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Night Operation
Set in a dystopian future, humanity has been driven underground by fears of terrorist attack. Dwelling in the sewers of an abandoned city, society is closed, crowded, obsessed with security and its own biological processes. In our post-9/11 world, Barfield's portrayal of the repressive, claustrophobic effects of anxiety on human communities is startlingly timely. Night Operation is a contemporary allegory on the fall and potential rise of humanity. Owen Barfield is one of the twentieth century's most significant philosophers. He is widely known for his explorations of human consciousness, the history of language, the origins of poetic effect, and cross-disciplinary thought. A member of the Inklings, an Oxford group of scholars, Barfield's thinking informed the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, among others. Night Operation is Barfield's only work of science fiction. His vision of society at an evolutionary turning point is original, daring and prophetic.
80 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
2 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Owen Barfield
71 books178 followersArthur Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic.
Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became his third book Poetic Diction, he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as Visiting Professor in North America. Barfield published numerous essays, books, and articles. His primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings. He is best known as a founding father of Anthroposophy in the English speaking world.
Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling". He had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis, and through his books The Silver Trumpet and Poetic Diction (dedicated to C.S. Lewis), an appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers". That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and Barfield. Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject." "It wasn't a subject to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way." Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in Surprised by Joy:
Barfield and C. S. Lewis met in 1919 and were close friends for 44 years. Barfield was instrumental in converting Lewis to theism during the early period of their friendship which they affectionately called 'The Great War'. Maud also guided Lewis. As well as being friend and teacher to Lewis, Barfield was his legal adviser and trustee. Lewis dedicated his 1936 book Allegory of Love to Barfield. Lewis wrote his 1949 book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for Lucy Barfield and he dedicated The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Geoffrey in 1952.
Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became his third book Poetic Diction, he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as Visiting Professor in North America. Barfield published numerous essays, books, and articles. His primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings. He is best known as a founding father of Anthroposophy in the English speaking world.
Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling". He had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis, and through his books The Silver Trumpet and Poetic Diction (dedicated to C.S. Lewis), an appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers". That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and Barfield. Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject." "It wasn't a subject to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way." Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in Surprised by Joy:
But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything. He is not so much the alter ego as the antiself. Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it. How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?
Barfield and C. S. Lewis met in 1919 and were close friends for 44 years. Barfield was instrumental in converting Lewis to theism during the early period of their friendship which they affectionately called 'The Great War'. Maud also guided Lewis. As well as being friend and teacher to Lewis, Barfield was his legal adviser and trustee. Lewis dedicated his 1936 book Allegory of Love to Barfield. Lewis wrote his 1949 book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for Lucy Barfield and he dedicated The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Geoffrey in 1952.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 23, 2009
Jon is a young man of the 22nd century who has grown up in a closed society that, long ago, was driven underground by rampant terrorism. It is a world of well-regulated amusements, restricted education, and a bland uniformity of personal experience. Not only has humankind literally been driven to set up a civilization in the sewers, but the same thing has also taken place on a figurative level, driving ambition and imagination out of the mind and into the “guts.” It is an intensely decadent and hollow world. And when Jon gains access to a library filled with books from old Aboveground society he, like a dormant conscience waking, finds himself positioned to upset the status quo and fundamentally change his world.
* * *
Why mince words? I found this to be a perfectly thrilling, idea-driven novella, a story that draws immediate associations with George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, and also with H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. However, it owes just as much to Plato’s allegory of the cave and C.S. Lewis’ polemic work, The Abolition of Man. In terms of genre, this is certainly a science fiction work (Barfield’s only one). But it also dips, in a meaningful way, into epistemology, linguistics, and Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy, or “spiritual science.”
Night Operation was written in 1975 and is, in large part, a parable functioning as a penetrating critique of modern social and cultural trends--such as political correctness, the “opiate” quality of pop culture, and the rise of faux egalitarianism. And in some ways the story carries that wonderfully strange patina of dated science fiction novels. After all, Barfield conceived the story before the era of personal computers, et cetera. And yet, the closed-society and terrorism themes also give the novella a very contemporary relevance. To say nothing of the decadence Barfield envisioned, which, in truth, may have been laughed off as absurd before the internet more or less blew the doors off private society.
* * *
Why mince words? I found this to be a perfectly thrilling, idea-driven novella, a story that draws immediate associations with George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, and also with H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. However, it owes just as much to Plato’s allegory of the cave and C.S. Lewis’ polemic work, The Abolition of Man. In terms of genre, this is certainly a science fiction work (Barfield’s only one). But it also dips, in a meaningful way, into epistemology, linguistics, and Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy, or “spiritual science.”
Night Operation was written in 1975 and is, in large part, a parable functioning as a penetrating critique of modern social and cultural trends--such as political correctness, the “opiate” quality of pop culture, and the rise of faux egalitarianism. And in some ways the story carries that wonderfully strange patina of dated science fiction novels. After all, Barfield conceived the story before the era of personal computers, et cetera. And yet, the closed-society and terrorism themes also give the novella a very contemporary relevance. To say nothing of the decadence Barfield envisioned, which, in truth, may have been laughed off as absurd before the internet more or less blew the doors off private society.
October 27, 2024
Everybody needs to read this book! The first few pages are quite prophetic and astonishingly relevant for us today. Please read it! It's super short and can be read in one sitting.
January 14, 2018
A vile look at a 22nd century dystopia. It is to Saving the Appearances is what That Hideous Strength is to Lewis’ Abolition of Men.
Read it in one sitting and will do so again soon.
Read it in one sitting and will do so again soon.
March 15, 2021
After finishing "Night Operation," I can finally say I've read at least one work by each of the four "major" Inklings (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield).
For a 65-page book, this one is densely packed with big ideas. The description on the back suggests that it is a "startlingly timely" work for our "post-9/11 world."
I might say the same about our post-COVID world.
Here's the gist: society has been driven underground for generations, after terrorist attacks and the FEAR of terrorist attacks on the surface produced an obsession with security.
" [. . .] and terrorism could be contained much more effectively in a literally closed society than in an open one. A still stronger motive was the chronic fear that now prevailed of a vast Airborne Invasion--not a nuclear, as had once been feared, but a bio-chemical onslaught on the life of every man, woman, and child."
~Barfield, Night Operation, p.9
A closed society that lives in fear of contagion? That sounds . . . oddly familiar.
This isn't necessarily going to be for everyone, even as short as it is. It's a sci-fi dystopian novella with much of its space devoted to deep philosophical musings. But it is also not-so-subtly earthy at times. This futuristic underground society is living in what used to be the sewers of a major city. It has spent so long underground that its people have become interested in almost nothing except their own bodily functions (while this is handled tastefully considering the subject matter, let's just say there are several words used in this text that I have never come across in any other work by an Inkling and never expected to).
I'm intrigued, though. Barfield wrote this in the mid-1970s, and it is worth pointing out that he lived longer than almost anyone else associated with the Inklings (he died in 1997) and therefore had opportunity to experience the final quarter of the 20th century in a way his friends didn't.
That shows through in Night Operation. If you've already devoured Narnia and The Lord of the Rings and are looking for Inklings "deep cuts," you could certainly do worse! And again, at 65 pages, most readers will probably knock this out in a day or two.
For a 65-page book, this one is densely packed with big ideas. The description on the back suggests that it is a "startlingly timely" work for our "post-9/11 world."
I might say the same about our post-COVID world.
Here's the gist: society has been driven underground for generations, after terrorist attacks and the FEAR of terrorist attacks on the surface produced an obsession with security.
" [. . .] and terrorism could be contained much more effectively in a literally closed society than in an open one. A still stronger motive was the chronic fear that now prevailed of a vast Airborne Invasion--not a nuclear, as had once been feared, but a bio-chemical onslaught on the life of every man, woman, and child."
