The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength),
C.S. Lewis (3.0)
In catching up on my C.S. Lewis reading, I tackled his
Sci-Fi trilogy, written in the 1940’s. While I enjoyed the first book, I have
given the series a ‘3.0’ as the second and third books were very preachy and
hard to take. The religious zeal of those books took away from the freshness of
the first. I don’t want to give away too much – since I am recommending the
first book, whose elements are more delightful as surprises. Suffice it to say
that Lewis has written a novel about a journey – both fantastical and
precarious – that involves non-humans as we know them and illuminates possible
origins of the planets. He links the planets’ relationship to humans and to
each other. The good and evil represented in the first book are interesting and
feel more realistic than the cartoonish representations of the other two books.
More than once I was reminded of H.G. Wells’ novels. As with his books, the
imagination, given the state of technology at the time is impressive. Besides
the issues with religion, my other criticism of the trilogy has to do with its
English centric mentality. In the 40’s I would have thought a writer would be
more global in his story telling.
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