The Space Trilogy

I agree that it is a clever way for Lewis to inject himself into the book and explain some short comings in the narative, and I do enjoy the introduction and postsript in Perelandra where Lewis in again injected in the story, but why not just explain the shutter problem in the narative rather than the postscript. The postscript seem like such a later after thought that to cover up problems in the original text and to set up for the sequel. And there was a second publishing right in time for the sequel. So I thought it was a add on.
 
Just finished this series a few weeks ago. I will admit That Hideous Strength was slightly a chore to read, but I was pleased with how it ended. Unlike most people, I guess I really liked that book the most. I know that Perelandra seems to be most peoples favorite, but I just loved how everything fell into place in That Hideous Strength.
 
I do love them all, but over time Strength has become my favorite. I think it the most poetically prophetic of the three, and possibly the most prophetic work of the 20th century - including other powerful works such as 1984 and Brave New World. By "prophetic" here I don't mean "forecasting the future" so much as "recognizing and portraying the spiritual, social, and intellectual trends of our time."
 
Yes....it has been correctly remarked before that "The Abolition of Man" is a companion piece to "That Hideous Strength." While we DON'T know how soon, or in exactly what form, the events of THE "end time" will come, it is instructive to expound on the TYPES of evil that the Spirit of Antichrist can fling at us.

I am attempting to do exactly this in my new novel, "The Possible Future of Alipang Havens," which is in progress on the same thread as the original Alipang Havens novel. My story is set in an unspecified near-future year which could be 2025, and in particular it illustrates the ways in which tyranny tries to extinguish faith in the Biblical God.
 
THS may be my favorite of the trilogy too. It's so rich i meaning, and I love the sort of "love story" that happens between Mark and his wife, although they're hardly together at all ...
 
PuzzleGlum said:
I know that this sounds like an annoying plug or review (forgive me) but I just thought it was worth saying.

I just saw the new sci-fi film "Avatar" and I see a lot of parallels between this movie and Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planet". Specifically, the hero joins the mission at the last moment, gets chased away by a beast, gets stranded with the natives and learns about their culture. The cultures in both Avatar and OotSP are even similar (though in Avatar, it was more based in Native American beliefs). But the philosophies were similar.
There were even Westons and Devines in "Avatar". Two people, one focused on destroying the planet for money, and the other puts the human race above all the natives, using it as an excuse to rid the planet of them. While "Avatar" was focused more on the message of crass imperialism, I definitely saw a lot of the Malacandra in the film.
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I felt the same similarity when I saw the film, but only in the upfront plot and overall setting.

There's so much to talk about this book. It had an apocalyptic/ historic/ mythological/ feeling to it with deep spiritual truths.
I liked the animals in THS. They seemed to serve and co-exist with the people in Ransom's home the way I guess Lewis thought it should be. (The mice servants and the humorous Mr. Bultitude)He spoke somewhere about men bringing animals closer to the pre-fall relationship we once shared.
 
The thing that is present in Silent Planet that was missing in Avatar was the eldila, particularly Oyarsa. Weston and Devine never really had a chance to endanger Malacandra - as Oyarsa pointed out, the least of his servants could touch their spaceship and make it an object "of different movements" - i.e. to annihilate it. Thus, though Weston and Devine were under the illusion that their superior technology gave them an advantage, there was never any real danger. They could do small amounts of damage, such as the killing of Hyoi, but never truly harm Malacandra.
 
Likewise, the N.I.C.E. never really had a chance to conquer the world if God/Maleldil did not choose to let them. The true drama was in the ancient question of Moses: "Who is on the Lord's side?" If Mark Studdock had not been reached by God's grace, he would have perished along with Frost, Wither, Miss Hardcastle and the other villains.
 
Largo said:
I liked the animals in THS. They seemed to serve and co-exist with the people in Ransom's home the way I guess Lewis thought it should be. (The mice servants and the humorous Mr. Bultitude)He spoke somewhere about men bringing animals closer to the pre-fall relationship we once shared.
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The theme of the "beasts" and their place in God's Kingdom runs throughout the trilogy, doesn't it? I love it when the Green Lady is talking about her joy in doing Maleldil's will in Perelandra, and she says something to the effect that if it delighted her for the animals to walk on their heads, they would try to do it, to please her -- and she calls herself Maleldil's beast, so she tries to do what delights Him. It's a lovely way of looking at our relationship to the Master, and the relationship of our pets to us. Ransom observes that her tender care for the beats "ennobles" them, and she indeed thinks that is one of her responsibilities to them, to bring even a kind of enlightenment to those who may become hnau.

It's a really beautiful way of looking at creation, and it's to be found in all trilogy, even with Ransom's relationship to the Hrossa: if you think about them as human beings, they're terrufying because they're so big and alient; but if you think about them as animals with everything you could ever have wanted in a beast-friend they're perfect.
 
Hey. I downloaded the Nook and eReader from both Barnes and Noble and Borders respectively and none have the Space Trilogy available as an e-book. Do you think there is no permission to publish it in electronic format? I really wanted to buy them in electronic format so I could read them in my new phone or my laptop which I carry with me all the time.

I haven't checked Amazon's Kindle so maybe they do offer it. I don't know.
 
The Kindle Store by Amazon has some of Lewis' books, but not the Space Trilogy. I click on the link to tell the publisher I want it in electronic format.
 
I really like the Space Trilogy, and That Hideous Strength is probably my favorite (but it's hard to decide!). However, I am woefully ignorant about King Arthur and Merlin legends, and I feel lost when they talk about Merlinus Ambrosius and Logres. To complicate matters, there seem to be a lot of different versions of these stories! Can anybody recommend any books that would be about the version of these legends that C.S. Lewis incorporated into That Hideous Strength? Thanks!
 
Well, the challenge is that with the Inklings, they had between them a knowledge of Arthurian England that was doctoral-level at least. In a way, Dr. Dimble's explanation to Jane of the Arthurian knowledge of the St. Anne's circle was something of an explanation of the Inklings themselves. Lewis almost certainly borrowed the term "Logres" from the works of Charles Williams, whose Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars were an Arthurian cycle. Lewis admired Williams' works and even alludes to Taliessin in Strength. (It's worth noting that Tolkien was not a great fan of Williams' work, though he admired Williams as a person and a scholar.)

So in Strength you have another "chapter in the tales", so to speak, but one that assumes at least passing familiarity with the corpus. I'd recommend Sir Thomas Malory's classic works, but there are many other good ones. Christian writer Steven Lawhead wrote a series of his own on the various characters, but can't speak to either their quality or historical accuracy.
 
When Stephen Lawhead wrote his Arthurian series, he connected Merlin with ancient Atlantis in a way which almost certainly was a conscious emulation of Mr. Lewis' hints that Merlin came from (or at least knew about) Tolkien's Numenor.
 
I just finished The Space Trilogy... wow. Very impressive, I must say. I found it interesting that Lewis incorporated Merlin and the Arthurian legend as well as Tolkien's Numenór, or "Numinor", as Lewis called it (the name and legend of that land originated from an unfinished science-fiction of Tolkien's, as I understand).
 
Numenor is Tolkien's version of Atlantis - a huge island in the ocean where a particular nation of Men, rewarded for their virtue, founded a highly advanced enlightened civilization. Eventually it went rotten, they foolishly invaded the "Undying Lands" where the gods lived, the small-g gods kicked that one upstairs to the big-g God who sank Numenor beneath the sea as punishment. Some loyalists who had not taken part in the invasion were allowed to flee by ship and came to Middle-Earth where they founded Gondor and Arnor; the latter kingdom, which was in the North, fell after a while but Gondor endured until the War of the Ring.
 
The reason Lewis misspelled it in Strength was that when he was writing the story, he'd only heard the name spoken, and not yet seen it written. He was taking a stab at the spelling, and missed.
 
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