The Space Trilogy

by C.S. Lewis

Reading a book the second time, after having read it as a child, is an adventure in perspective. Some of the old "movies" return to the mind, and other observations and ideas occur only the second time around. The things that fascinated a child still entertain, but sometimes, the book rises to a new challenge the young reader never even perceived.

The "Space Trilogy" is quite an undertaking for any reader, as it is long and involved, and on some level deals with good and evil, the nature and meaning of life. But on another it is just a really fascinating story that can be taken as fantasy fiction, with bad guys and good guys and worlds of made-up characters and scenery and battles. The books hold up well either way. The review that follows is a retelling - so beware of the famous "spoiler alerts." 

The series was written so that each book could be read as a stand-alone, or read in sequence, and the installments were published in 1938, 1943, and 1945. That alone will tell the adult reader something the child will likely not perceive: in 1938 the world was poised on the edge of war; in 1943 Stalingrad and Kursk had been attacked by Germany; in 1945 peace was declared. In a way, the stories reflect the movement of that war.

The first book, "Out of the Silent Planet," is narrated by Elwin Ransom, a philologist ("A philologist is someone who studies the history of languages, especially by looking closely at literature. If you're fascinated with the way English has changed over time, from Beowulf to Beloved, you might want to become a philologist. Linguistics is the study of language, and a philologist is a type of linguist." Vocabulary.com). The name, Ransom, is a clue to the deeper story the books are telling.

The series begins with this scholar and gentle man going on a walking trip. He stops in Nedderby (can't you just see it as the child would picture it: in the country north of London, cottages and sheep in the fields and small villages with stone buildings and chimneys puffing smoke - just as the adult re-imagines it), and goes on to Stark because he can't get a room in Nedderby. A distraught woman he encounters asks him to help her son, who is challenged, to get home from his job. Perhaps, suggests the woman, he will find a room there once her son is sent home? He walks on to where the boy is working, an estate with a small cottage on it. There he meets Weston and Devine, the first a physicist and scientist, the second an old (and obnoxious) school mate of Ransom's. Evidently, they are not very good men. While Ransom does send the boy home, ultimately, he is drugged and loaded onto a space ship with the two, headed for Malacandra. Mars. Though the location of the tale was broadcast, the turn of events is still startling.

Once out of Earth's atmosphere, the bright light makes Ransom feel "vigilant, courageous and magnanimous..." Space, he discovers, is bright and invigorating, not cold and dark. This was one of the first moments when the adult reader had no image from the mental movie of the child reader: why would space be a bright, shining, invigorating place as opposed to the dark emptiness we imagine? A clue?

He overhears his captors and fellow travelers talking about the "Sorn;" a kind of brute, he imagines, on the planet to which they're headed, that have ordered him (or some human) captured and delivered to them, presumably for some kind of tribute or sacrifice. 

"The love of knowledge is a kind of madness," Ransom observes, as he sees Weston and Devine plotting and realizes that Weston, at least, is brilliant, but evidently also more than a little crazy. This was another of those thoughts a child reader might dismiss, and in the modern world of sound bites and constant distraction offers new insight. 

Upon landing, Ransom escapes and eventually meets with the hrossa, a sort of seal-like creature, brave, singing, friendly. And he meets the Pfifltriggi, a digging, mining, working creature. All speak "Old Solar," a language once known on Earth, and spoken by all the creatures on the other planets. The group travel across the old, evolved planet, and Ransom begins to understand the nature of the wider universe, and man's place in it. The hnau (intelligent, speaking creatures, including man) of Malacandra know he must go to meet the Sorn, and the eldil, of their planet. 

Upon arriving at their destination - a sort of royal garden - Ransom meets his two captors and they end up discussing the idea of trying to take over the universe, planet by planet, by brute strength and "manifest destiny." The other creatures of the Solar System are innocent, not cunning or willing to grab the main chance, and therefore, according to Weston and Devine, don't deserve it. Another idea that can grab an adult reader with the idea of "just because you can doesn't mean you should" when considering power.

