CS Lewis in Space

While the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis are well known, his space trilogy toils in relative obscurity. I just finished reading the trilogy again for the first time since high school, and have enjoyed reading them. However, there is a reason that the Chronicles of Narnia are famous and the space trilogy is not: it is simply weird. The first book is kind of a classic “man gets kidnapped, goes into outer space with the evil scientist, meets odd creatures, and saves the day” type of book, except that the God of the Bible and various angels get thrown into the mix. The second one is extremely strange. The plot of the book basically is a Satan possessed virtually immortal evil scientist follows naked green innocent lady around Venus while main character follows both of them, once again saving the day. In another perspective, the book is about “Adam and Eve” on Venus, the temptation of Eve, and what would have happened if they had not sinned. The third book occurs on earth, where evil demons work through evil men to try and take over the world using re-animated heads and a nazified experimental program on unfortunates while the heroes gather together to fight against them, eventually conquering them through a resurrected Merlin. While they are a fun read, they are just strange. But inside the weirdness are plenty of fascinating thoughts, and I have included several of them below.

At the beginning of the second book (Perelandra), the narrator (not the main character) has an experience with an eldil (an angel in Christian terms). Here is his reaction.

I felt sure that the creature was what we call “good,” but I wasn’t sure whether I liked “goodness” so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can’t eat, and home the very place you can’t live, and your very comforter the person who makes you feel uncormfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played. For a second or two I was nearly in that condition. Here at last was a bit of that world from beyond the world, which I had always supposed that I loved and desired, breaking through and appearing to my senses: and I didn’t like it, I wanted it to go away. I wanted every possible distance, gulf, curtain, blanket, and barrier to be placed between it and me. But I did not fall quite into the gulf. Oddly enough my very sense of helplessness saved me and steadied me. For now I was quite obviously “drawn in.” The struggle was over. The next decision did not lie with me (19-20).

This selection comes from the end of the book, after Adam and Eve have passed the test.

“We know these things [evil] now,” said the King [Adam], seeing Ransom’s [main character] hesitation. “All this, all that happened in your world, Maleldil [God] has put into our mind. We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young, there is a darker ignorance that comes from being young: by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep. You are more ignorant of evil in Thulcandra [earth] now than in the days before your Lord and Lady began to do it. But Maleldil has brought us out of the one ignorance, and we have not entered the other. It was by the Evil One himself that he brought us out of the first. Little did that dark mind know the errand on which he really came to Perelandra! (209)

Here are two lighter selections from the third book, That Hideous Strength. The first is about how the kitchen work gets done in the house of the good guys. The second has to do with marriage relationships.

“There are no servants here,” said Mother Dimble, “and we all do the work. The women do it one day and the men the next. What? No, it’s a very sensible arrangement. The Director’s idea is that men and women can’t do housework together without quarreling. There’s something in it. Of course, it doesn’t do to look at the cups too closely on the men’s day, but on the whole we get along pretty well.”

“But why should they quarrel?” asked Jane.

“Different methods, my dear. Men can’t help in a job, you know. They can be induced to do it: not to help while you’re doing it. At least, it makes them grumpy.”

“The cardinal difficulty,” said MacPhee, “in a collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, ‘Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.’ The female for this is, ‘Put that in the other one in there.’ And then if you ask them, ‘in where?’ they say, ‘in there, of course.’ (167).

“Jane, that’s the third time you’ve yawned. You’re dropping asleep and I’ve talked your head off. It comes of being married thirty years. Husbands were made to be talked to. It helps them concentrate their minds on what they’re reading – like the sound of weir (77). [A weir is a fence placed in a stream to catch fish – I had to look it up!.]

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