The Space Trilogy--C.S.Lewis

The three books are progressively longer

Ta-da! I finished reading C.S.Lewis' Space Trilogy a while ago and decided that a review is a good way for me to recollect my thoughts upon reading them and remember things. It's always easier to remember what you thought about a book if you write it down.

I really enjoyed these books, even though they are very deep at times and less lighthearted than, say, the Narnia books. Now, the depth is to be expected, seeing as The Chronicles of Narnia were written primarily to a child audience and the Space Trilogy is subtitled, in the first book, "A Fairy-tale for Grown-ups." I will go through the books one by one to give my impressions of each. 

Out of the Silent Planet (henceforth OSP)

I was super happy to find pictures of the actual edition that I read!

This first book is the story of Dr. Elwin Ransom's first journey into Space. (Of course now I have to give you this quote about "Space" from Lewis' writing to explain exactly how it is in the book.)

This guy was a genius, but I'll just call it space

The book starts out with Ransom being kidnapped by two old accomplices, one named Weston and one named Devine, who have built a spaceship and are trying to steal the native gold from the planet Malacandra (aka Mars), and think that to do so they must appease the natives of Malacandra. They take Ransom to be a sacrifice for their gold, but their plan backfires very much. Ransom escapes, meets one of the native species (a 'hross'), learns the Old Solar language, and becomes their friend, learning about their Creator, and that the same Creator was HIS Creator. It's a little bit mind-blowing.  I think my personal favorite line is when Ransom is talking to a 'sorn' (a native creature of Malacandra) about the eldils, or spirit creatures that are similar to angels, and the sorn tells him, "These things are not strange, Small One, though they are beyond our senses." Just wow. Some things, the infinite universe, Time itself, the fact that God CREATED Time and the entire universe, are not strange. They're just beyond our senses.

As for content, there was a little bit of swearing, mainly by the bad guys and in the first couple chapters. Also a bit of suggestive content, but nothing more than theoretical, and mainly just Ransom's mind, thoughts that come across in his crazy journey to Mars. I would highly recommend this. 

Perelandra

This begins narrated by Lewis himself, talking about how changed Ransom was when he returned from his holiday, and his being 'let in' to the secret about the other planets. Ransom is called away again to Space, this time to a planet called Perelandra (Venus) to help the inhabitants. In the end  he finds that Weston has come as well in order to corrupt the natives, like Satan in the Garden of Eden, and Ransom has an epic, drawn-out battle to the death with Weston 

This book was a little harder to read and more 'thinky' than the first, with more hypothetical questions and insight into Ransom's mind, I think. He is shown a glimpse of what HIS world (which, by the way, is Thulcandra in the Old Solar language) would have looked like before the Fall and is able, by God's grace and through His strength, to protect Perelandra from the same fate and fall into sin as Earth. It really makes one think, but I think that perhaps I'm too young (see what I did there, those who've read it?) to fully understand everything that Lewis is talking about. I don't think my brain is quite ready for the depth of his discussions in this book. However, Perelandra is saved and the King and Queen (aka Adam and Eve) are kept in their innocent, sinless state.

Content-wise, this one was a little more awkward, because the inhabitants of Perelandra don't wear clothes (well, it's like the Garden of Eden before the Fall), and neither does Ransom, due to the environment he's in. Nobody is ashamed of this, but of course to us (to me), it's a little awkward and weird. I tend to forget and be so engrossed in the story that I don't remember until it's mentioned and I go "Oh...okayyy..." and read on. Of course Weston has some criticism of this condition when he first finds Ransom on Venus (and of course the Green Lady [Eve] had to be there at that time) but Ransom tiredly tells him that nobody wears clothes on Perelandra. DUH. Oh well. That doesn't take away from the story, really. There is some violence toward the end as Ransom fights the evil, but it doesn't get very graphic or terrible. And swearing about the same as the first one. 

Very good book, of course. Not as easy reading as the first one, but definitely worth it. 

That Hideous Strength (THS)

This is about as long as the first 2 combined, and is just...just wow (I know I said that already, but still!). It's not about Ransom going to space, which I was surprised at, but centers around the lives of Mark and Jane Studdock, a young British couple. Mark is let into the circles of a society called N.I.C.E. (The National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments) and Jane, after a great deal of conflict, joins another society under the direction of Ransom (who, in this book, is more like a wizard) to resist the N.I.C.E, which is trying to pretty much destroy the earth with its 'Progressive' jargon. 

*SPOILER PARAGRAPH* The NICE (forget punctuation) is ruled by an old, creepy man named Wither, but the element of fear and control is the facade kept by "the Head," which is an actual HEAD. Like, as in it's a decapitated head that they have been keeping 'alive' by science and has the semblance of life. Once Mark is 'in' the NICE, he's either controlled or dead, and for a long time he lives as a possession of the NICE. Then he sees how he has been wrong, close to the end, and goes back to Jane. Before this, she has been living with the group under Ransom's guidance, after they learn of her hereditary power to have prophetic dreams, and they find that the Earth is under attack by dark eldils or spirits. So they need help from the other eldils and need someone to channel the insane amount of power. It's hard to explain and too much to fit in a paragraph, but I will say GUYS MERLIN'S INVOLVED and BULTITUDE THE BEAR and OH MY GOODNESS THEY DID NOT JUST DO THAT! It gets crazy, but in the end good prevails, Bultitude the bear gets the bad guys, and the NICE is no more. *END SPOILERS*

Content: This book had more thematic or suggestive moments in it, but no explicit content, and, although I am taking into account it was written for adults and not children, it did have more swearing than I like in a book. (Sorry, Professor Lewis!) It's more violent at the end with the battle of the NICE and there is some weirdness with the eldils that I was weirded out by. Just, Lewis refers to them as Venus, Mars, Jupiter, whatever, and what I think of is the gods of Greek and Rome. *shrugs* But that was not greatly elaborated on. There is also un-clothed bits at the end. To enter the room where the Head is, clothing apparently has to go, and there's a fight to remove the Head and another man's head, and then some men who die Lewis just won't stop describing as being fat, and...

We'll leave it at that. Aside from that, it's a really, really good story, and I really enjoyed it. Cause wow. Fantastic writing, great plot (though I would have liked a more long, drawn-out battle than such a quick, one-chapter thing), and naturally just good. There was one part that made me laugh. At Belbury, where Ransom's forces are, there are a bunch of people and they have 'women's day' and 'men's day' in the kitchen. When Jane asks why, the reply is, from a Scotsman called MacPhee, thus: 

"The cardinal difficulty in 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.'" 

That was a good line. It's so true, though! Anyhow, one of the things I most enjoyed was knowing that Ransom's character was loosely based on the character of Lewis' good friend professor J.R.R. Tolkien. It made me smile and wonder how much of Ransom's character was Tolkien, his way of talking or his personal tendencies. When he meets the different species on Malacandra, discovers it has a language, and immediately thinks, "I must catalog and write it down!" that's totally Tolkien the linguist talking about his elvish, dwarvish, and whatever other thirteen bazillion languages he invented. This is why you must take care when you become friends with a writer. If you're not careful you'll end up as characters! 

To sum up, I will just say that this trilogy was definitely worth the read. C.S.Lewis always delivers a good tale with life-like, relatable characters and flowing, very well-done writing. I wouldn't recommend this for read-aloud or for children under 13 (depending on the child, maybe even under 15), but it is a really good story. Narnia will ALWAYS BE my favorite Lewis story, but the Space Trilogy is definitely worth the time you'll spend reading it.