The Space Trilogy

No I meant you could have it, for free, gratis no cost nothing, then I went to look for it and it's vanished! another casualty of my last move no doubt. Also I totally understand you not wanting to give out your address, I am just trying to make amends. In that spirit I have been trying to track down a downloadable free version to forward on, so far no luck but I did find this rather interesting link that people might want to look at

http://vahki.bookcrossing.com/books

its an online bookshare type thing and it's all free
 
Space Trilogy

Okay, I've never read the Space Trilogy books, but have started to buy them several times. I'm getting the impression from the posts I've read that they would be well worth reading.

I'll have to check them out. Thanks for answering my question before I even asked!
 
Worth it

The Space Trilogy books are well worth reading, but geared more toward an adult audience than Narnia.

Hope you like em!
 
I've read the first one. And what I've heard of the second, it's more theological-ish.....am I right? I want to read through the trilogy, but I'm afraid the second one will bore/confuse/baffle me. =\
 
The second one, Perelandra, is even better than the first, more filled with wonders and suspense, I would say.
 
Summaries

Puddleglum19, do you read the posts here? :confused: I don't mean to be obnoxious, but I think the reason you got jumped on before is because you seem to be asking pretty much the same questions over and over. There have already been basic summaries posted. However, if what you're asking for is something a little more defined, here you go:

Out of the Silent Planet
We are introduced to our hero Ransom, a philologist and professor. He is kidnapped by a couple of bad guys - one of them a mad scientist type called Weston - who transport him to a planet called Malacandra, which we know as Mars. The two have already been there several times,and intend to offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the Malacandrians, who they assume are primitive.

Once they arrive on Malacandra, Ransom escapes in terror at the sight of one of the native species. He spends many days roaming the alien landscape, and after befriending a sentient creature, learns the language, and in time begins to understand the cultures, interactions, and beliefs of the various species. He discovers that Malacandra is essentially an unfallen world, whose inhabitants commune freely with a spirit realm that includes angelic-type beings in addition to a single all-powerful deity they call "Maleldil". When Ransom finally visits the "Oyarsa", or angelic ruler of the planet, he is able to inform him of the spiritual situation on Earth, explaining why it does not commune with the heavens as the other planets do - it is silent because it is fallen, yet it has the distinction of being the only planet where Maleldil has come in the flesh to redeem its fallen inhabitants (some of this conversation is implied rather than spelled out).

Weston and his sidekick arrive at this moment, and there is a climactic conflict between them and Oyarsa, in which we discover the bad guys' true motive for coming to Malacandra in the first place, and in which Weston is revealed to be a modern atheistic materialist. The resolution of this conflict and how it is played out is basically the end of the book, which I won't give away, except to say that all three men eventually make it back to earth.

This book reads far more like fantasy than like science fiction, except for its comparitively modern setting. It is not an "alien" or "sci-fi" book. Lewis's descriptions of the martian landscape and its inhabitants are wonderfully imaginative and colorful, full of depth and insight. The theological bits are intriguing but not so deep you get mired down in them. There are a few slow moments before they arrive on Malacandra, but if you can slog through them you're in for a great ride. There is nothing in this book that should scare off wary parents - the Christian worldview is vindicated and strengthened and the lines between good and evil are firmly drawn.


Perelandra:
Since his stay on Malacandra, Ransom has developed a new understanding of the spiritual world, and now communes regularly with Oyarsa. He is informed that Maleldil has a mission for him that requires transport to another planet, this time Perelandra, or what we know as Venus. Obeying the call, he is taken to Perelandra by mysterious means arranged by the eldila (the angelic beings).

In Perelandra he discovers a paradise of floating islands populated by fantastic, colorful creatures. In time he befriends a single woman, humanlike in appearance except for emerald-green skin, who proves to be the first woman, or this planet's Eve, so to speak. She is unfallen, innocent yet wise, and communes easily with Maleldil. We learn that the "forbidden fruit" of this world is to attempt to live on the "fixed land" - the one unfloating landmass to be found on the planet.

Evil arrives in the form of Weston, the mad scientist from the previous book. He immediately begins to tempt the woman to disobey her one direct order. Cajoling, flattering, and twisting truth, he debates with her as Ransom attempts to guide and protect her. After a great deal of this in which it seems the woman is hedging closer to sin, Ransom realizes his only choice is to physically remove Weston, who is now clearly possessed. Their battle and its aftermath contains the climax of the book, and Ransom is once more returned to earth.

This book is the favorite of many in the series. In trying to analyze why, I've come up with a few ideas: 1)The descriptions are so rich and tantalizing to the senses, it gives us a heartbreaking glimpse of what Paradise could have been on earth, and fills us with hope for the heaven to come. 2)The debate between Weston, Ransom, and the woman contains some of the best theological dialogue in all of fiction. It employs all of the logic, common sense, and wit for which Lewis is famous, and the thought that "this is how it might have been" with Eve and the serpent ties it close to home and makes the reader breathless with suspense over the final decision. Again, the overall feel is much more like fantasy and even less like sci-fi than the first book - there is no spaceship, no scientific jargon. And again, nothing to make the Christian parent cringe. Rather, it cements such concepts as Godly obedience, joy, and the stumbling blocks of pride and vanity.


I'm going to leave the summary of That Hideous Strength to someone who has read it more recently than I have, as I can't do proper service to its complexity without a fresher memory. Besides, this post is long enough! But in any case, Puddleglum, you'd probably find the first two more to your taste and level of experience. It's been stated quite correctly several times now that the third book is far more interesting when approached from a more adult perspective.

I hope this was helpful. :)
 
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Oh yes

And just to draw a comparison...if you like Madeliene L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series, you'll probably like the Space Trilogy. That has been my experience when I've talked to people about it - except that Lewis is still less sci-fi and more theological than L'Engle.
 
I'm still getting to that part, lol.

Maybe i'll start reading perelandra now. Hmm, much to think about.

tg
 
Sojourner said:
What did you all think of Ransom in the Last book?
Ransom had become a type of Christ for Perelandra, hadn't he? He had defeated the tempter so that the Lady Tinidril was not led into sin, but it had cost him: he returned to earth with a wound in his heel that would not heal. The promise in Genesis 3:15 that God made to Satan, "it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" is seen as a prophecy of Christ: He was to crush Satan, and Satan in his vain attempt to destroy Christ would merely bruise His heel. Now Ransom has that wound that won't mend in his heel, where he thinks Weston bit him in their struggle. Further he is timeless, and will never die, another attribute of Christ. Of course he isn't Jesus, because He is on the earth as a follower of Jesus, but he was a sort of savior for Perelandra and is now out of place on earth (because his true home was Perelandra, and he will never die on earth).
 
Ransom has become a "little Christ" as all Christians (since Antioch!) are called to be. Granted Ransom is a spectacular example, but it is precisely because he did "imitate" Christ that Perelandra was saved from the Fall. Satan had attacked via Weston's physical presence on Perelandra and calling the Fallen One into that world, which the previous ban on Earth had forbidden.

As by one man evil is entered into to Perelandra, so it is opposed by the Incarnate One who dwells in Ransom and enables him physically, mentally, and spiritually to do battle and defeat the enemy. Ransom is thus one who bears the same name as He who was the ransom for many AND the one who makes present in the here-and-now Christ Jesus. Ransom is thus an image of the Second Adam at work in Mankind and of the Church, as well as an individual. Ransom's true home is NOT Perelandra, but with Christ. He is a partaker of the spiritual realm in mysterious ways that are scarcely to be borne while in the body, yet he does so in obedience and as a conduit of grace and power (anyone else thinking saint right now?). The stigmata of the bruised heel identifies him as one with Christ, though separate from Him, AND is another indicator of the on-going nature of the Incarnation in the Church, both individually and corporately.

Ransom is not timeless. He is a physical being encountering and enduring and educating others in the spiritual realms of what has happened on earth ("Even the angels wish to get a glimpse of these things," as Paul observed.) The consequences of that reality render him relatively "timeless" by comparison, but his true home is eternity - neither Earth nor Perelandra. When Earth and Perelandra have ceased to be, Ransom (and all Christ-ians, indeed!) will still be, living in the life of the Trinity! When the Universe has run down its appointed duration and matter ceases, Ransom will still be in God and living (as will we!).

Ransom therefore works on a literal level, an allegorical level, a moral level, and an anogogical level (like Dante in THE DIVINE COMEDY, in fact). To borrow and particularize Dante's explanation in his letter on reading the COMMEDIA to his patron Can Grande della Scala:
"For the meaning of this work is not simple...for we obtain one meaning from the letter of it, and another from that which the letter signifies... . For if we regard the letter alone what is set before us is (the story); if the allegory ... redemption wrought by Christ (through Ransom); if the moral sense, we are shown the conversion of the soul from grief and wretchedness of sin to the state of grace; if the anagogical, we are shown the departure of the holy soul from the thralldom of this corruption to the liberty of eternal glory.
"The subject of the whole work then, taken merely in the literal sense is ('what happened to Ransom on Perelandra and afterwards on Earth'), for the development of the whole work hinges on and about that. But if, indeed, the work is taken (allegorical or mystical), its subject is "Man, as by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of his free choice, he becomes liable to (manifesting or refusing Christ)." <cf. Dorothy L. Sayers "Introduction" to her translation of HELL, pp. 14 -15>

Ransom is modelled on JRR Tolkien per CS Lewis. Thus we see a particular instance of Christ at work in Tolkien converting Lewis. Christ in Lewis then goes on to do the same (as Tolkien continued to do) with Lewis' apologetics, and we have the redemptions of the subcreations of Narnia and Middle Earth - though not in precisely the same modes (just as Perelandra differs from Narnia and both from Middle Earth).

MORE? :D
 
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inked said:
Ransom is modelled on JRR Tolkien per CS Lewis. Thus we see a particular instance of Christ at work in Tolkien converting Lewis. Christ in Lewis then goes on to do the same (as Tolkien continued to do) with Lewis' apologetics, and we have the redemptions of the subcreations of Narnia and Middle Earth - though not in precisely the same modes (just as Perelandra differs from Narnia and both from Middle Earth).
Good, I forgot about that!
 
inked said:
Ransom has become a "little Christ" as all Christians (since Antioch!) are called to be.

This is fun.

Bultitude the bear escaped the compound, and apparently Ransom, when he climbed a tree that overhung the wall keeping him in. He didn't really want to escape Ransom, but he did want to get outside.

Where weird and unexpected things occurred. He was drugged and made captive; he participated in some ugly but necessary carnage, and ultimately lived happily ever after (presumably) with a friendly female bear.

But the point is that Ransom's presence and power are outside the wall, too.

You can run (or waddle) but you can't hide. :)
 
Charis said:
You can run (or waddle) but you can't hide. :)
Very good!

Welcome, Charis-- I didn't see you post before. I bever thought about Bultitude's example and what it meant in THS. Very astute.
 
inkspot said:
Welcome, Charis-- I didn't see you post before. I bever thought about Bultitude's example and what it meant in THS. Very astute.

Thanks - even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes....

I started out with Mere Christianity a long, long time ago and later read the fiction. It's all good.

Lewis was amazing, and I really look forward to knocking down a few pints with Warnie and him at a heavenly pub.
 
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