Through Space With HG Wells And His Successors

In The War Of The Worlds by HG Wells, Martians invade Earth and Venus.

In Star-Begotten by Wells, Planetarium Club members discuss cosmic rays and Martians before one of their number summarizes and criticizes The War Of The Worlds, mistakenly attributing it to "'...Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, one of those fellows...'" (New York, 1975, p. 48), then proposes instead Martianization of human beings by cosmic rays.

In the Ransom Trilogy by CS Lewis, a scientist visits Mars and Venus, in the latter case as the spearhead of a planned demonic invasion. Lewis parenthetically comments that "...Mr Wells' Martians [are] very unlike the real Malacandrians..." (Voyage to Venus, London, 1978, p. 7).

In The War Of Two Worlds by Poul Anderson, Martians militarily conquer Earth but are being covertly manipulated by extrasolars.

In "Soldier From The Stars" by Anderson, humanoid extrasolars conquer Earth economically by selling their superior military services to the highest bidder among Terrestrial governments.

Later, I will add a few more alien invasions but I think that this is a neat progression through Wells, Lewis and Anderson. See here.

Cosmic Journeys III

In CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy:

Out Of The Silent Planet describes Elwin Ransom's journey to Mars and ends when Ransom, back on Earth, writes to Lewis;

Perelandra begins when Lewis visits Ransom, then describes Ransom's journey to Venus;

That Hideous Strength, set entirely on Earth, features many characters including Ransom, MacPhee and Lewis and ends when Ransom returns to Venus.

Thus, the Trilogy is structured as follows:

interplanetary journey, correspondence with Lewis;
conversation with Lewis, interplanetary journey;
conversations and conflicts with several characters, interplanetary journey.

Three other works feature Lewis as character and narrator:

"The Dark Tower" begins when Ransom, Lewis, MacPhee, Orfieu and Scudamour converse, then describes Scudamour's visit to an alternative Earth;

"The Shoddy Lands" begins when a former student and his fiancee visit Lewis, then describes Lewis' visit to the fiancee's mind;

The Great Divorce begins with Lewis already visiting a mysterious realm where he later converses with George MacDonald.

The structure of this loose Lewis trilogy is:

conversation involving Lewis, visit to a parallel realm;
conversation involving Lewis, visit to a mental realm;
visit to spiritual realms, conversation involving Lewis.

One other work fits into this sequence. "Forms of Things Unknown" begins when Jenkin and Ward converse after a lecture, then describes Jenkin's journey to the Moon. The four characters who make cosmic journeys are:

:

Ransom, to Mars and Venus;
Scudamour, to Othertime;
Lewis, to the Shoddy Lands and to a dream of the hereafter;
Jenkin to the Moon.

Lewis converses, fictitiously of course, with his fictitious character, Ransom, then converses, also fictitiously, with an earlier writer, MacDonald. The line of literary descent is that MacDonald inspired Lewis who created Ransom but Lewis, by entering his own fictions, converses with both the others.

    

"The Dark Tower" was written before Perelandra and as a sequel to Out of the Silent Planet so I propose that the "Lewis trilogy" should be read between Volumes I and II of the Ransom Trilogy. That Hideous Strength, published in 1945, describes some technological advances after the War and "Forms of Things Unknown" describes the further technological advance of flight to the Moon so I propose that "Forms..." be read after the trilogies. (Weston's earlier space journeys were not made public and Weston died on Venus so that flights to the Moon - there were three before Jenkin's - came as a new development.)

"The Dark Tower" and Perelandra are direct sequels to Out Of The Silent Planet but "The Dark Tower" and its two "sequels" (I argue that they can be seen as such) change the direction, replacing Ransom with Lewis until the former returns in Perelandra. Although Ransom appears in four of the seven works and MacPhee in three, Lewis is in six. He becomes the central or continuing character of the sequence before returning that role to Ransom. Most people know of Narnia and many have read Ransom but it may not be widely recognised that Lewis himself plays such a major role in his own fiction. 

CS Lewis: Fictitious Correspondence

Lewis used fictitious correspondence three times:

Ransom writes to Lewis;
Lewis writes to Malcolm;
Screwtape writes to Wormwood.

Of course, in reality, Lewis wrote both Ransom and Screwtape although Screwtape then made a name for himself. Screwtape exists only to write his letters and, later, to propose a toast. Malcolm exists only to receive letters from Lewis. By contrast, Ransom is the central character of a Trilogy and writes to Lewis only at the end of Volume I.

The Screwtape Letters and Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, two entire volumes of fictitious letters, refer to fictitious characters - the man tempted by Wormwood, Malcolm's son who becomes ill - and conventional novels could have been written about these characters. Instead, Lewis used the fictitious correspondence form to address temptation and prayer.

Lewis' fictitious letters indirectly interacted with James Blish's fiction:

(i) In Black Easter, which is in memoriam CS Lewis and includes quotations not only from Lewis but also specifically from Screwtape, a demon announces the death of God. Lewis, of course, could not respond to Black Easter, written after his death, but does tell Malcolm how he would respond to a hypothetical death of God. 

(ii) In The Day After Judgment, the sequel to Black Easter, a magician refers to Screwtape as a real demon communicating with Lewis: an unexpected element of humor in an otherwise horrific scenario.

(iii) Both Lewis' Screwtape and Blish's Goat refer to Satan as "Our Father Below."

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. 

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.