Described by critic, novelist, and philosopher Colin Wilson as the "greatest novel of the twentieth century",[1] it was a central influence on C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy,[2] and through him on J. R. R. Tolkien, who said he read the book "with avidity".

Critics such as the novelist Michael Moorcock have noted that the book is unusual, but that it has been highly influential with its qualities of "commitment to the Absolute" and "God-questioning genius".

Maskull awakens to find himself alone in a desert on Tormance; his body has grown a tentacle, or magn, from his heart, and an organ called a breve.

Maskull wakes to find his magn transformed into a third arm, which causes lust for what is touched, and his breve changed to an eyelike sorb which allows dominance over the will of others.

Tydomin, another wife of Crimtyphon's, uses her will to force Oceaxe to commit suicide by walking off a cliff; she persuades Maskull to come to her home in Disscourn, where she will take possession of his body.

Maskull crosses the sea by manoeuvring a many-eyed tree and reaches Matterplay, where many life-forms materialise alongside a magical creek and vanish before his eyes.

Maskull and Corpang meet Haunte, a hunter who travels in a boat that flies thanks to masculine stones which repel earth's femininity.

When the sun Alppain rises, Maskull sees in a vision Krag causing the drumbeat by beating his heart, and Gangnet, who is Surtur, dying in torment enveloped by Muspel-fire.

[9] The novel was made widely available in paperback form when published as one of the precursor volumes to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in 1968, featuring a cover by the illustrator Bob Pepper.

[14] The scholar Kathryn Hume writes that with the name of the planet, Tormance, and its sun, Alppain, Lindsay "is cosmically punning on the yogic tenet that all existence, all consciousness, is pain".

[15] The historian Shimon de Valencia states that the names "Surtur" and "Muspel" are taken from Surtr, the lord of Múspellsheimr (the world of fire) in Norse mythology.

[16] The sexuality of the Tormance species is ambiguous; Lindsay coined a new gender-neutral pronoun series, ae, aer, and aerself for the phaen, who are humanoid, but formed of air.

[15] Hume contrasts A Voyage to Arcturus with Christian allegory, which, she writes, makes its direction and plan clear to the reader.

[15] This structure is compounded by having the protagonist examine the world in terms of the dyad of I and not-I, and the triad of "material creation, relation, and religious feeling"; in the end, Maskull transcends personality for dualism on both the macrocosmic and the microcosmic scales.

[1] The playwright and novelist Clive Barker stated that "A Voyage to Arcturus is a masterpiece", calling it "an extraordinary work ... quite magnificent.

[5] In Moorcock's view, although the character Maskull seems to be commanded to do whatever is needed to save his soul, in a kind of "Nietzschean Pilgrim's Progress",[5] Lindsay's writing does not fall into fascism.

"[5] Also in 2002, Steven H. Silver, criticising A Voyage to Arcturus on SF Site, observed that for a novel it has little plot or characterisation, and furthermore that it gives no motives for the actions taken by its characters.

[19] The novel was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's 1938–1945 Space Trilogy;[2] he called A Voyage to Arcturus "shattering, intolerable, and irresistible".

[23] In 1984, the composer John Ogdon wrote an oratorio entitled A Voyage to Arcturus, based on Lindsay's novel and biblical quotations.

Ogdon's biographer, Charles Beauclerk, notes that Lindsay was also a composer, and that the novel discusses the nature and meaning of music.

[24] Critic Harold Bloom, in his only attempt at fiction writing, wrote a sequel to this novel, entitled The Flight to Lucifer.

[30] Paul Corfield Godfrey wrote an operatic setting based on the novel to a libretto by Richard Charles Rose; it was performed at the Sherman Theatre Cardiff in 1983.

[31] The jazz composer Ron Thomas recorded a concept album inspired by the novel in 2001 entitled Scenes from A Voyage to Arcturus.

[32] The Ukrainian house producer Vakula (Mikhaylo Vityk) released an imaginary soundtrack called A Voyage To Arcturus as a triple LP in 2015.