Last night at around two in the morning I completed the final novel in C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. For those of you who do not know, that trilogy consists of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.
I want to try to compare the three novels to each other, but I'm finding that I can't really do that. I'm having difficulty even choosing which one I enjoyed the most. Each of the three seemed to have a completely different purpose in mind. It was almost as if the novels shared common characters just for the sake of simplicity. By that, I mean each idea being presented could have been made in an entirely separate novel just as easily; however, Lewis tied all of the ideas together by writing them as a series.
Out of the Silent Planet is an introduction to Ransom, to space travel, and to the eldils. It is full of beautiful imagery, but not the best imagery of the trilogy. It was full of thoughts concerning equality and cooperation. The point of the book seemed to be that mankind is truly wretched and has fallen far beyond what it could have become.
Perelandra by far has the greatest amount of imagery. It seems at least a third of the book is spent describing the strange planet. Ransom is sent to battle an evil temptation that presses against the Queen of the planet. A large amount of intellectual sparring is in this novel. I think this was probably my favorite of the three books.
That Hideous Strength was quite interesting. This novel didn't need as much imagery simply because it was set on Earth. The plot is more concentrated and, in my opinion, the plot moves much more slowly. I think it was the best written book of the trilogy.
I don't want to go into more detail because I'm not sure how many people have read these books. I am also fairly certain that if I tried to give a few details I would give away too many.
I really enjoyed this series and I would recommend it to everyone.
Posted by Randy at April 20, 2004 02:41 PM | TrackBack