Lindsay's first novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, was published in 1920, but sold fewer than 600 copies. A surrealist fantasy drawing to some extent on the work of George MacDonald, it has always been known as a complex and difficult book, though a recent critic maintains that a reader who approaches it with sympathy "will find the experience both profound and astonishing". The central character, Maskull, travels to the planet of Tormance, a satellite of Arcturus. The planet is controlled by the evil Crystalman, but alongside this world exists another one, Muspel, and "Crystalman's empire is but a shadow on the face of Muspel". Maskull's adventures begin as a quest for Surtur, whose drums he has heard on Earth. (The critic quoted above, JB Pick, suggests elsewhere that the reader should not so much search for the meaning of the book as "hear the drumbeats"):
He heard what sounded like the beating of a drum on the narrow strip of shore below. It was very faint but quite distinct ... He now continued to hear the noise all the time he was lying there. The beats were in no way drowned by the far louder sound of the surf, but seemed somehow to belong to a different world.
A Voyage to Arcturus, though unsuccessful during Lindsay's lifetime, is now recognised as an important work both in Scottish literature and in the fantasy genre. Acknowledged by CS Lewis as a major influence on his own fantasy novels, it has recently been reprinted in the Canongate classics series. Canongate has also republished Lindsay's second novel, The Haunted woman (1922), also a fantasy but with a terrestrial setting, which has been described as better written, though slighter, than A Voyage to Arcturus.
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