CS Lewis's non-Narnia fiction

Cafe Society
1

This was inspired by the Lion, the Witch, and the Warddrobe thread, but I didn’t want to hijack that one.

Anyone like Lewis’s other fiction? I guess most people know him either as the guy who wrote Narnia or the christian apologetic guy, but he has some other fantastic fiction.
He has a sci-fi trilogy that’s really good. I read the first two, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, but never finished the third one. I also have a book of his short stories.

Lewis was the master of coming up with settings that were just plain creepy. Look at the unfinished story The Dark Tower, and you’ll see what I mean. The devil character in Perelandra also creeped me out.

2

Oh yeah, what do non-christians think of The Screwtape Letters? I quite liked the book, but then again, I’m a christian.

3

That Hideous Strength takes a bit of finishing, but it’s worth the effort. I like a lot of the characterisation in it, not least the development of Ransom from his timorous self in OOTSP to the self-assured, in-tune-with-God “Director” he becomes by the time he appears on stage in THS.

Btw, for “apologetic” I think you mean “apologist”. :slight_smile: I don’t believe old Jack ever saw Christianity as anything to apologise for.

4

Yeah, I meant apologist.

I actually didn’t like the way Ransom turned out too much. In fact, I think it was around the time he came in that I stopped reading. But actually I stopped because I had to read something for school.
Anyway, he seemed kinda sexist, for one thing. I think there was something similar about him that bugged me, but I don’t remember.

5

I never read Narnia or even heard it until I was in my late 20s. However, Out of the Silent Planet was one of my favorite SF novels of all time (I actually should read it again). Perelandra was so-so, and That Hideous Strength was the first book I never bothered to finish (LOTR was the first book I couldn’t finish, but I picked it up and slogged through it a few years later).

6

I had exactly the same experience with that trilogy, Chuck! :slight_smile:

I started with Narnia when I was about 7 and (being Jewish) completely missed all the Christian references until someone pointed it out to me when I was about 16. I still love 'em though, overall.

I thought The Screwtape Letters was good, but not stunning. The Great Divorce, however, started out wonderfully–better than even the Narnia books but towards the end degenerated into just weird hero-worshipping ickiness.

The book starts in Hell (which is like every bad day you’ve ever had: it’s overcast and drizzely and your umbrella won’t work and the bus is late and the guy next to you on the bus hums tunelessly and everyone’s a jerk and the store isn’t open so you have to wait and when it finally does open, it doesn’t have quite what you want, etc…) and follows a bunch of people leaving on a vacation to Heaven. When they get there, residents of heaven (and Lewis paints a better Heaven than Dante did) try to convince the people from Hell to stay, but due to many of their issues, the “damned” are hard to convince. There’s actually some tension to see if people will give up their sins and accept forgiveness. Then Lewis (who’s there, narrating) meets the “ghost” of George MacDonald (a Christian writer who Lewis hero-worshipped) and things rapidly turn into bad, gushy mush. Still worth reading, but expect a let-down at the end.

Fenris

7

Well I for one think the Space Trilogy is just fantastic. The implications are marvelous …

Book 1: what if Christians discovered an unfallen race who had never heard of Christ, what would they do? And what of the idea of the sacredness of humanity, in whatever form it takes millions of years of evolution hence? Is some future conception of “human,” just meaning the beings eventually descended from present humans, automatically superior to all other species now or then?

Book 2: the most beautiful, if a little too “spiritual” for me. I love how Ransom is changed just by being in the holiness of Eden, realizing he mustn’t search for the red-hearted nuts, drink the bubble-fruits once his thirst is quenched, etc. It does leave open an explicit question which is unresolved for me: what IF Eve had resisted the serpent the first time, would it have come back again the next day, and the next? Lewis seems to say the question doesn’t matter; there are no “what would have happened” questions.

Book 3: admitted, it’s a bit all over the place, but it’s my favorite. Jane being practically FORCED to become a Chrsitian, kicking and screaming, because of her irrefutable experiences. The in-your-face politcal incorrectness of the earthly rule of the Director. And of course, as a lover of all things Arthur, the assumption that the Arthurian story is actually true rings all my bells.

And as an employee of, and observer of, local government, I see the connections with the N.I.C.E. … the scene when Mark and Cossack visit the village of Cure Hardy, planning on “modernizing” it at the expense of undesirable elements such as the people who actually lived there … this is what local governments actually do, folks. We have no big N.I.C.E. but we have one million little N.I.C.E.'s with essentially the same goals: to wipe out everything natural and human and replace it with an artificial world that’s supposed to be better. Lewis was a prophet, I tells ya.

8

No nominations of * Till We Have Faces*? I think it’s my favourite, although I do love Out Of The Silent Planet. I really liked Perelandra, too, and lots of parts of That Hideous Strength*, but the last one is kind of too much Charles Williams for me. I don’t really like his writing, even though he was an Inkling and all, and you can clearly see his influence in THS.

I think I just really really like Orual, as an image of what can happen when protective love becomes possessive and strangling. And she’s a nice real female character, and I find the women in the Space trilogy good but too stereotypical.

