CS Lewis: Planetary Environments

Each volume of CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy presents a fanciful account of another planet. Lewis' Malacandra, Perelandra and Sulva, nominally identical with Mars, Venus and the Moon, are imaginary worlds unlike their counterparts in the astronomical Solar System. All three are inhabited and humanly habitable. Malacandra has "canals."

Perelandra has oceans. Sulva has a troglodyte race to that extent reminiscent of the Wellsian Selenites. Malacandra and Perelandra are visited from Earth whereas Sulva is merely described by characters who remain on Earth. The lunar race that is great according to one account is cursed in the other. When Lewis tells us of a wondrous realm on the far side of the Moon invisible from Earth, he, of course, presents mythological, not scientifically based, fiction.

By contrast, in "Forms of Things Unknown," Lewis tries to imagine what the lunar surface might really be like. His character lands in a crater and ventures out in a spacesuit. The surface is "...rock, not dust (which disposed of one hypothesis)..." (1) There is of course no sound. The lack of atmosphere means that the light, whether directly from the sun or reflected from the rock, is dazzling. Shadows are "...like Indian ink..." (2) The lack of atmosphere prevents any sense of distance. The remote crater wall looks as if it could be touched. The peaks look small and the stars near - although Lewis does not also mention the relative closeness of the horizon due to the smaller size of the Moon.

Despite all this, I argue that "Forms of Things Unknown" can be read as consistent with the Ransom Trilogy. Jenkin transmits to Earth so he has landed on the near side of the Moon. He remains on the surface so does not see any troglodytes. It is stated in the third Ransom novel that the eradication of organic life from the surface has been a deliberate policy of the Great Race. In the concluding paragraph, Jenkin is surprised by the sudden appearance of a character from Greek mythology on the lunar surface but the story had begun with a quotation from Perelandra:

"...that what was myth in one world might always be fact in another." (3)

The mythological being kills Jenkin as it had killed the members of three previous expeditions, leaving High Command on Earth with no clue as to their fate. This is consistent with the idea in the Ransom Trilogy that Earth, the "Silent Planet," is besieged and that consequently travel beyond the lunar orbit has been banned. Weston was allowed to reach Mars and Venus but only because this served a greater purpose and Ransom tells Lewis that "...'Weston' has shut the door..." (4)

"Forms of Things Unknown," considered as a single fictional work, exists only to shock the reader with its surprise ending whereas relocating it into a broader narrative context necessitates an explanation for the manifestation of a myth on the Moon. However, the Ransom Trilogy, with Ares and Aphrodite respectively presiding over Malacandra and Perelandra, has more than enough mythological content for this purpose. Here, "Mars" means both the planet and the deity albeit within Lewis' imaginative classical-Christian context. Science and myth collide when lunar airlessness contradicts Jenkin's impression that an approaching figure has long, thick hairs blowing in the wind... 

Like HG Wells and ER Burroughs, CS Lewis presents, in several sometimes indirectly linked works, a Solar System where inhabited planets interact.

  (1) CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories, London, 1983, pp. 124-132, AT p. 129.
(2) ibid., p. 130.
(3) ibid., p. 124.
(4) CS Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, London, 1952, p. 187.

The Ransom Trilogy

The Pan Books omnibus edition of CS Lewis' science fiction trilogy is called The Cosmic Trilogy, an inappropriate title because the novels describe only local interplanetary journeys. In fact, the first novel addresses the appropriateness or otherwise of the term "cosmic":

"The dangers to be feared are not planetary but cosmic, or at least solar..." (1)

No doubt the intervention of the mysterious being Maleldil in Thulcandra, the "silent planet," Earth, is an event of cosmic significance. Indeed, we are shown how the event affects a newly inhabited world, Perelandra, Venus, and we are also told that its effects will be more widespread. However, curiously, Maleldil's opponents, the rebel eldila, are confined to Thulcandra so that the conflict with them is not cosmic in scope. We are not told what might occur elsewhere.

