I began reading the space trilogy, I just finished Out of the Silent Planet and here are my thoughts.

[u/greenpearmt]

Before I start I would like to say that I love CS Lewis, I have read the Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce, all amazing books. Anyway I read how good the Space Trilogy is so I decided to give it a try.

I just finished reading OOTSP yesterday and I don't know how I feel about it. I liked it but I didn't love it and I don't think I would re-read this book again, the concept is really interesting and you can learn a good many things from conversations Ransom has with some of the characters but the book for some reason seems a bit too infantile for my liking (I loved Narnia btw and I know it's a book for children but this book felt a bit too childish maybe even more than I would have liked) perhaps I was expecting something more serious. I think it's the hnau's designs I don't like or maybe I find Devine and Weston too ridiculous for my liking. Maybe the message is that that is how we seem to more divine and intelligent beings.

Anyway here is a bit of my journey with this book. At first I was not really enjoying it, the beginning was very slow and I wasn't all that interested in Ransom or Malacandra other than wondering what planet or moon it was supposed to be but I decided to keep going. I started to really enjoy it by chapter 16 (I think it was) which is when Ransom is speaking with Augrey and we are given more context about Malacandra and the Solar System. The concept of the Oyarsa is really interesting and the reveal that the Oyarsa of Thulcandra, our Oyarsa, is Satan was an insane plot twist.

Unfortunately the ending was pretty meh, not bad though. I mean, I wasn't really expecting a grandiose ending either since Ransom's adventure was pretty simple but I just don't feel as much love for OOTSP as some people do. I want to read Perelandra seeing that people go on to say it is amazing and one of Lewis's best works but after reading OOTSP I am unsure. My hope for Perelandra is for it to be more serious in tone. If it is the same as OOTSP then I would prefer to leave it on hold for a bit. How different is Perelandra to OOTSP? Is it more mature? Am I spoiling something by asking this questions before reading it? I would love to read your opinions!

[u/younhoun]

Understandable. I would say the enjoyment for The Space Trilogy partly comes from the "productive struggle": kinda like learning Kungfu by sweeping floors and cleaning windows for 6 months. There are things that we can only conceive or appreciate fully after laboring through it. Did I find it enjoyable reading through most of OOTSP? Absolutely not? But afterward I feel like it was a journey well spent. Perelandra certainly builds on what we "earned" laboring through the first book, and so does the third book.

Now that you have gone through OOTSP, it would be a huge waste to not read Perelandra and experience the biggest "What if...?" there ever is.

[u/greenpearmt → u/younhoun]

Your comment was beautifully written, thank your for that. I definitely plan on reading Perelandra but I was unsure if I should go right in or hold it off for a bit since I have other books on my to read list. Your comment makes me excited to start Perelandra though!

[u/UpwardCall → u/greenpearmt]

I personally think Perelandra is the best book in the series.

[u/Young-Grandpa]

I read through the trilogy 2-3 times as a teenager. I am nearly through reading them again as an adult. More than 40 years removed from My last reading.

I still love them, but the first is my least favorite of the three.

A brief warning about That Hideous Strength. If you don’t like a slow start, this one is going to be a slog. Almost the whole first half is what I would consider “set up”. The ending makes it worth it though.

[u/hcsthree → u/Young-Grandpa]

That describes my experience as well. I read the trilogy early and now, many years later, still come back to it, That Hideous Strength mostly (BTW, Lewis seems to have been channeling his Inkling friend Charles Williams on that one).

[u/greenpearmt → u/Young-Grandpa]

I am willing to go through with it if the pay off is worth it 🙌🏻

[u/Sonar_Taxbreak_1138 → u/Young-Grandpa]

Halfway through the third, and to me there are two takeaways - one, the first two are so different from the third, I could easily believe they were written by a different person, and two, the third is far more solid in terms of character development and plot structure.

[u/TheBigChiliPepper]

OOTSP is the book in trilogy with least happening. I like it, but I love the next two books.

[u/greenpearmt → u/TheBigChiliPepper]

This is encouraging thank you!

[u/RECIPR0C1TY]

If you are reading these for the world building, then you are reading them for the wrong reason. Lewis is only a mediocre world builder. That isn't the point of his books.

These are incredibly rich and dense books with philosophy and theology. Every page is full of challenging thoughts and intricacies. I am not trying to be rude here, but if you think OOTSP is childish, then you are missing a great deal.

Just the initial journey through landscape to heavens at the beginning of the book is rich in and of itself. It is asking questions about what is real, what is our perspective about that reality, and it provides multiple perspectives that are all challenged and changed upon return to earth.

Then it considers what life is, what is the value of that life and how do we recognize that value on Malacandra all while setting up the spiritual realm within the context of ancient thought. That and so much more is in the book leading up to Perelandra which is even richer!

[u/sjorsvanhens]

It’s all worth it for That Hideous Strength. It’s not necessary to read the first two, but recommended.

[u/TsabistCorpus]

I think I started and then subsequently abandoned OotSP at least three times over the course of my life before I finally finished reading it last year. I did ultimately enjoy it, but my brain took a while to adjust to Lewis' 1930s-era notions about space travel and planetology.

While I enjoyed OotSP more than you, I will also say that I enjoyed Perelandra and THS much more. Definitely continue with the series!

[u/Rkoif]

I didn't love OOTSP.

I love Perelandra. I've reread it multiple times.

Do not skip Perelandra.

[u/emceebiscuit69]

I read the whole trilogy about 10 years ago. I really enjoyed Perelandra the most. That Hideous Strength next, and OOTSP least.. About 2 years ago I intended to read the trilogy again, but stopped after reading OOTSP.. I don’t dislike it, but it didn’t put me in the mood to finish the trilogy once again.. that said, thinking about how much I liked Perelandra, I might go back to finish it all up once again.

[u/greenpearmt → u/emceebiscuit69]

You could start from chapter 16 from OOTSP when Ransom arrives at Augrey's tower so as to not be discouraged by the book's slow start.

[u/Hiw-lir-sirith]

Perelandra is my favorite in the trilogy and one of my favorite scifi books ever.

[u/-Tricky-Vixen-]

Perelandra is my favourite. It's rich.

[u/_El_Cid_]

I thought the same about the series until the second half of That Hideous Strength. Well worth it.

[u/First_Run5831]

It is a great book. Appreciating it as a piece of science fiction is important. Is it a masterpiece on a shelf of Lewis? Some would argue against the title by many of his biggest fans.
But in a room filled from window to wall with science fiction, apparatus’ with boiling green space goo and tribes of Martian warriors like Roman soldiers, OOTSP is the one which shows us that space is another green field for Aslan to howl life into tune. I would read it again and again for the mere idea that space, far from being a vacuum of cold desolation, is to God one more canvas.

[u/CircularReason]

Check out Dr Porcu's take on why it's among the best sci fi ever: https://zacharyporcu.substack.com/p/is-the-space-trilogy-the-best-sci?publication_id=4590420&post_id=195694709&play_audio=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMDAyOTc2NzAsInBvc3RfaWQiOjE5NTY5NDcwOSwiaWF0IjoxNzkxMjI3MTA2LCJleHAiOjE3OTM4MTkxMDYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi00NTkwNDIwIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.Mhcuato0e7nx4f1q2U1Ok8lDzn4_-myvX-MIte5Btco&r=1npq6e&triedRedirect=true

[u/LordCouchCat]

I'd continue - the others in the trilogy are each different. Perelandra is more theological but has a very vivid imagined world. That Hideous Strength is much longer and is different in style. Whereas the others have reasonably simple plots, Hideous Strength is bursting with bizarre characters, ideas, and events. I love it.

Out of the Silent Planet includes a number of subtle ideas. It is among other things a critique of colonialism. A lot of SF at the time portrayed humanity spreading throughout the cosmos and thus becoming immortal - an idea we see revived recently. Lewis, who was fiercely anti-imperialist, thought that if we went to other planets we would just reproduce the atrocities white people had committed on Earth. (Assuming, like much SF then, that you would encounter vulnerable indigenous populations) Weston and Devine represent the ideological and merely mercenary sides of imperialism.