~Barfield, Night Operation, p.9
A closed society that lives in fear of contagion? That sounds . . . oddly familiar.
This isn't necessarily going to be for everyone, even as short as it is. It's a sci-fi dystopian novella with much of its space devoted to deep philosophical musings. But it is also not-so-subtly earthy at times. This futuristic underground society is living in what used to be the sewers of a major city. It has spent so long underground that its people have become interested in almost nothing except their own bodily functions (while this is handled tastefully considering the subject matter, let's just say there are several words used in this text that I have never come across in any other work by an Inkling and never expected to).
I'm intrigued, though. Barfield wrote this in the mid-1970s, and it is worth pointing out that he lived longer than almost anyone else associated with the Inklings (he died in 1997) and therefore had opportunity to experience the final quarter of the 20th century in a way his friends didn't.
That shows through in Night Operation. If you've already devoured Narnia and The Lord of the Rings and are looking for Inklings "deep cuts," you could certainly do worse! And again, at 65 pages, most readers will probably knock this out in a day or two.
September 18, 2020
Owen Barfield's Night Operation has very little to recommend it. The prose is poor and an all-knowing narrator has to guide the reader over the bumps of the story (i.e. explain key points to us). The omniscient narrator is full of himself, his apparent cleverness masking Protestant, donnish, English values. The characters are mere ciphers to model somewhat different thoughts about their society (although, deep down they share the same upper-middle class culture). Insofar there is an interesting idea in the story, it arose in regard to the issue of language and history: how do you even understand the past when the words the people used in the past have evolved? Here, though, the answer was quite shallow: that there was an underlying emotional content that could be rediscovered.
September 6, 2021
This short dystopian novella is the first Owen Barfield book I have read. As another reviewer mentioned, I do imagine this being Barfield's 'That Hideous Strength.' Barfield was concerned with words and meaning and this comes out in 'Night Operation.' It is a bizarre tale of a future society that lives underground and that occupies itself with the "three Es" (ejaculation, excrement, and eructation) told in painfully ponderous prose ("About five hours late Jon awoke, not through any gradations of diminishing somnolence but suddenly and totally", p. 50; if the other Inklings had lived to 1974-75 when Barfield is said to have written this story they may have been able to spare him embarrassment). 'Night Operation' seems more Barfield's beliefs promulgated thinly through story (he even alludes to himself on p. 61).
October 3, 2016
It is a short, mild post-apocalyptic novella. It is pretty much what I would expect as a science fiction apprentice piece by about anyone and what I would expect of Barfield plying his hand at the genre at age 77. It is more interesting as something written by Barfield than as a composition interesting in its own right.
February 22, 2025
My thoughts on Night Operation by Owen Barfield:::::::
In the 22nd century, much of humanity have gone underground to escape the chaos and destruction caused by antagonistic groups of people. They have been living in sewers for a long time now. Their culture is becoming stagnant. Not in line with the new younger generation. They are wanting a change. Our main character Jon is a young person with a passion for learning. More than most underground dwellers. He visits the library consistently. Teaches himself several languages. He reads as much as he has time for. This society is very complacent. They're obsessed with bodily functions. They are fairly anti-intellectual. Jon is ready to go aboveground to see if it offers his people a better existence.
You wouldn't expect a story like this to come out of a bestie of C S Lewis'. But it did.
It is fairly grim at the beginning. Everyone underground is obsessed with orgasms, defecation, and eructation. A special kind of full spectrum experience is invoked in the story. There's not much moving forward going on here.
The atmosphere and prose are top notch. The ideas are fresh and timeless. This is short and sweet. I really enjoyed this. It's in line with Riddley Walker and any other "post apocalyptic but on the upswing" stories.
In the 22nd century, much of humanity have gone underground to escape the chaos and destruction caused by antagonistic groups of people. They have been living in sewers for a long time now. Their culture is becoming stagnant. Not in line with the new younger generation. They are wanting a change. Our main character Jon is a young person with a passion for learning. More than most underground dwellers. He visits the library consistently. Teaches himself several languages. He reads as much as he has time for. This society is very complacent. They're obsessed with bodily functions. They are fairly anti-intellectual. Jon is ready to go aboveground to see if it offers his people a better existence.