The Trilogy can be adequately described by reference either to its author, "CS Lewis' interplanetary trilogy" or to its central character, "the Ransom Trilogy."

Out Of The Silent Planet, 144 pages in the omnibus edition, has a very small cast of human characters:

Weston, Devine and Ransom travel to Malacandra, Mars;
before leaving Earth, they interact with a woman and her son, Harry;
on Mars, they meet members of three intelligent species and some extra-planetary beings, eldila;
back on Earth, Ransom corresponds with CS Lewis;
thus, there are six human characters.

Perelandra, (204 pages) has an even smaller cast:

Ransom and Weston travel independently to Perelandra, Venus;
before leaving Earth, Ransom converses with Lewis and with an eldil;
there are as yet only two Venerian human beings, the Perelandrian First Parents;
Ransom's other dealings on Venus are with a demon possessing Weston, with two other eldila and with Maleldil;
thus, there are only five human characters, two of them extraterrestrial.

That Hideous Strength, 405 pages, has an uncountable cast:

Jane Studdock
Mark Studdock
Curry
a first person narrator who is not named but who is consistent both with Lewis the author and with Lewis the first person narrator of five other works, including the previous Volumes of the Trilogy
Lord Feverstone, formerly Devine
James Busby
Canon Jewel
Mrs Dimble
Cecil Dimble
Ivy Maggs
Ivy's husband
John Wither
William Hingest
Steele
Cosser
Professor Filostrato
Wilkins
Miss "Fairy" Hardcastle
Camilla Denniston
Grace Ironwood
Straik
Brizeacre
Glossop
Stone
Dolly
Daisy
Kitty
Joe, a driver
an unknown couple
Frost
Mr Fisher-King/Ransom
MacPhee
Denniston, addressed as "Frank" by Camilla but as "Arthur" by Dimble
Winter
Gould
Jules
the tramp
Mr Bultitude, a bear
five planetary eldila
Captain O'Hara
Canon Storey
Merlinus Ambrosius
Alcasan
a demon speaking through Alcasan's guillotined but artificially preserved head
Father Doyle
Inspector Wrench
the terrestrial Venus and the hyper-cosmic Maleldil as encountered by Jane
Sid, a driver
Len, Sid's mate
a lorry driver
a kindly elderly landlady
the chilly man
the ticket collector 

I have cast the net as widely as possible. A few of the names listed here are mere names in the novel. Usually, however, we get at least a short insight into the character. In many cases, the characters are well-rounded and substantial. Is Richard Telford a character in the novel? He remains off-stage but is mentioned twice and described once.

Lewis as a writer and a Professor of Literature knew that authors must understand and control narrative points of view. If an entire novel is not written from a single point of view, then each Chapter or at least each section of a Chapter, each passage of continuous prose narrative between changes of scene, should have a single point of view. That Hideous Strength breaks some rules of points of view but in interesting ways. It contains:

several viewpoint characters;
one first person viewpoint character;
an imaginary observer;
a first person narrator of other passages in the novel;
an omniscient narrator of yet other passages in the novel.

I identify the first person viewpoint character with Lewis because he tells us:

"...I am Oxford-bred and very fond of Cambridge..." (2)

The opening and closing viewpoint character of the novel is Jane Studdock. The main continuing viewpoint character throughout the novel is Mark Studdock. In fact, the novel principally follows Mark's moral and  spiritual development. Temporary view point characters during the novel are Lewis, Ransom, Dimble, Frost, Wither, the tramp, Mr Maggs, Miss Hardcastle, Feverstone, Filostrato and Mr Bultitude. When Lewis is the viewpoint character, he narrates in the first person. However, a first person narrator, presumably also Lewis, sometimes imparts information about other characters. For example, of the fleeing tramp we are told:

"I have not been able to trace him further." (3)

At one point, this first person narrator invites the reader to imagine an observer placed high enough to see both a car carrying Mark and, later, a train carrying Jane from the town where they live. "...our imaginary observer..." has what we call a bird's eye, or god's eye, view of some English countryside. (4) An imaginary observer who saw not just at one place and time but at all places and times would be an omniscient observer and would thus share one attribute of the God in whom Lewis believed. Such an observer would have been promoted from a god's eye view to the God's eye view. The omniscient narrator who is present in much fiction and in some parts of this novel is presumably an omniscient observer who narrates some of what s/he observes.