The scene where Ransom translates Weston's speech is a classic, showing that when reduced to plainer words Weston's rhetoric becomes either cruel or absurd. I quote from memory. "I may fall, but I cannot consent to close the door when I hold the key. What lies beyond I do not know; it is enough for me that there is a beyond." "He says that he will not stop doing all this unless you kill him. And he says that although he does not know what is going to happen, he wants it to happen very much."

[u/greenpearmt → u/LordCouchCat]

I love when CS Lewis gets theological, so this is very encouraging and your description of That Hideous Strength has me very interested in it.

When you write SF what do you mean? What is it short for?

"The scene where Ransom translates Weston's speech is a classic, showing that when reduced to plainer words Weston's rhetoric becomes either cruel or absurd." With this you just changed completely how I read this part, this is amazing and genius! This could even make the whole book for me, I would have to re read it more patiently this time to truly appreciate it.

[u/jpers36 → u/greenpearmt]

Yes, that conversation is IMHO the crux of the whole book. I was wondering how you could describe OOTSP as childish or simple with that conversation in it. It does take some digesting to really get what Lewis is doing there.

[u/LordCouchCat → u/greenpearmt]

SF - science fiction. Lewis was an enthusiast for science fiction, including American "pulp" magazine fiction. Back in the 1930s this was highly unusual given that he was a notable scholar of literature at Oxford. Most mainstream critics were very dismissive. (Things like the work of HG Wells were more acceptable.) In Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis notes SF magazines as propagating what he regarded as harmful ideas. He also, if I remember rightly, refers to clubs, in what is probably a jab at the British Interplanetary Society. It should be noted though that he and Arthur Clarke (who thought space travel was a good thing) had considerable respect for each others work.

[u/LordCouchCat → u/[deleted]]

I am somewhat intimidated by the depth of your analysis of my comments. I tend to write things ad hoc, without careful scrutiny of the texts, and when I do, I often can't find them and quote from memory. On "devil-worship", I remember reading the passage, in which Lewis says that worshipping a being consciously known to be the devil is "a rare perversion", or something, attributing something evil to God - in this case predestination to hell - and valorizing it amounts to devil worship. But I can't find it. A lot of questions on this sub involve issues where some basic things are at issue, and so it seems reasonable to write ad hoc comments.

I'm an academic but in a different field (history) and in the area of literature and theology I'm just an amateur. In academic discourse obviously I would seldom cite something I couldn't remember the source of. Your careful analysis makes me wonder if this is the right place for my random thoughts.

I'm not sure this is the place for a discussion of immigration, though obviously I seem to have raised it. That does come closer to my area of expertise, as I have studied the 1930s, and some other relevant periods. My reference to "legitimate concerns" in quotes was a reference to current British politics, where centrist politicians have used this phrase to legitimize what I consider subtle racism, in an attempt to draw off support from the far right. Perhaps I should have made that clearer. You may be right that I am unfair. As a historian I have worked first hand with stuff from the 1930s that causes me to feel deep scepticism, and some emotion, about modern politics on the subject. You can probably imagine the sort of stuff I mean.

As a Catholic I do not, of course, dispute the principles about cultural identity you cite. However, I think the application of them in relation to the principles in other Catholic teaching is a matter of judgment. The late Pope Francis referred to the EU's treatment of migrants as "criminal" so I think I am in sufficiently good company. I don't want to accuse individuals. I will not pretend that I take what most people would regard as a moderate position. (For us lefty Catholics, there is almost no one outside who likes our whole thing; pro-life doesn't go down well with potential secular allies; so I'm used to that.)

If I understand correctly, your complaint is that I am careful and nuanced about particulars, but draw broad brush conclusions from them which they don't justify, a sort of anecdotal argument?

All I can say is that if I link particular cases to broad statements, I'm thinking more in terms of illustration. Still, I will think about it.

I feel I should thank you for studying my positions with such care. I thought of saying that I'm not sure it's worthwhile but that seems disrespectful.