You wouldn't expect a story like this to come out of a bestie of C S Lewis'. But it did.
It is fairly grim at the beginning. Everyone underground is obsessed with orgasms, defecation, and eructation. A special kind of full spectrum experience is invoked in the story. There's not much moving forward going on here.
The atmosphere and prose are top notch. The ideas are fresh and timeless. This is short and sweet. I really enjoyed this. It's in line with Riddley Walker and any other "post apocalyptic but on the upswing" stories.
November 13, 2021
I agree with another reviewer who said that the book is of interest primarily as a work of Barfield's, and not as science fiction. Its cultural commentary on a society that literally lives in sewers and whose culture matches is the best part. The actual "Night Operation" scene that is the climax of the book is something that only someone already familiar with Barfield's esoteric Christian outlook called Anthroposophy would "get." Basically he is describing how the souls even of the people in this sewer culture return to the spiritual world at night while they sleep, and then the main characters have an experience of directly perceiving the souls returning to the people at daybreak as they wake, and this unlocks to them that there is a deeper meaning to life. Even I was confused for a few pages and thought the characters were discussing their first sighting of clouds. Barfield was a remarkable philosopher, and this story is just his bit of fun. No one should judge Barfield based on this book.
February 21, 2022
Like George Lucas' dystopian film THX-1138, it's hard to say if this is pure sci-fi or a fable. However you categorize it, it's a moving and clever analysis of humanity's tendency to limits its understanding for safety, and the freeing power of new language to discuss new ideas.
February 4, 2024
“He knew something of books, and he had heard of Barfield’s Law of literary endeavor (when a book appears with anything upsetting in it, the few who read it don’t need it, and the many who need it don’t read it).”
Yet 🙂
And sideways, Yes 🙂
Keep the course.
Yet 🙂
And sideways, Yes 🙂
Keep the course.
October 12, 2021
There is so much to think about in this book!
October 12, 2022
Short, but very prophetic!
July 2, 2023
Religious trite dribble.
June 1, 2025
I appreciate the message Barfield is trying to deliver through this story, but the level of profanity negated the impact of the beauty of prisoners emerging from the cave. Instead of rejoicing and delighting in the newly acquired vision of the characters, I felt icky and filthy.
December 13, 2020
If my own experience is any indication, the Barfieldians (and by extension and association, philosophers and literary theorists) will cherish this story as yet another take on Barfield's incorrigible devotion to language and the secrets it holds; and science fiction fans will say 'huh?'
Post-apocalypse subterranean life - suffocating and stinking - is 'transcended' by a group of young uns who find a way out and up, and 'enjoy' their brief moment in the sun. The group's leader, by way of his will and intent, is set on his way by his study of language, specifically of etymology - the history of individual words through their historical lives, from one language to another.
This technique of transcendence is the real and documented path Barfield took, that lifted him up and out of the toilet and trash of maya. See his books History in English Words, and Poetic Diction, for the substance of his own hard work of transcendence via this method.
Post-apocalypse subterranean life - suffocating and stinking - is 'transcended' by a group of young uns who find a way out and up, and 'enjoy' their brief moment in the sun. The group's leader, by way of his will and intent, is set on his way by his study of language, specifically of etymology - the history of individual words through their historical lives, from one language to another.
This technique of transcendence is the real and documented path Barfield took, that lifted him up and out of the toilet and trash of maya. See his books History in English Words, and Poetic Diction, for the substance of his own hard work of transcendence via this method.
October 24, 2012
prophetic and thought-provoking book about a dystopian future in which modern society has been reductio'ed ad absurdum, so that they live in the sewers (out of fear of terrorist attacks). this is barfield's take on plato's myth of the cave, and is short enough to read in about an hour's time.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews