A Voyage to Arcturus

The first modest publication of A Voyage to Arcturus sold fewer than six hundred copies. Since then, the book has been reissued by more than a dozen trade houses and translated into at least six languages. It has significantly influenced such writers as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and is thought by many to be the major underground novel of the twentieth century.

An interstellar voyage takes three Englishmen to Tormance, a planet orbiting the double star Arcturus, one hundred light years from Earth. Allegorical in nature, the story chronicles the experiences of characters as they travel though lands that represent philosophical systems or states of mind while the main protagonist, Maskull, searches for the meaning of life. An unusual amalgam of fantasy, philosophy, and science fiction, the story explores the nature of good and evil and their relationship to being. A Voyage to Arcturus continues to be loved as much for its imaginative world-making as its inimitable shimmering literary style.