From +SF/Authors Thu Oct 10 16:54:35 1991 From rec.arts.sf-lovers Fri Aug 23 01:43:04 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!kth.se!eru!bloom-beacon!mintaka!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!psuvax1!hsdndev!husc6!frodo.mgh.harvard.edu!loos From: loos@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu (William D.B. Loos) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers Subject: David Lindsay book list (LONG) Message-ID: <21AUG199102505777@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu> Date: 21 Aug 91 07:50:00 GMT Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu Organization: Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Lines: 548 News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4 Awhile ago I requested information about David Lindsay, the author of _A Voyage to Arcturus_ : had he written any other books? If so, what were they? And *how* were they? The summary of responses, plus additions, follows; it consists of: responders; introduction; bibliography; secondary source bibli- ography; general (including biographical) information; and separate sections on each novel containing such information as is available. This is more than just a bald listing of books -- the obscurity of the author and most of his work make it difficult to find out anything about him, so for the benefit of anyone who's interested I've included such other information as I've been able to find. In the sections on the novels I've relied on the experiences of the responders where possible. Nobody seems to have read a couple of them, though, so in these cases I've included somewhat lengthy quotes from a secondary source which I came across after my original post. Remarks not specifically attributed are by myself; editorial comments embedded in remarks by others are marked "[WDBL]". -- Thanks are due to the following responders: ecm20685@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Dai) daved@westford.ccur.com (Dave Davis) Elworthy@europarc.xerox.com (David Elworthy) e343mh@tamuts.tamu.edu (Michael Hand) wlinden@msb.com (Will Linden) tlundgre@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Timothy J Lundgren) law015@aberdeen.ac.UK ("F.LYALL") sappenc@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu (Carlin Sappenfield) whit@milton.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore) -- In my original posting I wrote: >One day in a bookstore I browsed through a book of the best-SF-novels-of- >all-time sort. It had not only _Voyage To Arcturus_ listed as the entry >for 1920 but also a second Lindsay novel as the entry for 1922, a novel >which apparently was received very coldly. I think I remember that the >second one was also of the fantasy or dream-adventure type. Since I didn't remember the name of either the reference work or the second Lindsay novel, I appealed to the net. By one of those coincidences, during the last few weeks that same reference work was issued in paparback. It turns out that it was _Fantasy: The 100 Best Books_ , by James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock. Astonishingly, in a list that contains the likes of Swift, Mary Shelley, Poe, and William Morris ("pre-SF era") and Lovecraft, Vance, Poul Anderson, Tolkien, and Le Guin ("SF-era"), Lindsay is one of a handful who made the list twice. This may be because one of the authors (Cawthorn) has a specific affinity for him. From the Introduction: "To keep abreast of the torrent of dragons, unicorns, mages, and moody swords sluicing through the bookstores is impossible; ... An immensely helpful side-effect of the boom has been the resurrection of such rarities as Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_, _The Haunted Woman_ , and the novels of William Hope Hodgson." _The Haunted Woman_ was the second Lindsay novel which I couldn't remember. -- Bibliography: [Assembled from the responses supplemented by Books in Print and the Gary K. Wolfe reference (see the secondary bibliography below). Notes about what is and isn't in print is based on Books in Print and therefore are *NOT RELIABLE* -- that is, if a book is not listed there it is almost certainly out of print, but if it is it's anybody's guess. They also have trouble with different authors of the same name. The entry on David Lindsay, for example, contains works by at least three David Lindsay's -- one is our David Lindsay and the other two are a 15th century Scottish poet (whose name is actually spelled Lyndsay) and a late 19th century British aristocrat. The books listed below are the only ones by the author of _Voyage to Arcturus_. Also, comments about what's in or out of print apply only to American editions. ] A Voyage to Arcturus. London: Methuen, 1920. Reprints: London: Gollancz, 1946, 1963, 1968; New York: Macmillan, 1963; New York: Ballantine, 1968, 1973 [paperback]; Boston: Gregg Press, 1977 [photographic reprint of 1st edition]; New York: Citadel Press, 1985. The Citadel edition (ISBN 0-8065-0944-9) is the only one still in print. Introductions to various editions of _Arcturus_ : -- Visiak, E.H. Gollancz, 1963 edition. Gary K. Wolfe: "Repeats many of the ideas of Visiak's 1940 essay." [see secondary bibliography below] -- Eisley, Loren. Macmillan, 1963 edition. Gary K. Wolfe: "This brief introduction, reprinted in the Ballantine edition of the novel, is sympathetic but misleading, and contains factual errors." In another place he calls it "earnest" but "often erroneous". The Elflandsson Introduction [see below] is also critical of Eisley. -- Mensing, Van A. Gregg Press, 1977 edition. Gary K. Wolfe: "The most complete exposition to date of the debt _Arcturus_ owes to Nietzsche." -- Elflandsson, Galad. "David Lindsay and the Quest for Muspel-fire", Introduction to the 1985 Citadel Press edition. Timothy J Lundgren writes: This is a brief biography of Lindsay, and a quick interpretation of _Voyage_. ... In the Intro, Elflandsson takes a swipe at Loren Eisley, as follows: "_Arcturus_ is seemingly filled with contradictions, and though Lindsay does not _seek_ to confuse us, neither does he intend that we have an easy time of it. Maskull's confusion _must_ be our confusion, unless we are quick enough to recognize the one symbol in _Arcturus_ that will allow us to discard illusion as we encounter it. Loren Eisley, in his much maligned intro- duction to the Ballantine edition of _Arcturus_, failed to grasp this symbol's full significance and so was unable to interpret the book as anything more than a fragmentary melange of Lindsay's perceptions. Lindsay's indicator is the 'vulgar, sordid, bestial grin' seen on the face of the apparition Krag has 'murdered.' " He goes on to argue that whenever that grin appears Lindsay is "symbolically rejecting the beliefs and morality of that being's life." In short, it is not a particularly brilliant piece of work ... [ Maskull is the protagonist in _Arcturus_ ; Krag is a secondary character, albeit an important one. WDBL] The Haunted Woman. London: Methuen, 1922. Reprints: London: Gollancz, 1964; Hollywood: Newcastle (Forgotten Fantasy Series), 1975, 1980; Hollywood: Newcastle (Forgotten Fantasy Series), 1975 [paperback]; Trafalger Sq: David & Charles, 1988 [paperback]. The Newcastle hardcover (ISBN 0-89370-503-9), Newcastle paperback (ISBN 0-87877-103-4), and David & Charles paperback (ISBN 0-86241-162-9) are all in print. Sphinx. London: John Long, 1923. Reprints: London: Xanadu, 1988; New York: Carroll and Graf, Inc. 1988. The Carroll and Graf edition is still in print (ISBN 0-88184-416-0). The Adventures of M. de Mailly. First edition: London: Melrose, 1926; Reprint [as Blade for Sale]: New York: McBride, 1927. Not reprinted since as far as I've been able to learn. Devil's Tor. London: Putnam's, 1932. Reprint: New York: Arno Press, 1978, Reginald, R. & Melville, D. eds. The Arno edition is in print (ISBN 0-405-10995-4) but the list price is prohibitive ($40.00). The Violet Apple and The Witch. Ed. J.B. Pick. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1976. Reprint: London: Sidgwich & Jackson, 1978. out-of-print. Sketch Notes for a New System of Philosophy. Unpublished; in Scottish National Library. -- Secondary Source Bibliography: [Taken partly from the responses and mostly from the Wolfe reference (the fourth item below), and thus contains no items later than 1982. Books (when devoted exclusively to Lindsay) have been listed first. The annota- tions following certain entries if not otherwise attributed are from the Wolfe reference. Essentially, this is the entire secondary source list from Wolfe plus additions. Ordinarily this would not be feasible but Lindsay is sufficiently unknown that the list is quite short, considering how long ago he published. ] Sellin, Bernard. _The Life and Works of David Lindsay, translated by Kenneth Gunnell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. The first scholarly biography of Lindsay and the longest sustained critical discussion of his works to date; originally a doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne. Wilson, Colin, E.H. Visiak, and J.B. Pick. _The Strange Genius of David Lindsay_. London: John Baker, 1970. A collection of essays and remini- scences that is the major source of information on Lindsay, but contains little critical perspective. Wilson, Colin. _The Haunted Man: The strange Genius of David Lindsay_. San Bernardino, Cal: Borgo Press, 1979. With the exception of a brief new discussion of _The Haunted Woman_, essentially a reprint of Wilson's essay in _The Strange Genius of David Lindsay_. Wolfe, Gary K. _David Lindsay_. (Starmont Reader's Guides to Contemporary Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors.) Starmont House, 1982. Amis, Kingsley. "Adventures on a Distant Star" (rev. of _A Voyage to Arcturus_). New York Times Book Review, 24 Nov 1963, p 60. Some valid criticisms, but chiefly useful as an indication of the sort of reviews _Arcturus_ has consistently received. Cawthorn, James, and Michael Moorcock. _Fantasy: The 100 Best Books_. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991, pp 71-71 and 75-76. They include _Arcturus_ and _The Haunted Woman_ as two of their 100. [WDBL] Lewis, C.S. "On Stories", in _Of Other Worlds_: Essays and Stories. Ed. Walter Hooper. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1966, pp 3-21. Contains a a brief discussion of _Arcturus_, praising it for its "lived dialectic". McClure, J. Derrick. "_Devil's Tor_: A Rehabilitation of David Lindsay's 'Monster'. " _Extrapolation_, 21, 4 (Winter 1980), 367-378. McClure, J. Derrick. " 'Purely as Entertainment?' _Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly_ as a Representative Work of David Lindsay." _Studies in Scottish Literature, 11 (1974), 226-236. Argues that the deceptions and intrigue of _de Mailly_ are consistent with Lindsay's broader themes of illusion and self-deception; also briefly discusses other novels. Pick, J.B. "The Work of David Lindsay." _Studies in Scottish Literature, 1 (1964), 171-182. General essay represents an early attempt to revive the study of Lindsay. Pohl, Joy. "Dualities in David Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_" _Extrapolation_, 22, 2 (Summer 1981), 164-170. Rabkin, Eric S. "Conflation of Genres and Myths in David Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_." _The Journal of Narrative Technique_, 7 (1977), 149-55. Analyzes _A Voyage to Arcturus_ as a blending of science-fiction episodes and an overall fantasy structure that uses fantasy to extend science- fiction into the realm of serious myth. Rabkin, Eric S. _The Fantastic in Literature_. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. Discusses _Arcturus_ as an example of how 'escape' literature may have a serious purpose. Russ, Joanna. "Dream-Literature and Science Fiction." _Extrapolation, 11 (1969), 6-14. Cites _Arcturus_ as an example of adolescent 'dream- literature', inferior to better science-fiction. Schofield, Jack. "Cosmic Imagery in _A Voyage to Arcturus_." _Extrapolation_, 13 (1972), 146-151. Reply to Russ defends _Arcturus_ and points out interesting parallels to Dante and others. Scholes, Robert, and Eric S. Rabkin. _Science-Fiction: History, Science, Vision_. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. pp. 207-212 discuss _Arcturus_ as a "representative" science-fiction novel. Visiak, E.H. "The Arcturan Shadow." _Notes and Queeries_, 178 (1940), 225-227. The earliest critical appreciation of Lindsay; draws Miltonic parallels. Wilson, Colin. _Eagle and Earwig_. London: John Baker, 1966. A chapter on _Arcturus_ mostly recounts Wilson's experiences with the novel. Wolfe, Gary K. "David Lindsay and George MacDonald." _Studies in Scottish Literature, 12 (1974), 131-145. Argues for MacDonald's influence on Lindsay and notes parallels between their careers. Wolfe, Gary K. "Symbolic Fantasy." _Genre_, 8 (1975), 194-209. Places Lindsay in a tradition of symbolic, rather than allegorical, fantasy. -- General Information: Biographical summary: Lindsay was born in 1878 and was working as a clerk for Lloyd's of London by the turn of the century. He was entirely self-taught, never having attended university; "this may account for the somewhat eclectic and idiosyncratic reading that influenced [him] ..." (Wolfe, p. 9). He served in the British army during WWI without leaving England and in 1919 left Lloyd's to write. His books were strikingly inventive but failed to attract an audience (_Arcturus_ sold 596 copies in the first printing while _Devil's Tor_ sold 650 copies). As a result he was unable to publish anything after 1932 (though _Violet Apple and _Witch_ had been completed) nor would any publisher re-issue _Arcturus_. Thereafter he increasingly sank into isolation, depression, and penury, to eventually die in 1945. Meanwhile _Arcturus_ was slowly achieving underground fame, pushed by (among others) C.S. Lewis, who was telling audiences at Merton College, Oxford, that Lindsay was "the real father of my planet books [i.e. Perelandra, etc.]". The first re-issue of _Arcturus_ was in 1946. tlundgre@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Timothy J Lundgren) writes: There is also a brief biography of Lindsay in Elflandsson's introduction. He notes as influences on Lindsay: "the lonely, Highland hills, the music of Beethoven, ...Norse sagas, the novels of George MacDonald [another, and more important influence on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien], and the philosophical works of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche." Lindsay lived from 1878 to 1945, so he did not really die young. He did not publish, however, after 1932. Again Elflandsson: "Unable to support his family