As a side note, I like Michael O’Brien’s apocalyptic novels for their Lewisite view of the present and future. He’s a Canadian, and he’s Catholic, and his books are more overtly religious than Lewis’ Space trilogy. They’re very much about the same evil-through-corporations-and-eugenics that THS centres on. I particularly love Strangers And Sojourners and Father Elijah. Sorry for the plug.

9

Why thank you Lissla, I really like you too! :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, of course I’m here to add another voice of praise for Till We Have Faces. I think the character of Orual shows human emotions in one of the truest ways I’ve ever seen in writing.

It’s so bizarre, here I am, a self-avowed pagan, yet I simply adore C.S. Lewis, even when he’s preaching to me.

10

Till We Have Faces was fascinating, gripping and thought-provoking. Outside of Narnia, that one gets my vote.

I liked the Screwtape Letters, though I doubt I’d read it again.

What seemed funny about the Space Trilogy was the fact that each book was so different. Of course the plots are fairly disconnected; they’re all allegorical, as has been described by others. The first one was a rewrite of Paradise Lost. The second one wasn’t particularly dazzling. The third was so much darker: sacrifices, torture, etc.

11

Till We Have Faces was the only one of Lewis’ books that it was an effort to finish. And I have read everything of his I can find.

I would recommend his literary criticism very highly indeed, if you are interested in that at all. His Preface to Paradise Lost is a standard work on the subject.

FWIW, I thought That Hideous Strength was the weakest of the Space Trilogy. Perelandra was the best - those floating islands, and the nasty, dragged out battle against the Unman. Allegory at its best.

Pilgrim’s Regress is also interesting, especially if you have read Bunyan. A trifle heavy-handed (think of the scene where Ransom is “translating” for Weston on Malacandra in Out of the Silent Planet), but an insight into Lewis’ early thinking shortly after he became a Christian. And quite funny in places.

The Shoddy Lands is one of Lewis’ best, and creepiest, short stories. Find and read it if you can.

Regards,
Shodan

12

The bit where Ransom is translating for Weston is great! Well, yes, stilted and everything but… “It’s okay for our people to kill your people because we can move things far away in a short time.”!

Umph, you’re welcome, Orual. You may want to reread what I actually said about you. You may not want to thank me. :smiley:

13

Here’s a list of where it’s appeared: (I think I’ve got one or two of these anthologies, so I’ll read it asap!)
[ul][li]The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1956, Anthony Boucher, 1956, $0.35[/li][li]The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sixth Series, Anthony Boucher, 1957, Doubleday, $3.50, hc[/li][li]The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sixth Series, Anthony Boucher, 1962, Ace, #F-131, $0.40, pb[/li][li]Of Other Worlds, C. S. Lewis+Walter Hooper, 1966[/li][li]The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sixth Series, Anthony Boucher, 1968, Ace, #G-715, $0.50, pb[/li][li]Science Fictions, Arnold Thompson, 1971, London: University Tutorial Press, 0-7231-0529-4, hc[/li][li]The Light Fantastic, Harry Harrison, 1971, Scribner’s, hc[/li][li]The Late Great Future, Gregory Fitz Gerald+John Dillon, 1976, Fawcett Crest, pb[/li][li]The Dark Tower and Other Stories, C. S. Lewis, 1977, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, hc[/li][/ul]

(From www.isfdb.org–one of the best sites for this sort of thing)

14

Huge C.S.Lewis fan here. I’m also an agnostic, though I was raised in a hard-core, fundamentalist, Christian church.

Till We Have Faces is one of my all-time favorite pieces of fiction. The humanity of it, how unconventional but also real it all seems, its unique female herione…I love it. It’s a masterpiece of fiction.

I also think Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce are brilliant. I thoroughly enjoy The Pilgrim’s Regress, but I have a feeling that’s a book mainly for fans; it’s thought-provoking, though, albeit heavy-handed sometimes, as a poster above pointed out.

I very much like the Space Trilogy, though I feel each book has serious flaws as well. However, one cannot deny the potency and brilliance in many of the images and ideas in those books.

15

I’m a lapsed neopagan, and I adore The Screwtape Letters. I found it to be incredibly astute about a number of mind-sets that are destructive (Screwtape’s letter on gluttony, for example, and the passage about what happens when you give up your true tastes for what is considered “trendy” or “classy” is marvelous), and worth reading, regardless of your religious leanings.

16

Just read “The Shoddy Lands”…while my first thought was that it was very sexist by today’s standards (although no big deal by the culture of the times which is when one must judge a story), the last line makes it really, really good.

17

I completely agree. (Is this getting scary? ;))

IMO, Perelandra is something rather unusual, if not effectively unique: under the guise of a SF story, it takes the reader through a mind-stretching spiritual experience, by enabling him to feel it through identification with the viewpoint character.

18

I loved the short stories about the blind guy who regained his sight and the one where a guy went to the moon. The space prostitues one was a hilarious response to someone who said they should send women to space to keep the men company.

19

No worries, we both like the character for the same reasons. (The reasons for my taking her name as my SN are a bit… convoluted.)