What was written on those 30 missing pages? No one knows because they remain missing. It is interesting to speculate as what is left reads like the music (and lyrics) from “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Considering how bizarre and sexually suggestive the remaining content is – one is left pondering as to the true scale of non-conformity. Anyway, a number of early SciFi writes used the agency of “sleep” as a means to travel long distances or indeed travel through time – I think this idea dates back to the French author “Louis-Sébastien Mercier” (1740-1814) and his 1771 masterpiece entitled “The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One” (L’An 2440, rêve s’il en fut jamais). I think HG Wells also borrowed this concept for his 1898 book entitled “When the Sleeper Wakes”. Lindsay, it must be said, did flesh it out somewhat by suggesting it was possible to “travel on light beams” in “torpedo-shaped metal space craft” (the essence of the modern “Alien” franchise?). Of course, it must be stressed that Arcturus was in fact the “sun” around which the planet Tormance orbited. The protagonists did not travel to the sun – but to the planet Tormance – which is an interesting and unexplained contradicting. Why not the title “A Voyage to Tormance” – as this planet seems far more warmer than earth (the main character Maskull required a blood transfusion just tosurvive – provided wilfully by a Tormance women (an allusion to the power of menstruation – perhaps?)
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 