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The Scientifiction Novels of C.S. Lewis: Space and Time in the Ransom Stories
Used by C.S. Lewis himself, the term "scientifiction" is revived here as it once encompassed not only what we call science fiction, but also that indeterminate field of the 1940s and 1950s sometimes referred to as science fantasy (leading up to Ray Bradbury), along with a portion of that great realm that has come, since the advent of The Lord of the Rings, to be called fantasy. Rather as an eighteenth-century novel may pre-date the divide between novel and romance, so C.S. Lewis's "interplanetary" novels may be considered to pre-date the modern divide between fantasy and science fiction and thus be thought of as "scientifictional" in nature. The stories dealt with are those in which Elwin Ransom is a character, the three usually called the "space trilogy": Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength --and the time-fragment entitled The Dark Tower. Lengthy chapters are devoted to each of the four Ransom stories. The book presents a study of Lewis, the nature of science fiction, the nature of Lewis's "Arcadian" science fiction and his (and its) place in English literary history.
204 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 28, 2010
Whoa.
This is one of those books that makes me feel like Cortez. All kinds of wild surmises, not to mention new planets bunging into my ken nonstop.
Reading this book is a giddy experience. So many new ways of thinking are opening up that my mind feels like the Allied front line during the Battle of the Bulge.
Allow me some genealogy. While reading Harry Potter (of which I am unabashedly a fan) I started wondering what made so many English people write about magical worlds. I began to wonder if there was some common thread of "Englishness" throughout these magical worlds, and the closest I could come to expressing the sense I got from them was that the magical world was always either a thinly veiled portrayal of England itself (Narnia, Middle Earth), or it was actually part of the larger world of England (say, Harry Potter or Jonathan Norrel & Mr Strange--and Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth). In neither case was magic "odd" or alien to England. Nothing, in fact, could be more normal. A book of English history that does NOT talk about magic seems incomplete. (And, of course, it is. England is quite factually and literally a magical world--or was.)
Anyway, I started looking through books on Lewis and Tolkien to try to clarify some of these curiosities. This book seems to answer my questions almost directly by dealing with the "Englishness of English art." I am delighted that someone has actually tried to think out what makes English art unique. The answer is deeply embedded in the entire book, so it would be difficult to extract a concise quote for this review, but this might suggest something of the author's answer.
Englishness involves the literary form of the pageant:
"One might almost say that the individual characters who see the strange sights--or have the strange adventures--should not be individualized. That would be a distraction. In a pageant, that is obvious, and it sets up no tensions: as we all know, the fineness of the pageant is in the costumes, in the gilding, which is part of this artistic Englishness. It is not in the individual delineation of character" (p. 10).
I think this addresses what I was trying to formulate about the magical world being so matter-of-factly a part of the normal, homely English world.
The pastoral form of literature is present also:
"It is likely that the necessary association of pastoral with countryside acted in the English creative genius to amalgamate pastoral with redemptive comedy or eucatastrophic romance, to produce the English phenomenon of pastoral-with-judgment" (p. 10).
The third literary form connected to the "Englishness" of English art is the pilgrimage, but I would have to quote a page or two to get his point across, so I will simply direct you to the book.
There is a great deal more in the book, but I can't go into it all because I can barely, and only with great effort, bend my mind around it. I will simply note that I really like the guy. He has a habit of saying things like, "Oh yeah, this passage in Perelandra reminds me of that part in Buchan's Prester John where...."
Such people will always be near to my heart.
This is one of those books that makes me feel like Cortez. All kinds of wild surmises, not to mention new planets bunging into my ken nonstop.
Reading this book is a giddy experience. So many new ways of thinking are opening up that my mind feels like the Allied front line during the Battle of the Bulge.
Allow me some genealogy. While reading Harry Potter (of which I am unabashedly a fan) I started wondering what made so many English people write about magical worlds. I began to wonder if there was some common thread of "Englishness" throughout these magical worlds, and the closest I could come to expressing the sense I got from them was that the magical world was always either a thinly veiled portrayal of England itself (Narnia, Middle Earth), or it was actually part of the larger world of England (say, Harry Potter or Jonathan Norrel & Mr Strange--and Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth). In neither case was magic "odd" or alien to England. Nothing, in fact, could be more normal. A book of English history that does NOT talk about magic seems incomplete. (And, of course, it is. England is quite factually and literally a magical world--or was.)
Anyway, I started looking through books on Lewis and Tolkien to try to clarify some of these curiosities. This book seems to answer my questions almost directly by dealing with the "Englishness of English art." I am delighted that someone has actually tried to think out what makes English art unique. The answer is deeply embedded in the entire book, so it would be difficult to extract a concise quote for this review, but this might suggest something of the author's answer.
Englishness involves the literary form of the pageant:
"One might almost say that the individual characters who see the strange sights--or have the strange adventures--should not be individualized. That would be a distraction. In a pageant, that is obvious, and it sets up no tensions: as we all know, the fineness of the pageant is in the costumes, in the gilding, which is part of this artistic Englishness. It is not in the individual delineation of character" (p. 10).
I think this addresses what I was trying to formulate about the magical world being so matter-of-factly a part of the normal, homely English world.
The pastoral form of literature is present also:
"It is likely that the necessary association of pastoral with countryside acted in the English creative genius to amalgamate pastoral with redemptive comedy or eucatastrophic romance, to produce the English phenomenon of pastoral-with-judgment" (p. 10).
The third literary form connected to the "Englishness" of English art is the pilgrimage, but I would have to quote a page or two to get his point across, so I will simply direct you to the book.
There is a great deal more in the book, but I can't go into it all because I can barely, and only with great effort, bend my mind around it. I will simply note that I really like the guy. He has a habit of saying things like, "Oh yeah, this passage in Perelandra reminds me of that part in Buchan's Prester John where...."
Such people will always be near to my heart.
August 25, 2011
Interesting background on Lewis's sci fi novel trilogy.
December 18, 2012
Read about 75% of the book - the portions that pertained to the Space Trilogy and Narnia.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews