No Man in Eden

by Harold Myra

217 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

As a leader of Christianity Today International, Harold has been instrumental in creating an extremely successful nonprofit organization. Behind his leadership CTI has vastly expanded the number of magazines it publishes and the audience it reaches. The CTI website explains that more than 2.5 million readers currently receive the organization's 11 publications that include Christianity Today, Leadership Journal, Campus Life, Today's Christian Woman, Marriage Partnership, Christian History & Biography, Your Church, Today's Christian, Books & Culture, Christian Parenting Today, and Men of Integrity. In addition, CTI reaches additional people with these online offerings: PreachingToday.com, BuildingChurchLeaders.com, and the Christianity Today online magazine.

Reviews

[Cathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you really enjoyed the Space Trilogy you might enjoy this retro read as it definitely was influenced by Lewis’s books. It was written in 1969 and it is dated, so it could give cringe to modern readers. The social commentary I did not like, but it was of that time and there were words that I was surprised to see in the book being it is Christian. I loved the human and alien friendships. I liked the idea that earth is in the antimatter because of our falllen state versus the other worlds being in matter and having no sin. This was probably written as marketing to the hippies because the evil uses rock-n-roll as social influence. This was like the author took what he liked about the Space Trilogy and time-jumped it to the social experiment of the 60s. I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless I know you and your reading tastes as it has nuances. I did really enjoy the story, but I have recently read the original trilogy and I think was a good Lewis tribute for the 1960s.

[Evan Þ. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This advertises itself as a Christian science-fiction book, written to explore the vast possibilities of God's creation. It certainly tries to do that, but fails because it's poorly plotted.

Essentially, our protagonist meets an alien who, being unfallen, is horrified to learn about human sin. Through a series of circumstances, our protagonist comes to Christ himself and returns with the alien to visit the unfallen planets of the distant cosmos, before returning to Earth. But all this visit is a simple travelogue. On Earth, there's a background conflict with an anti-Christian media producer, and a subplot about our protagonist's marital issues - but none of this has real tension, the protagonist never faces significant decisions besides accepting Christ, and of course it's all absent in the visit to the distant cosmos.

Christian art should be well-done as art. Else, in addition to the normal problems of poor art, it risks casting disrepute on Christianity. I pray this book has not done that harm.