C.S. Lewis

[VampirePrincess]

I love C.S. Lewis. He is one of my favorite authors of all time. Anyone like any of his books. My favorite is Out of the Silent Planet. What is your favorite book by him?

 

[kelsi]

How many other books has he written?? Is OOTSP for kids of adults, and is it scifi?

 

[ray gower]

Think Lewis's most read work is the Narnia Chronicles (Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe etc).

Out of the Silent Planet is currently being read on BBC7. In writing style it shares much with HG Wells, so not a children's book, at least not now.

 

[BAYLOR]

Read Narnia yeas ago, great series.

The Planet trilogy also classic stuff.

 

[Extollager]

I've greatly enjoyed the Narnian books and, even more, the space trilogy. That Hideous Strength deserves to be read in conjunction with the short book of three university lectures called The Abolition of Man, one of the books that has most influenced my thinking. Perhaps my favorite of the Narnian books is The Magician's Nephew, which is not to say it is the finest of the seven. His late novel Till We Have Faces is, I believe, an under-recognized work that deserves to become known as a 20th-century classic. It should be read by Lewis fans and also by people who wouldn't usually, perhaps, read Lewis but who like, say, Kazuo Ishiguro.

I like to try to drum up interest also in Lewis's narrative poems:

Tolkien's friend Lewis's Narrative Poems

Fantastic Poetry: "The Nameless Isle"/"In a Spring Season I Sailed Away" & Others

Perhaps That Hideous Strength is my personal favorite, since you ask, VP. It contains passages that I find simply delectable, such as the "guided tour" that leads to Merlin's well. (Btw, given your adopted name here, do you know George MacDonald's Lilith?)

 

[Toby Frost]

Along with John Brunner’s The Traveller in Black, I re-read That Hideous Strength every so often to see if it really is as crazy as I remember. The answer is always “Yes”. I’m not sure that it works as a whole for me, but it contains some amazing and horrific images. The Head, the banquet and Frost’s room designed to break down the mind are remarkable creations. The scenes after the banquet, where the various villains are polished off, are really nightmarish. The combination of Lewis’ good writing and the limits of the time as to how graphic things could be make the scenes as good as a lot of Lovecraft’s better stories.

I also think that the satire in it works quite well, especially of various university types being lured to their destruction through pride, arrogance and so on.

The point where the book falls down, for me, is that it fails to present a very palatable alternative to the NICE: in other words, it doesn’t make God look like anyone that I’d want to worship. Ransom comes across as rather tyrannical in a way, and the mystic episodes don’t really work for me: they’re just odd. But then writing about good people is harder than writing about bad ones, and writing about religion in a way that makes it appealing is especially difficult (not that Lewis is writing a sermon here or literally follows Ransom’s views).

Interestingly, George Orwell wrote a review of That Hideous Strength. Perhaps predictably, he liked the story but felt that the supernatural events weakened it. I wonder if it was an influence on his work: Filostrato’s speech about trees on the Moon sounds like a parody from one of Orwell’s diatribes against joyless intellectuals, and of course the NICE is a police state in miniature.

I have a feeling that there may be a couple of versions of this book, though: one longer than the other. Do you know if this is true?

 

[The Ace]

I couldn't get my head around, "That Hideous Strength," but enjoyed the other two.

My favourite of the, "Narnia," chronicles is, "The Last Battle," but its controversial ending has put many off (the BBC refused to film it, ending with, "The Silver Chair," and I'm not sure if the current series of films is going to touch it either).

 

[Extollager]

I have a feeling that there may be a couple of versions of [That Hideous Strength], though: one longer than the other. Do you know if this is true?

Yes. Lewis produced an abridged version for paperback publication. Avon Books in America published it as The Tortured Planet. I think this version preceded the Pan Books version in the UK, which, unlike the American book, didn't proclaim on its cover that it was abridged.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Lewis produced an abridged version for paperback publication.

I wonder which I have now and which I originally had. How do I tell?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

But then writing about good people is harder than writing about bad ones,

Lewis said that too. He said Screwtape was too easy and an angel version probably impossible.

 

[aThenian]

I've read Narnia, Screwtape (a long time ago), and his autobiography, Surprised by Joy - a very interesting read. I'm now extremely intrigued to read The Hideous Strength!

Of the Narnia books, my favourites have been The Silver Chair, The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle. Prince Caspian is by a long way the worst, although curiously I thought it made a really good film.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I'm now extremely intrigued to read The Hideous Strength!

Read the other two in the series first!

Prince Caspian is by a long way the worst, although curiously I thought it made a really good film.

The recent film had little resemblance to the book.

I find the last three weaker... The Horse and His Boy, The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle. If you are on a limited budget to make TV programs, then the first four are good and have continuity. THAHB is a sort of Peter Duck Meta Story, TMN is serious bit of Retcon and Origins*. TLB is an Apocalypse / Final Ending, so those three are separate really.


[Though Jadis is supposedly the White Witch, she's rather scarier. Charn is chilling.]

 

[Extollager]

I wonder which I have now and which I originally had. How do I tell?

