Arqtiq
Encyclopedia
Arqtiq: A Story of the Marvels at the North Pole is a feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

n adventure novel, published in 1899
1899 in literature
The year 1899 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Edgar Rice Burroughs begins working in his father's business.*Rainer Maria Rilke travels to Moscow to meet Leo Tolstoy....

 by its author, Anna Adolph. The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian fiction
Utopian and dystopian fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia...

 that marked the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Genre

Arqtiq participates in, bridges, and hybridizes several related literary genres and sub-genres of its time. Some writers applied feminist viewpoints to utopian fiction; Elizabeth Corbett's New Amazonia
New Amazonia
New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future is a feminist utopian novel, written by Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett and first published in 1889. It was one element in the wave of utopian and dystopian literature that marked the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.-The plot:In her novel, Corbett...

is one pertinent example, among others. A number of late-nineteenth-century novels looked forward to the invention of the airplane, as Adolph's book does; these works can be classed, at least generally or peripherally, as science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

. Arqtiq combines this "airplane fiction" with utopian feminism, as does Jones and Merchant's Unveiling a Parallel
Unveiling a Parallel
Unveiling a Parallel: A Romance is a feminist science fiction and utopian novel published in 1893. The first edition of the book attributed authorship to "Two Women of the West." They were in fact Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant, writers who lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.-Genre:The novel is...

.

Arqtiq also partakes in the exotic sub-genres of hollow Earth
Hollow Earth
The Hollow Earth hypothesis proposes that the planet Earth is either entirely hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. The hypothesis has been shown to be wrong by observational evidence, as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation; the scientific community has...

 or subterranean fiction
Subterranean fiction
Subterranean fiction is a subgenre of adventure fiction which focuses on underground settings, sometimes at the center of the Earth or otherwise deep below the surface...

, and lost-world
Lost World (genre)
The Lost World literary genre is a fantasy or science fiction genre that involves the discovery of a new world out of time, place, or both. It began as a subgenre of the late-Victorian imperial romance and remains popular to this day....

 or lost-race fiction. Like Mary Lane's Mizora
Mizora
Mizora is an utopian novel by Mary E. Bradley Lane, first published in 1880–81, when it was serialized in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper. It appeared in book form in 1890. Mizora is "the first portrait of an all-female, self-sufficient society," and "the first feminist technological...

, Adolph's Arqtiq gives these forms of adventure fiction a feminist twist.

Stories of travel to the North Pole
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...

 or South Pole
South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...

 recurred throughout the nineteenth century. Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus...

is the most famous of these; there were various others.

Finally, Adolph couches her story as a dream, linking it to a whole host of fantasies
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 that employ the dreaming motif.

Story

The plot of Arqtiq involves a woman who invents an aircraft, a sort of hybrid of airplane and balloon. She decides to fly it to the North Pole, accompanied by her husband, father, and friends. After crossing the continent to New York, they travel northwards and reach the Pole. At first they perceive only a flat plain surrounded with icebergs; but the narrator detects a crystal city beneath the ice. The aeronauts land and meet the inhabitants, called the Arq. The Arq maintain a culture of gender equality and high technology. Communication is facilitated by the Arqs' telepathy
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...

; the narrator soon develops the same psychic ability. Despite their isolation, the Arq are devout Christians.

Adolph's Arqtiq has been characterized as "An eccentric novel combining elements of science fiction and religious fundamentalism," and an "exuberantly incoherent" book that also touches upon the work of John Symmes
John Cleves Symmes, Jr.
John Cleves Symmes, Jr. was an American army officer whose 1818 Hollow Earth theory, expounded on the lecture circuit, gained him considerable notoriety.-Biography:...

, a lunar meteorite, and "lunar people who are tiny and nasty."

See also

  • The Great Romance
    The Great Romance
    The Great Romance is a science fiction and Utopian novel, first published in New Zealand in 1881. It had a significant influence on Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, the most popular Utopian novel of the late nineteenth century.-The book:...

  • The Milltillionaire
    The Milltillionaire
    The Milltillionaire, or Age of Bardization is a work of utopian fiction written by Albert Waldo Howard, and published under the pseudonym "M. Auberré Hovorré." The book was one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth...

  • Sub-Coelum
    Sub-Coelum
    Sub-Coelum: A Sky-Built Human World is an 1893 utopian fiction written by Addison Peale Russell. The book is one volume in the large body of utopian, dystopian, and speculative literature that characterized the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.-Genre:Scholar of the genre Jean Pfaelzer...

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