First Man On The Moon

A one volume collection of "first man on the moon" short stories - or at least shorter than novels? Contents?

"The Man Who Sold The Moon" by Robert Heinlein.
"Forms Of Things Unknown" by CS Lewis.
"The Light" by Poul Anderson.
"Wrong Way Street" by Larry Niven.

What else?

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: 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. 

CS Lewis: "Forms of Things Unknown"

"Forms of Things Unknown" by CS Lewis reads like "hard sf" (scientifically and technologically accurate science fiction) until the last sentence. However, Lewis has prepared the reader for this ultimate intrusion of fantasy. The story is prefaced by a quotation from Lewis' novel, Perelandra:

"...that what was myth in one world might always be fact in some other." (1)

Before Jenkin sets off for the Moon, his friend derides the idea of animated lunar stones as "...mere science fiction or mythology." (2)

Thus, sf and myth are bracketed together. Jenkin replies:

"Going to the Moon at all was once science fiction. And as for mythology, haven't they found the Cretan labyrinth?" (2)

Thus, the reader is prepared for the idea that, if the labyrinth existed, then perhaps mythological beings did as well. Also relevant is Jenkin's remark that, after a disappointing relationship with a young woman, he doesn't feel anything about her or indeed about women. In fact, he is: "A bit petrified." (3) There was a female mythological being who literally petrified anyone who saw her.

The petrification theme continues when Jenkin, en route to the Moon, realizes one of his motives for volunteering. Because the affair had indeed frozen or petrified him, he now:

"...wanted to feel again, to be flesh, not stone." (4)

He will get the opposite of this wish.

There is a less explicit echo of Perelandra. A conscious reason why Jenkin had volunteered was a wish to be "...'outside,' in the sky...," in space, where, if anything, there might be a danger of agoraphobia. (4) Instead, he is claustrophobically enclosed in "...a little metal container...very like a coffin." (4) In Perelandra, Ransom had been angelically transported to Venus in a transparent white coffin but there the symbolism was of death to one world leading to new life in another whereas Jenkin's situation suggests merely death.

Lewis' unfamiliarity with technology is shown by his use of the word "...gimmicks.." for the instruments that Jenkin must use. (5) On the Moon, he finds statues of the men who had preceded him there, had started to transmit to Earth, then stopped. The statues show them in their spacesuits, looking over their shoulders. Believing that he has encountered lunar art, Jenkin, happy, no longer petrified, starts to transmit, sees the shadow of a human head with thick writhing hairs approaching from behind him and remembers that there is no wind on the Moon as he turns...

"His eyes met hers." (6)

(1) CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories, London, 1983, pp. 124-132 AT p. 124.
(2) ibid., p. 127.
(3) ibid., p. 125.
(4) ibid., p. 128.
(5) ibid., pp. 128, 131.
(6) ibid., p. 132.

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.