I have the Avon version (titled The Tortured Planet) and a Pan version of That Hideous Strength, and both contain a brief note by Lewis stating that he abridged the present edition. He says he prefers the longer version but that some people may like the shorter one better. The longer version contains a preface by Lewis in which he mentions "Numinor" and his friend Tolkien's so-far unpublished manuscripts.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I see my CURRENT Pan edition is x2 fatter than the first two books and 1983 edition. No mention of Abridgement in Lewis's introduction were he apologies for a lack of magicians etc, mentions Abolition of Man, Olaf Stapledon (though an un-named scientific friend mentioned Stapledon's idea first) and Numinor (the True West) an awaiting Tolkien's unpublished Mss.

Reverse of Title page
The Shadow of that hyddeous strength
Sax myle and more it is of length.
Sir David Lindsay: from Ane Dialog
(describing the Tower of Babel)

The publishing history states on same page
First Published 1945 John Lane / The Bodley Head
First Pan Edition (abridged) 1955 (I think I had it in the early 1970s)
This edition 1983

So I think I have the full version.
That Hideous Strength
A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups

I think it is very modern and prophetic too, quite amazing for 1945.

EDIT (45 min later)
I don't often bother with rear cover, but I notice now that half way down it says:

C.S. Lewis's classic novels of interplanetary travels
and adventures of Dr Ransom - Out of the Silent Planet,
Perlandra (Voyage to Venus) and That Hideous
Strength - are published with the full text and original
titling intended by the author for the first time
in paperback with these new Pan editions.

ooops! Question answered!

 

[Extollager]

So I think I have the full version.

Yup!

 

[Extollager]

I'm now extremely intrigued to read The Hideous Strength!

I think of it fondly as Lewis's kitchen sink book, as in: he put in everything but the kitchen sink. THS is coherent but it also teems with things Lewis loved and things that he believed were harmful. I always find that part of the fun of reading it again is the leads it gives for collateral reading. Send me a message (anyone interested) if you'd like me to email you the study guide I prepared years ago for it, in which, for example, there's an explanation of the joke involved in the college bursar being nicknamed "Non Olet." At least I hope I can find that document on my office computer...

 

[Toby Frost]

I think of it fondly as Lewis's kitchen sink book

That's a very good way of putting it. For me, it contains loads of very powerful ideas, but they aren't as strong as a whole as they are when considered separately, and I'm not persuaded by the story's morals, in that I didn't really warm to the "good" side or its mysticism whilst reading the book. My sympathies were really with the "little people" in the story, rather than with Ransom, who came across rather coldly to me. I do like the kitchen-sink feeling, though: it's like listening to a rambling anecdote by someone very learned. There's a sense of Lewis almost making a genre up as he goes along.

Here's Orwell's review: LEWISIANA: George Orwell on C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

 

[Ray McCarthy]

There's a sense of Lewis almost making a genre up as he goes along.

I think it's certainly quite different to the earlier two of the trilogy and quite an experiment on his part, the attempt to mix SF, absolute Fantasy and almost an apocalyptic story in an contemporary setting. If you think the fantasy elements sit uneasily (or are bonkers) and the moral tone is a little strong, it's interesting to compare with current Urban Fantasy such as The Girl With all the Gifts (Mike Carey/M.R. Carey, more post-apocalyptic Zombie), City of Bones (Cassandra Clare) and Black Wings (Christina Henry, read 3 of them, quite bonkers but enchanting). I've not read "Twilight", nor seen any of the Teen Vampire/Urban Fantasy stuff on TV or Cinema.

It does make slightly more sense if you have read the first two book in the series and read both The Screwtape Letters (which as @Extollager revealed is tenuously connected with the Trilogy in Lewis's mind) and the Essay The Abolition of Man. It's certainly a cauldron of stuff!

 

[Zendexor]

Along with John Brunner’s The Traveller in Black, I re-read That Hideous Strength every so often to see if it really is as crazy as I remember. The answer is always “Yes”. I’m not sure that it works as a whole for me, but it contains some amazing and horrific images. The Head, the banquet and Frost’s room designed to break down the mind are remarkable creations. The scenes after the banquet, where the various villains are polished off, are really nightmarish. The combination of Lewis’ good writing and the limits of the time as to how graphic things could be make the scenes as good as a lot of Lovecraft’s better stories.

I also think that the satire in it works quite well, especially of various university types being lured to their destruction through pride, arrogance and so on.

The point where the book falls down, for me, is that it fails to present a very palatable alternative to the NICE: in other words, it doesn’t make God look like anyone that I’d want to worship. Ransom comes across as rather tyrannical in a way, and the mystic episodes don’t really work for me: they’re just odd. But then writing about good people is harder than writing about bad ones, and writing about religion in a way that makes it appealing is especially difficult (not that Lewis is writing a sermon here or literally follows Ransom’s views).

Interestingly, George Orwell wrote a review of That Hideous Strength. Perhaps predictably, he liked the story but felt that the supernatural events weakened it. I wonder if it was an influence on his work: Filostrato’s speech about trees on the Moon sounds like a parody from one of Orwell’s diatribes against joyless intellectuals, and of course the NICE is a police state in miniature.

I have a feeling that there may be a couple of versions of this book, though: one longer than the other. Do you know if this is true?

Yes the PAN books edition was an abridgement by the author. About 200 pages were cut, I think.

 

[Toby Frost]

Wow, that's a lot!