweed and the boats trapped within it, and the island where things creep about at night are all chilling and vibrant. I particularly enjoyed the reoccurring motif of frightful fungi and of humans transforming/fusing with other growing organic matter. It was a real treat having read The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” so close to The Voice in the Night and being able to pick out the author’s particular fascinations and hauntings in that way.

The last third of the book shifts from survival horror (to put a newer term from a different medium to an older book), to action-adventure. It’s like the shift from Alien to Aliens, or, to return to video games, the late portion of a horror game where power creep has made all encounters with something that should be terrifying rote and trivial. There is a clear turning point where, after some last casualties, most of the danger is contained, and the book shifts to the mechanics of escape, with long explanations of the building of bows, of kites, and of developing romance. While I was enthralled with this as I was reading it (the discovery made in the midst of the strangling seaweed was briefly and literally breathtaking for me), I was still simultaneously disappointed that the book was moving away from a white-knuckled fight for survival against incomprehensible horror. Ah well. The book had to end somehow.