The point of "Out of the Silent Planet" is to introduce us to the greater Solar System, the intelligent beings of other planets, and the idea that the ancient world of Malacandra is what Earth (Thulcandra in Old Solar) might have been had man not fallen. Ransom also meets the eldil, a kind of angelic being that lives on a plane in which the planets are tiny dots in a larger sea of being. Each planet has a ruling eldil, an Oyarsa. Including Earth, whose eldil (eldila is the plural) is "bent," or bad. Thulcandra, as a result, is the "silent planet." Ransom's value, at least in part, is his ability to learn the language - especially its deeper meanings. But it also, it is hinted, because he is not, like his planet's keeper, "bent." For a child, the idea of "good" guys and "bad" is typically simple; for an adult, it's not quite as clear.

Eventually, having met the eldil and stood up for mankind against Weston and Devine, Ransom returns to Earth where he is met by another "narrator" of the story - and the two men agree that Weston and Devine can't be allowed to carry out their plot any further.

"Perelandra" picks up the story, but this time it is narrated by the man who finds Ransom upon his return to earth in the first book. He has been tasked with preparing Ransom for another adventure he is going on, this time to Venus (Perelandra) for a mission he does not yet know the purpose of. The story is told by this new character as it is related by Ransom upon his return. 

Perelandra, as Ransom encounters it, having landed in his spaceship which melts away around him, is a watery planet. Floating across its surface are islands of vegetation upon which Ransom can, after a fashion, walk. He finds bubble "fruits," sleeps and eats and lives with simple, basic joy in each activity, and eventually meets "The Lady," a creature of sublime beauty and simplicity. The "Eve" of her planet. Thought the place is hard to imagine, one of Lewis's great gifts as a writer is his ability to create a mental picture so vivid, it was quite brightly reimagined on the second reading, almost as if it had been "seen" before.

If, in the first book, the reader didn't catch on, this book is a little more obvious in its intent. Soon after Ransom lands, finds his way, and meets the lady, he finds that she is untainted and very direct, innocent yet highly intelligent, and has lost (on one of the floating islands) The King, her husband and the "Adam" of Perelandra. In other words, we are getting a version of Biblical tales, but set on a bigger imaginary stage.

Ransom learns that the one thing forbidden to the couple is to live on "fixed land." There seems to be no reason for the rule, it just "is," and The Lady seems to accept it that way. For the time being.

Eventually, Weston (or some evil facsimile of him) shows up and begins his attempt to seduce The Lady. Not physically, but with something a child reading the book would not pick up on, but upon this reading stood out, and lent a new depth to the story. Weston doesn't tempt "Eve" with apples, or riches, or fame - but with her own pride and vanity and self-dramatization. Weston tells her stories of the women of his own planet, who suffer for their loved ones, who are brave and glorious and powerful in their resolve. Who are, as as result of their willingness to break rules, braver and better than the men in their lives and thus more beautiful and perfect. 

As Weston's inhabited body, "The Un-Man," puts it, "Each one of these women had stood forth alone and braved a terrific risk for her child, her lover, or her people. Each had been misunderstood, reviled, and persecuted: but each also magnificently vindicated by the event." Weston is beguiling her with the idea of suffering and doing something supposedly "wrong" in order to be the savior of her people, her man, her children. Weston is setting her up because his next step is to urge her to disobey the command not to go to the fixed land. He tells her she must disobey the command to make both her and The King prove their merit to Maleldil (God). 

The seduction goes on and on, and at some point Ransom realizes that it's up to him to talk The Lady out of listening to The Un-Man. It becomes apparent that there is a battle for the newly inhabited planet of Perelandra. The Adam and Eve story is happening again. On Malacandra the test was passed and the planet lived on happily, and had reached its "old age." On Earth, the test was failed and now the planet lives out of easy contact with the rest of the Solar System (Deep Space). On Perelandra, the test has begun. Ransom and Weston have been chosen as the tempter, and the "rescuer."

