

Lectures on Out of the Silent Planet ( here), Perelandra ( here), and That Hideous Strength ( here).

That Hideous Strength is objectively Wilson's favorite book, based on the number of times he's read it (~15) see some comments here about the kind of women that appear in it. See here for information about the "Lost Lewis Tapes." His accounts of supernatural intervention would have been more impressive had he known more of nature as it actually exists."Ĭould also be called "The Cosmic Trilogy" or "The Ransom Trilogy." "Mr Lewis is often incorrect, as in his account of the gravitational field in the spaceship, of the atmosphere on Mars, the appearance of other planets from it, and so on. This world is largely run by the Devil," Haldane writes.

The application of science to human affairs can only lead to hell. Whereas all but one of the scientists are possessed of the Devil. In the trilogy the hero, Ransom, is a professor of philology (an obvious nod to Tolkien). After a tendentious introduction, the writing is all Haldane. Below is a link to what Haldane wrote in response to the Trilogy. It seemed as if Lewis was out for petty revenge by portraying Haldane, and other scientists, as evil in his fiction. Lewis was quite the bully and didn't like losing. Haldane, who defeated Lewis in an Oxford Union debate.

One of the evil scientists in the Trilogy is based on a distinguished British scientist, J. And he was quite hostile to scientists, as comes out loud and clear in his Space Trilogy. Given what Lewis is trying to do with this trilogy, it's important to know that Lewis knew absolutely nothing about science. Lewis believed that popular science was the new mythology of his age, and in The Cosmic Trilogy he ransacks the uncharted territory of space and makes that mythology the medium of his spiritual imagination. That Hideous Strength (1945) completes the trilogy and finds Dr Ransom returned from his travels in space and living in an English university town - where the Senior Common Room is given a mysterious depth, a more than earthly dimension which such things, in the author's view, always have in life.Ĭ.S. In the second book, Perelandra (1943), Ransom is transported to a world of sweet smells and delicious tastes, a new Garden of Eden in which is enacted, with a difference, the story of Temptation. Lewis's ill-informed and terrified victim who leaves Earth much against his will and who, in the first book of the trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, published by the Bodley Head in 1938, encounters the imaginary and delightful world of Macalandra. The Cosmic Trilogy relates the interplanetary travels of Ransom, C.S.