through writing, Lindsay finally succumbed to frustration and bitterness. In his final years, he grew silent, reclusive, and careless of his health. In fact, his fatalism was grown so great that he actually died from blood poisoning caused by the neglect of his rotting teeth!" [Note: the point about Lindsay's "not really" dying young was in response to my original post. That particular piece of misinformation came from the Eisley Introduction. WDBL] Elworthy@europarc.xerox.com (David Elworthy) writes (referring to The Strange Genius of David Lindsay by Wilson et. al): This is a good and interesting book, not least for the insights it gives into Lindsay's life. One anecdote I remember concerns the cause of his death. In his later years, he developed a morbid fear of dentists, and consequently when one of his teeth went bad he refused to have it attended to. The conse- quence of this was that he ended up with gangrene of the jaw, from which he died. Sick? You bet. whit@milton.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore) writes: His writing style is such that one keeps recalling scenes, seeking new insights. I have found that it helps a LOT to discuss the work at length with a friend (reminds me of a movie, _El Topo_, in this regard). ecm20685@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Dai) writes: He was wildly unpopular, with good reason; most of his novels are bad novels without the philosophical force of "Arcturus". * * * More on sources: "We do know that he was fond of German metaphysics, the Norse sagas, historical works dealing with the Roman Empire, and personal memoirs of the eighteenth century ... Of the authors that we know to have been represented in his library, those of particular interest include Goethe, Nietzshe, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rider Haggard, and F. Max Muller's _Three Lectures on Vedanta Philosophy_. But to regard these works as in any sense 'sources' for the phenomenal inventiveness of such works as _A Voyage to Arcturus_ would be misleading, for even in cases in which names or concepts are borrowed from earlier writers, Lindsay almost invariably altered the material in such a way as to make the detection of the original meanings treacherous at best." (Wolfe, p. 11) -- A Voyage to Arcturus: This is the best-known and easiest to find of Lindsay's works. It was accepted for publication in 1920 but 15,000 words had to be cut first, of which no trace now remains (Argh). A brief description follows. The protagonist Maskull and his companions, Nightspore and Krag, journey to Tormance, a planet orbitting Arcturus (actually a double star), in a crystal torpedo. (A piece of SF trivia is that the torpedo is an early FTL spaceship: powered by Arcturian "back rays", i.e. light which is attracted back to it's source, it makes the 100 light year journey in nineteen hours.) " ... As the ship speeds into interstellar space, Maskull falls into a profound sleep. When he awakes, he is on Tormance, alone. Nightspore, Krag, and the ship have vanished. " He begins his journey of self-discovery and, ultimately, self-negation across the bizarre landscapes of Tormance, under the punishing glare of the binary star's component suns, white Branchspell [Arcturus] and weirdly blue Alppain. Already he has undergone the first of many metamorphoses, the growing and discarding of new organs with which to interpret his changing environment. It is a metaphysical odyssey, an amazing voyage through inner space, into a world of abstractions embodied in living shapes. ... " ... it is not necessary to have ambitions of a trancendental kind to be enthralled by the fertility of Lindsay's imagination, the ever-changing land- scapes of Tormance, the host of strange beings who help or hinder Maskull as he marches towards his ultimate metamorphosis. The journey is sufficient in itself. " (Cawthorn and Moorcock, pp 71-72) What has stayed with me is the strikingly original manner in which even minor details are rendered. When presenting the landscape of Tormance Lindsay invents two new colors, "jale" and "ulfire". He communicates the experience of seeing these colors by producing emotional analogues for red, blue, and yellow and then doing the same for jale and ulfire. Many of his descriptions are filled with equally unusual metaphors. -- The Haunted Woman: Cawthorn and Moorcock being their entry as follows (p. 75): " If Hillary, after climbing Everest, had returned to find that everyone had been looking the other way at the time, he might have felt as David Lindsay did after _A Voyage to Arcturus_ was published. It was remaindered with less than 600 copies sold. The mountain being too steep and the air too rarified for popular consumption, the only recourse was to descend to the plains. Brighton and its environs formed the territory of his next novel, and his characters were recognizably denizens of the 1920's. " _Arcturus_ had baffled and upset the critics, but they had admitted to being faced with something out of the ordinary. By resorting to an outwardly conventional romantic entanglement between contemporary people, Lindsay sent them off in quite another, but equally wrong, direction. He was not writing a ghost story or a tale of star-crossed lovers; at least, not in the way in which some of them interpreted it. " It is debatable whether the supernatural justification for the strange house in _The Haunted Woman_ is any more necessary than the crystal spaceship which took Maskull to Arcturus ... " And then they go on, in a synopsis, to indicate that there was just as much philosophizing in the background of _The Haunted Woman) as there was in _Arcturus_. wlinden@msb.com (Will Linden) writes: My assessment: anyone expecting another ARCTURUS will be disappointed. It has little of the Tormantic quality. Elworthy@europarc.xerox.com (David Elworthy) writes: I've read the first two of the above [_Violet Apple and _Haunted Woman_]. They are both hard work and not very rewarding - a considerable disappoint- ment after _Voyage_. Both consist of dull stories about romantic assignations amongst the English middle classes of the 1920s, with a bit of supernatural stuff thrown in on top to keep the plot chuntering along. Read them if you like, but be prepared for a disappointment. Having said that, they both do have moments where they come to life and you see some of the magic of _Voyage_ shining through. -- Sphinx: ecm20685@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Dai) writes: "Sphinx" was an entertaining but rather confused story of love triangles among the upper-middle class in a village in the South of England. The only SF element is a fascinating dream-recorder which the protagonist is inventing. While it will hardly win anyone's awards, it was well-written and ended with the usual Lindsayan death-glorification and philosophy. -- The Adventures of M. de Mailly: Gary K. Wolfe (p. 57): " The charge of triviality has been more consistently and seriously brought to bear against the novel that Lindsay published three years after _Sphinx_. _The Adventures of M. de Mailly_ (1926) is a complex account of social and political intrigues at the court of Louis the Fourteenth and is the only novel of Lindsay's to contain no element of fantasy. Compared to Lindsay's other works, _de Mailly_ was relatively successful; in 1927, retitled _Blade for Sale_, it became the first of his works to appear in the United States. Colin Wilson, J.B. Pick, and E.H. Visiak pretty generally dismiss the novel as a "potboiler" written solely as an entertainment and to raise money, but J. Derrick McClure ... makes an interesting case for regarding it as among the mainstream of Lindsay's writing. McClure argues that the themes of illusion and self-deception, particularly in regard to social behavior, are as much a part of this novel as of Lindsay's fantasies -- hence the setting in the court of Louis the Fourteenth, 'where social ceremonial was developed to a degree rarely surpassed.' [McClure, 1974] The novel consists of four episodes concerning an ingenious and witty courtier named de Mailly, whose complex schemes and whose understanding of people's capacity to be tricked by their own illusions enable him to survive in a world of unrelenting intrigue and betrayal. The complex of false assump- tions, mistaken identities, coincidences, cross-purposes, schemes, treach- eries, and the like that go to make up the plot at once parody such authors as Dumas and raise their art to a level of remarkable ingenuity. " -- Devil's Tor: Gary K. Wolfe (p. 47): " ... By the time Devil's Tor was published, Lindsay had not published a novel in more than five years and was becoming increasingly embittered about his failure to find an audience. This sense of failure is apparent in the novel: it is certainly the most uncompromising and difficult of all the works published during his lifetime, and much of this difficulty seems to arise from his lack of concessions to the reader. The pacing of the novel is excruciatingly slow, the style often completely out of control, the charac- terizations harsh and unengaging, and the ideas obtuse and relentlessly detailed. But the work is as rich in ideas as _A Voyage to Arcturus_, and if the reader approaches it as a philosophical disquisition rather than as as series of actions, it can be among the most rewarding and fascinating of Lindsay's books. " Lindsay's own account of the novel, written in a letter to his pub- lisher, provides a concise summary of what he was attempting: _Devil's Tor_ was conceived in a spirit of music ... To the curious in such matters I should have to refer _Devil's Tor_, as to its primary origins, not to any master of prose, living or dead, but to the tremen- dous creator of the Ninth Symphony. The first movement of that work has