The Space Trilogy
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Out of the Silent Planet Perelandra That Hideous Strength | |
Author | C. S. Lewis |
---|---|
Cover artist | Brian Froud (omnibus) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | The Bodley Head (first and first omnibus) |
Published | 1938–1945 1990 (first omnibus) |
Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) 0-370-31439-5 (omnibus, 651 pp) |
The Space Trilogy (also known as The Cosmic Trilogy or The Ransom Trilogy) is a series of science fiction novels by C. S. Lewis. The trilogy consists of Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). A philologist named Elwin Ransom is the protagonist of the first two novels and an important character in the third.
Contents
Summary
The books in the trilogy are:
- Out of the Silent Planet (1938), set mostly on Mars (Malacandra). In this book, Dr. Elwin Ransom is kidnapped and transported to Mars. While there, he meets the planet's various inhabitants and discovers that Earth is exiled from the rest of the Solar System.
- Perelandra (1943). Also known as Voyage to Venus. Here, Dr. Ransom journeys to an unspoiled Venus (Perelandra), where he participates in a good vs. evil battle.
- That Hideous Strength (1945), set on Earth. A scientific think tank called the N.I.C.E. (The National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments) is secretly in touch with demonic entities who plan to assume control of the Earth.
In 1958, the publishing house Avon published an abridged edition of That Hideous Strength entitled The Tortured Planet.[1]
Publication history
- Lewis, C.S. Out of the Silent Planet. London : The Bodley Head, 1938.
- Lewis, C.S. Perelandra: A Novel. London : The Bodley Head, 1943.
- Lewis, C.S. That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-ups. London : The Bodley Head, 1945.
Influences and approach
Lewis stated in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green:[2]
What immediately spurred me to write was
J.B.S. Haldane's Possible Worlds both of wh[ich] seemed to take the idea of such [space] travel seriously and to have the desperately immoral outlook [3] wh[ich] I try to pillory in Weston. I like the whole interplanetary ideas as a mythology and simply wished to conquer for my own (Christian) p[oin]t of view what has always hitherto been used by the opposite side. I think H. G. Wells's First Men in the Moonthe best of the sort I have read …
The other main literary influence was David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (1920): "The real father of my planet books is David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, which you also will revel in if you don’t know it. I had grown up on Wells's stories of that kind: it was Lindsay who first gave me the idea that the ‘scientifiction’ appeal could be combined with the ‘supernatural’ appeal."[4]
The books are not especially concerned with technological speculation, and in many ways read like
Main character
The character of Elwin Ransom appears similar to Lewis himself: A university professor, an expert in languages and medieval literature, unmarried (Lewis did not marry until his fifties), wounded in
In Out of the Silent Planet it is suggested that "Ransom" is not the character's real name but merely an alias for a respectable professor whose reputation might suffer from his recounting such a journey to the planet Mars. In the following books, however, this is unaccountably dropped and it is made clear that Ransom is the character's true name. As befits a
The Dark Tower
An unfinished manuscript, published posthumously in 1977 and named
Setting
Cosmology
Ransom gets much information on
This is, in effect, Lewis' version of the events known in Christian theology as
In response to his destructive acts, the Bent One suffered confinement on Earth, where he inflicted great evil. He made Earth a silent planet, cut off from the Oyéresu of other planets; thus, Earth is referred to by the name 'Thulcandra', the Silent Planet. The Bent One, or Satan, seduced
Earth will remain a silent planet until the end of the great Siege of Deep Heaven against the Oyarsa of Earth. The siege starts to end (with the Oyéresu of other worlds descending to Earth) at the finale of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength. But there is still much to happen until the Oyéresu put an end to the rule of the Bent Eldil and, on the way, smash the Moon to fragments.
In the Field of Arbol, the outer planets are older than the inner planets. Asteroids are called "dancers before the threshold of the Great Worlds."
Eldila
The eldila (singular eldil) are super-human spirits. The human characters in the trilogy encounter them on various planets, but the eldila themselves are native to interplanetary and interstellar space ("Deep Heaven"). They can, if they want, remain fixed to one point on a planet's surface - but that requires a conscious act on their part, without which they would instantly drift away into space.
Certain very powerful eldila, the Oyéresu (singular Oyarsa), control the course of nature on each of the planets of the Solar System. They can manifest in corporeal forms. The title Oyarsa seems to indicate the function of leadership, regardless of the leader's species; when the Perelandran human Tor assumes rule of his world, he styles himself "Tor-Oyarsa-Perelendri" (presumably "Tor, Ruler of Perelandra").
