A Voyage to Arcturus (review)

I sometimes imagine Weirdness as a form of radiation. It can be emitted, reflected, and absorbed. Many works going under the label "weird" are reflectors. China Mieville, for example, knows he's being weird; whatever his other merits, he's reflecting rays that come from somewhere else. So it's always a pleasure to find a bona fide weird-ray emitter, which brings me to the topic of the post, David Lindsay's disquieting Voyage to Arcturus. (Spoilers ahead). At the novel's beginning, a man named "Krag" crashes a seance and invites two of the guests, "Maskull" and "Nightspore" on a trip to the planet Tormance, orbiting the binary star Arcturus. Maskull wakes up in a desert, alone. He has new sense organs on his head and a tentacle protruding from his heart. The landscape is bizarre and psychedelic. There are two new primary colors, and water moves in ways it's not supposed to. Life is malleable -- Maskull sprouts a variety of new organs, most of which open or close various Doors of…