Before leaving the first person narrator, Lewis, we can note that he sometimes adopts the first person plural, as when he refers to "...our imaginary observer...," thus getting the readers on his side. (4) When he refers to the British press as "...our papers...," he again identifies himself as one of us, a citizen who reads the same newspapers that we do. (4) The omniscient narrator would refer merely to "...the papers."

However, the omniscient narrator is also present and tells us things that the first person narrator could not have known: something that Curry thinks but immediately and permanently forgets; what Frost, Filostrato and Wither were thinking as they died. This narrator could have told us where the tramp went.

Mark confronts Dimble. Conventionally, their conversation should be described either from Mark's or from Dimble's viewpoint but not from both. However, the narrator of this passage tells us how they both felt. Dimble's effort not to hate Mark gives his face a fixed severity which Mark misinterprets as loathing.

"The whole of the rest of this conversation went on under this misunderstanding." (5)

The omniscient narrator would know this, of course, but Lewis might have learned it later by conferring with both men so we are not sure which narrator speaks here. The author has indeed complicated the viewpoint issue - as Isaac Asimov did at one point in the Foundation Trilogy when an "I" appeared unexpectedly in what had until then been the omniscient narrator's account of different modes of consciousness in the far future. In that case, one critic objected to the ambiguity in Asimov's narrative whereas I welcomed the extra layer of mystery presented by a narrator who, on the one hand, knew something about future mental powers but, on the other hand, admitted to the same level of ignorance as the readers about what it would be like to experience such powers.

There cannot be many parallels between works by CS Lewis and Ian Fleming. James Bond is Fleming's viewpoint character. However, one Fleming short story presents a bird's eye view of two converging figures crawling through long grass - towards a third party whom both intend to assassinate. This odd perspective is explained by the fact that three stories, including this one, were based on screen treatments for a proposed TV series.

Lewis the first person narrator came on stage on p. 136 of Out Of The Silent Planet, after Ransom had returned to Earth.

 "At this point, if I were guided by purely literary considerations, my story would end..." (6)

and:

"This is where I come into the story." (6)

We learn that Lewis has fictionalized the names of "Ransom" and "Weston" in order to publish as fiction an account that a very few readers will recognize as the truth. The postscript is "...extracts from a letter written by the original of 'Dr Ransom' to the author..." (7) In one extract, 'Ransom' addresses Lewis by name.

At the beginning of Perelandra, the first person narrator visits Ransom and is again addressed by name. 

"The Dark Tower" features Ransom, MacPhee and, as a first person narrator, an "Oxford man" who dislikes the nick-name "Lu-Lu" and who "...had been mixed up with..." Ransom's strange adventure described "...in another book..." and is indeed referred to as "Mr Lewis." (8)

"The Shoddy Lands" has a first person narrator visited in his college rooms at Oxford by a former student. 

The Great Divorce has a first person narrator who admired George MacDonald and is clearly Lewis. Here the story overlaps with that told in Lewis' spiritual biography Surprised By Joy.

Thus, whereas first person narrators are not usually identical with their author, in this case they are.

(1) CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet IN The Cosmic Trilogy, London, 1990, pp. 1-144 AT p. 138.
(2) CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN The Cosmic Trilogy, London, 1990, pp. 349-753 AT p. 359.
(3) ibid., p. 719.
(4) ibid., p. 395.
(5) ibid., p. 578.
(6) Out Of The Silent Planet, p. 136.
(7) ibid., p. 139.
(8) CS Lewis, "The Dark Tower" IN The Dark Tower and other stories, London, 1983. pp. 17-91 AT pp. 17, 22, 29, 39.