My James Blish Appreciation site
includes an article comparing
the Christian CS Lewis with the agnostic James Blish. Each wrote a
theological trilogy and the latter’s refers to the former’s.
Also, Blish was a future historian and Lewis’ theological trilogy had
replied to
earlier secularist future histories by Wells and Stapledon.
Secularist future historians show
mankind making its own future without divine help. They also often show religion
surviving as an irrational social force, either opposing science or cynically
manipulated as a means to social control. Lewis disagreed. In order to address
this full sequence of ideas, my article, “CS Lewis and James Blish,” summarizes
religious and anthropocentric themes in British future histories by Wells,
Stapledon and others before considering Lewis, then summarizes similar themes in
American future histories by Blish and others before considering Blish in
relation to Lewis.
The section on American future histories
grew as it was written and maybe should have become a separate article that
would have been called “Religion in Future Histories.” Heinlein, Asimov, Blish,
Anderson, Niven, Pournelle, Burroughs, Simak, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Herbert,
Cordwainer Smith and no doubt others all present futures for religion. For a
summary and some comments, please see “CS Lewis and James Blish.”
One further comment here: there are
different kinds of Christians. Lewis did not believe that only he and his
co-religionists were saved or that everyone else was damned. He was a Professor
of English Literature whose own fiction incorporated Greek mythology. His
theological trilogy presents an Armageddon that is millennia hence and that is
clearly mythological in content. Thus, he was not the same kind of Christian as
the authors of the recent Left Behind series.
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