On two levels the temptation of The Lady meant a great deal more to an adult reader than a child: first, the nature of the temptation itself. It's hard enough to understand the idea of being tempted by something so simple as an apple, yet the "child" reader will understand it's simply a test of obedience. Far more difficult to reconcile would be the temptation to be persuaded by something as subtle as one's desire to be brave and true, particularly in terms of a pointless "rule." And then there is Ransom's realization that he is up against a genuine fight that wasn't his to choose, yet here he is. And he's scared.

Ransom feels overwhelmed finally, and observes, "The Enemy was using Third Degree methods... why did no miracle come? Or rather, no miracle on the right side?...Had Hell a prerogative to work one? Why did Heaven work none? Not for the first tie he found himself questioning 'Divine Justice.'"

He realize that yes, he, a "little man of straw," has been given this enormous task. "A stone may determine the course of a river." Again, Jack the Giant Killer seems reasonable enough to a child who can dream that a little boy or girl could best a Giant; the adult will comprehend the panic that can set in when the odds seem so unwinnable.

The eventual battle is won, but not before there is an actual, ugly, physical battle between Ranson and the Un-Man, after which a wounded (in the foot, a la Achilles) Ransom returns to Earth, having been lauded by the happy Perelandra as the hero of their story.

Finally, in "That Hideous Strength," the final chapter of Ransom's, and Deep Space's, story is told. Of the three, this is by far the longest, and likely the least interesting to the child reader. It dwells more on corporate maneuvering, boring meetings and shows of strength, and less on curious creatures and fights to the finish.

Two forces are lining up on Earth. Again, a man and a woman - a young couple, Mark and Jane - are chosen up to be a sort of "test case" for how the bigger battle will be waged. But this time around it is the man who is tempted, and the woman who has to wait to see what he'll do, though she clearly aligns herself with "The Good."

A group of odd assorted "good guys" are brought together in a small town, and a corrupt and powerful organization known as the N.I.C.E (National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments) is preparing to take over and relegate mankind to its service. 

In the course of this story, C.S. Lewis makes a brilliant observation about the power of propaganda, with the "sides" of arguments each assuming they are the "educated" ones; each assuming they have the "right" answers, and thus never being willing to listen to, or entertain, the "other" (and wrong) side. 

One of the marks, at least according to this tale, of being on the right, the good, side, is the willingness to use desperate measures - or not. This is an interesting observation on the part of the writer. "The Director," a now eternally young, but eternally wounded, Ransom, explains to the young woman the reason they have to continue to do "right." "I am not allowed to use desperate remedies until desperate diseases are really apparent. Otherwise we become just like our enemies -- breaking all the rules whenever we imagine that it might possibly do some vague good to humanity in the remote future."

This is another one of the junctures at which the second reading was a learning experience. The very idea that one can't jump in and be the hero as soon as the bugle blows, or that that same person would have  to jump in when it wasn't desirable, is daunting. It's likely some of this thinking came out of Lewis' own experience in WWI, fighting in the trenches of the western front.

As the story edges closer and closer to the finale, the intriguing idea is that things become more "themselves." "Before the point of final resolution, things have more "elbow room," and "contrasts weren't quite so sharp. Then there comes a time when there is less room for indecision, and choices become more and more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder."

Again, an idea that couldn't be noted for the child reader, but stood out for the adult. The idea that rather than expanding the person so that they become larger and more expansive and relaxed, life can whittle the person, sharpening, honing and defining. It is also likely an idea that would have sounded more likely in the 40s when the books were begun than in the 2020s of today, as blurring is more the style today than whittling.

And in the end, the characters pick a side and wage a final battle. 

C.S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis) was part of a small group of writers and scholars who called themselves "The Inklings," which name has two meanings, one the obvious "ink," the other "idea." Part of that group also were J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit) Owen Barfield (who was instrumental in C.S. Lewis leaving atheism), Lord David Cecil, Adam Fox, and others, all of them writers of fiction, poetry, and/or scholarly books. If you didn't read the Space Trilogy as a child, try it now. If you did read it then - it's fascinating the second time around as well.