generally been more or less in my head during the book's writing. But the story's actual themes -- Fate made visible, the Great Mother, the mystic stones belonging to a world of other dimensions, the part of the Northern races in history, the supernatural bringing-together of a chosen pair for the uplifting of humanity, the purpose of the creation of the universes -- these belong not to one time or one mental birth, but have been built up of infinite darkness and confusion. The eye caring to discern will see in them the evident traces of an astronomical parallax: by which I mean a progress of the story, not only from the first chapter to the last, but across the sky-space of thought itself. [quoted by Pick in Wilson et. al., 1974, p. 28] It is apparent that Lindsay has chosen vast themes for his novel, and indeed he does treat of the purpose of the world, the nature of fate, the evolution of the human races, the origin of religions, and the function of art! He has attempted to encompass all these themes and more in a story as simple on the surface as that of _The Haunted Woman_: the story of the discovery and eventual bringing together of two halves of a mystical stone which had been broken in distant antiquity. " -- The Violet Apple: Elworthy@europarc.xerox.com (David Elworthy) writes: I can't actually say very much about _The Violet Apple_: it's one of those books that obstinately refuses to stay fixed in my memory ... ; this means the descriptions that follows is probably very inaccurate[.] The plot, as far as I can remember it, involves two couples who come into possession of a family heirloom containing some seeds which are supposed to be from the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden. The seeds are kept in a glass ornament, which gets broken early on in the book. They plant the seeds, and a tiny apple tree starts to grow, on which appears one (or two, I'm not sure) violet apples. This takes places over the period of the middle part of the book, during which time, various tensions between the four main characters develop. Near the end, two of them - the man from one couple and the woman from the other - eat the apples, and gain an altered perception of the world, and in particular an altered perception of morality and moral imperatives. It's like _Arcturus_ in that the message is perhaps best appreciated in an intuitive and emotional way, rather than a rational one, which is perhaps why I find it hard to summarise the significant content of the book. It's more satisfying than _The Haunted Woman_, but far less so than _Arcturus_: the last two or three chapters have the same kind of concealed profoundness, but you have to wade through a lot before you arrive there. -- The Witch: Gary K. Wolfe (p. 60): " _The Witch_ is almost as difficult to read as _Devil's Tor_, and like that earlier novel it is full of lengthy passages of introspection and meditation on the nature of love, both as a force within the world and a force for transcending the world; on the meaning and nature of the Ancient; on the role of the Ancient and the Great Mother in history and psychology; on the role of illusion in life; and so on. More than that earlier novel, however, it shows that Lindsay's philosophy does not end with _A Voyage to Arcturus_, that the apparent process of world-negating that goes on in that novel was intended by its author to be merely a prelude to something else, that there was indeed a story yet to be told after Krag and Nightspore set off into the dark waters at the end of that novel. In many ways, Lindsay's problem was not unlike Dante's in writing the Commedia: the Inferno is striking, dramatic, and relatively easy to portray; but paradise, the positive vision that follows the negative, is a far more difficult concept to explain. " -- End Note. As far as getting these books goes, it looks like _Arcturus_, _Haunted Woman_, and _Sphinx_ would be easy; _Devil's Tor_ would be straightforward if one were enamoured enough to spend the money; _The Violet Apple and The Witch_ would require hitting the used bookstore circuit or doing an out-of-print search; and _de Mailly_ almost impossible. If it came to that one's only recourse would probably be to just xerox a library copy, if one could find a library that had one. Widener Library at Harvard actually does have one, but then, they like having a copy of every book ever published. =============================================================================== | "And that, I may tell you beforehand, Maskull," | said Krag, grinning, "is Crystalman's trump card." William D.B. Loos | "How do you mean?" | "You'll see. You'll renounce the world so loos@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu | eagerly that you'll want to stay in the world | merely to enjoy your sensations." | -- A Voyage to Arcturus ===============================================================================