CS Lewis: WWII and After

World War II looms large in CS Lewis' fiction:

children are evacuated from London in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe;

Lewis wakes from the dream of The Great Divorce to the sound of a siren;

the man tempted by Screwtape's nephew is killed in an air raid;

the volumes of the Ransom Trilogy are set respectively before, during and after the War.

The Ransom Trilogy, Vol III, That Hideous Strength, was published in 1945 but set "after the War," thus was near future fiction. It features both technological advances and political events that did not happen in our history. Thus, this novel, like many works by other authors, soon became a "past future." Although That Hideous Strength is not a future history, its characters envisage and advocate alternative human futures and the novel is Lewis' response to Wells' and Stapledon's future histories.

"Forms Of Things Unknown" is set later along a timeline of continued technological progress so it makes sense that it be read after That Hideous Strength in the proposed "Cosmic Journeys" sequence. In this sequence, Vols I and III are interplanetary, Vol II involves journeys that are made without leaving the surface of the Earth and Vol IV is in the future.  

CS Lewis: Cosmic Journeys II

I proposed that seven works by CS Lewis be regarded as a "Cosmic Journeys" series (see here). The series could be published as a tetralogy:

(I) Out Of The Silent Planet.
(II) "The Dark Tower," "The Shoddy Lands" and The Great Divorce.
(III) Perelandra.
(IV) That Hideous Strength and "Forms Of Things Unknown."

The proposed Vol II is what I have called "a Lewis trilogy." The unity of the tetralogy is fairly clear:

(I) begins with Ransom and ends with Ransom writing to Lewis.
(II) begins with Lewis, Ransom and others together and ends with Lewis.
(III) begins with Lewis visiting Ransom and ends with Ransom.

In (IV): That Hideous Strength contains both Lewis and Ransom; "Forms Of Things Unknown" expresses a thought of Ransom in Perelandra.

The proposed Vols I, II and IV are the Ransom Trilogy. If the fragment, "The Dark Tower," had been completed, then it would have become Vol II of the Ransom series although it takes a curious turn because it is neither Ransom nor Lewis but another, younger, character who visits the alternative Earth. Lewis then remains on stage as the cosmic traveler in "The Shoddy Lands" and The Great Divorce before handing the narrative back to Ransom after the opening chapters of Perelandra. Thus, the proposed Vol II, beginning as a continuation from Out Of The Silent Planet, becomes a curious and interesting digression that nevertheless leads the reader back to the expected interplanetary adventures of Ransom in Perelandra.

Lewis corresponds with his friend Malcolm in Letters to Malcolm and somehow accesses a demonic correspondence in The Screwtape Letters. Perhaps he is also the first person narrator who dreams The Pilgrim's Regress. He also at one point converses with Lucy in The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. Thus, Lewis as character plays an active role, to a greater or lesser extent, in the works of Lewis as author.

CS Lewis: Cosmic Journeys

CS Lewis wrote the seven Chronicles of Narnia whose characters visit:

the Wood between the Worlds;
the world of Charn;
the world of Narnia, Archenland and Calormen;
Aslan's country.

I suggest that seven further works by Lewis form a less uniform sequence of "Cosmic Journeys" whose characters visit:

Mars/Malacandra;
the "Shoddy Lands" (another character's mind);
an alternative Earth;
a grey city which is Hell;
the foothills of Heaven;
Venus/Perelandra;
the Moon

 - three heavenly bodies, three spiritual states and one alternative Earth. 

"Cosmic Journeys" incorporates not only the Ransom Trilogy but also an unexpected Lewis trilogy "within" the Ransom Trilogy.

(i) In Out Of The Silent Planet, Elwin Ransom visits a planet called Malacandra by its inhabitants, returns to Earth and corresponds with CS Lewis.

(ii) In "The Dark Tower," Lewis and Ransom confer with other colleagues one of whom is then mentally transferred to an alternative Earth.

(iii) and (iv) Lewis alone visits a woman's mind in "The Shoddy Lands" and the hereafter in The Great Divorce. "The Dark Tower" and "The Shoddy Lands" share a University setting. 

(v) In Perelandra, Lewis visits Ransom who then travels to Venus which is called Perelandra in the Solar language.

(vi) Lewis is a less visible first person narrator in That Hideous Strength which ends when Ransom returns to Perelandra. Two accounts are given of life in the Moon.

(vii) In "Forms Of Things Unknown," an unrelated character travels to the Moon but the story is connected because it is based on a quotation from Perelandra.

Thus, the characters recur as follows:

(i) Ransom, then Lewis;
(ii) Lewis, Ransom and others;
(iii) Lewis;
(iv) Lewis;
(v) Lewis, then Ransom;
(vi) others, Lewis and Ransom;
(vii) one other.

Ransom passes a baton to Lewis who runs with it, then returns it to Ransom:

(i), (v) and (vi) are the Ransom Trilogy;
(ii), (iii) and (iv) are a Lewis trilogy;
(vii) is an appendix.

If Lewis' sf story, "Ministering Angels," had been set in a space station or a lunar base, then it might have fitted in with this sequence as a sequel or companion story to "Forms Of Things Unknown." However, it is instead set on a realistic Mars, thus contradicting the fantastic Malacandra. Since the sequence incorporates an alternative Earth, it could also, of course, incorporate alternative versions of Mars but that is not the intent of this story and the first Ransom novel as they stand. They are simply unrelated fictions.

Lewis' fictional sequences are connected:

the being called Aslan in Narnia is called Maleldil in the Field of Arbol, the Lewisian Solar System -

Arbol, the Sun;
Viritrilbia, Mercury;
Perelandra, Venus;
Thulcandra, Earth;
Sulva, the Moon;
Malacandra, Mars;
Glund or Glundandra, Jupiter;
Lurga, Saturn;
Neruval, Uranus;

in The Great Divorce, Lewis' mentor George MacDonald, refers to the Ransom Trilogy;
the foothills of Heaven are part of Aslan's country;
Lewis hears Aslan/Maleldil's voice in the Shoddy Lands;
That Hideous Strength refers to a forest in a wardrobe.

Readers might notice other connections.