The Space Trilogy (also known as The Cosmic Trilogy, The Ransom Trilogy, or The Ransom Cycle) is a series of science fiction novels by British writer C. S. Lewis. The trilogy consists of Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). A philologist named Elwin Ransom is the protagonist of the first two novels and an important character in the third.
Contents
Summary The books in the trilogy are:
Out of the Silent Planet (1938), set mostly on Mars (Malacandra). In this book, Dr. Elwin Ransom is kidnapped and transported to Mars. While there, he meets the planet's various inhabitants and discovers that Earth (Thulcandra, meaning the "Silent Planet") is exiled from the rest of the Solar System. Perelandra (1943). Also known as Voyage to Venus. Here, Dr. Ransom journeys to an unspoiled Venus (Perelandra), where he participates in a good vs. evil battle. That Hideous Strength (1945), set on Earth. A scientific think tank called the N.I.C.E. (The National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments) is secretly in touch with demonic entities who plan to assume control of the Earth. In 1958, the publishing house Avon published an abridged edition of That Hideous Strength titled The Tortured Planet.
Publication history Lewis, C.S. Out of the Silent Planet. London : The Bodley Head, 1938. Lewis, C.S. Perelandra: A Novel. London : The Bodley Head, 1943. Lewis, C.S. That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-ups. London : The Bodley Head, 1945.
Influences and approach Lewis stated in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green:
What immediately spurred me to write was Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men … and an essay in J.B.S. Haldane's Possible Worlds both of wh[ich] seemed to take the idea of such [space] travel seriously and to have the desperately immoral outlook wh[ich] I try to pillory in Weston. I like the whole interplanetary ideas as a mythology and simply wished to conquer for my own (Christian) p[oin]t of view what has always hitherto been used by the opposite side. I think H. G. Wells's First Men in the Moon the best of the sort I have read … The other main literary influence was David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (1920): "The real father of my planet books is David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, which you also will revel in if you don’t know it. I had grown up on Wells's stories of that kind: it was Lindsay who first gave me the idea that the ‘scientifiction’ appeal could be combined with the ‘supernatural’ appeal." The books are not especially concerned with technological speculation, and in many ways read like fantasy adventures combined with themes of biblical history and classical mythology. Many of the names in the trilogy reflect the influence of Lewis's friend J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish languages.
Main character The character of Elwin Ransom appears similar to Lewis himself: A university professor, an expert in languages and medieval literature, unmarried (Lewis did not marry until his fifties), wounded in World War I, and with no living relatives except for one sibling. Lewis, however, apparently intended for Ransom to be partially patterned after his friend and fellow Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien, since Lewis is presented as novelizing Ransom's reminiscences in the epilogue of Out of the Silent Planet and is a character-narrator in the frame tale for Perelandra. In That Hideous Strength, Ransom – with his royal charisma and casual acceptance of the supernatural – appears more like Charles Williams, or some of the heroes in Williams' books. In Out of the Silent Planet it is suggested that "Ransom" is not the character's real name but merely an alias for a respectable professor whose reputation might suffer from his recounting such a journey to the planet Mars. In the following books, however, this is unaccountably dropped and it is made clear that Ransom is the character's true name. As befits a philologist, he provides an etymology: The name is a contraction of the Old English for "Ranolf's Son". This may be another allusion to Tolkien, a professor of Old English. However, the name "Ransom" holds a deeper meaning. In Perelandra, the voice of Maleldil (Jesus) tells Ransom, "'It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom'", and later adds, "'My name also is Ransom'".
The Dark Tower An unfinished manuscript, published posthumously in 1977 and named The Dark Tower by Walter Hooper, its editor, features Elwin Ransom in a less central role as involved with an experiment that allows its participants to view on a special screen their own location in a parallel universe. Its authenticity was impeached by Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog in her criticism of Walter Hooper, but in 2003 Alastair Fowler established its authenticity when he wrote in the Yale Review that he saw Lewis writing the manuscript that would be subsequently published as The Dark Tower, heard him reading it and discussed it with him; he further stated that he gained the impression that the piece was an abandoned first attempt to write a sequel to Out of the Silent Planet.
Setting
Cosmology
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