The eldila are science-fictionalised depictions of
Hnau
Hnau is a word in the Old Solar language which refers to "rational animals" such as humans. In the book, the Old Solar speaker specifies that God is not hnau, and is unsure whether eldila can be termed "hnau", deciding that if they are hnau, they are a different kind of hnau than humans or Martians.
The term was adopted by some others, including Lewis's friend J. R. R. Tolkien; Tolkien used the term in The Notion Club Papers, which were not published in his lifetime. Tolkien distinguished hnau from beings of pure spirit or spirits able to assume a body (which is not essential to their nature). Similarly, a character in James Blish's science fiction novel A Case of Conscience wonders whether a particular alien is a hnau, which he defines as having "a rational soul".
The term has been used by philosopher Thomas I. White in "Is a Dolphin a Person?" White asks if dolphins are persons, and if they are, whether they can also be reckoned as hnau.
Old Solar language
According to the Space Trilogy's cosmology, the language of all the inhabitants of the Field of Arbol is Old Solar, or Hlab-Eribol-ef-Cordi. Only Earth lost the language; this loss was due to the Bent One's influence. Old Solar can be likened to the
For this was the language spoken before the Fall and beyond the Moon and the meanings were not given to the syllables by chance, or skill, or long tradition, but truly inherent in them as the shape of the great Sun is inherent in the little waterdrop. This was Language herself, as she first sprang at Maleldil's bidding out of the molten quicksilver of the first star called Mercury on Earth, but Viritrilbia in Deep Heaven.[9]
Terms used throughout the trilogy
- Eldil (pl. Eldila): An everlasting, rational, "multidimensional energy being" that is not organic; an angel. Some act in the capacity of "Oyarsa" of a planet.
- Field of Arbol: The Solar System.
- Glund or Glundandra: Jupiter.
- Hnau or 'nau: A rational being, capable of speech, intellect, and personhood, and containing a soul.
- Handra: A planet or land.
- Hrū: Blood.
- Lurga: Saturn.
- Malacandra: Mars.
- Maleldil: The Christian God, described in Perelandra as having been incarnated as Jesus.
- Oyarsa (pl. Oyéresu) (title): Ruler of a planet. A higher-order angel.
- Perelandra: Venus.
- Sulva: The Moon.
- Thulcandra: Earth, literally "The Silent Planet".
- Viritrilbia: Mercury.
Parallels and adaptations
The cosmology of all three books—in which the Oyéresu of
In That Hideous Strength, Lewis alludes several times to Tolkien's Atlantean civilization Numinor (spelt Númenor by Tolkien), saying in the foreword, "Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS. of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien."[12]
References
- ^ "Lewis, C(live) S(taples) 1898-1963". www.encyclopedia.com.
- ^ Lewis, C.S. Collected Letters, Volume II: Books, Broadcasts and War 1931-1949. Walter Hooper, ed., 2004, p.236f.
- ^ The future history depicted by Stapledon includes the wholesale genocide of the intelligent inhabitants of Venus, to facilitate the planet's colonization by humans.
- ISBN 9780521034012– via Google Books.
- ^ Franklin, Robert (2006). "Intersections between science and belief in some 'novels of ideas' by Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis" (PDF). rune.une.edu.au. p. 216.
- ^ Musacchio, George (15 March 1988). "Warfaring Christian". Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature. pp. 31–32.
- ^ C.S. Lewis, The Dark Tower and Other Stories, Walter Hooper, ed., (London: Collins, 1977), 8.
- ^ Harry Lee Poe, "Shedding Light on The Dark Tower, Christianity Today, 2 February 2007
- ^ Lewis, C. S. (1945). That Hideous Strength. London: The Bodley Head. p. 281.
- ^ Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008)
- ^ Kathryn Lindskoog, C.S. Lewis: Mere Christian (Cornerstone Press, March 31, 2007)
- ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.
Further reading
- Butts, Dennis. "The Abolition of Man?: Horror in the Science Fiction of C.S. Lewis". In Clive Bloom (ed), Creepers: British Horror and Fantasy in the Twentieth Century. London and Boulder CO: Pluto Press, pp. 111–19.
- Downing, David C. Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of CS Lewis's Ransom Trilogy. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.
- Sammons, Martha C. A Guide Through CS Lewis' Space Trilogy. Westchester, IL: Cornerstone Books, 1980.
- Glyer, Diana. A Compass for Deep Heaven: Navigating the C. S. Lewis Ransom Trilogy. MD: Square Halo Books, 2021.