Book Review: Planets in Peril

Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C.S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy by David C. Downing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

David Downing has written a first class treatment of C.S. Lewis' Ransom Trilogy. His burden is to classify the trilogy as "theological fantasy" and show how some of Lewis' own biography find their way into the books. Downing does a fantastic job situating the books in Lewis' own life, placing it among his other works, and explaining the many, many literary and theological allusions in the series. Downing also makes an effort to asses the series on its merits, interacting with the reviewers and criticial essayists who have come before.

If you like the series, then this book will help you appreciate all the nuances of Lewis' ingenius writing. If you're just going to skim, make sure and read chapters 1-2 and 6-7.

Table of Contents:
1 - "Transfiguring the Past": Lewis' Reading of His Early Life
2 - "Smuggled Theology": The Christian Vision of the Trilogy
3 - The Recovered Image: Elements of Classicism and Medievalism
4 - "Souls Who Have Lost the Intellectual Good": Portraits of Evil
5 - Ransom and Lewis: Cosmic Voyage as Spiritual Pilgrimmage
6 - Models, Influences, and Echoes
7 - The Achievement of C.S. Lewis: Assessing the Trilogy
Appendix: "The Dark Tower"

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Book Review: That Hideous Strength

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wish I had time to give this a little longer review, because there's so much packed into this final story in the Ransom (or Space) Trilogy. Perhaps the most interesting thing is the way Lewis blurs genre throughout the series. You can call the whole series "science fiction," but that's not quite accurate. It best describes the first book Out of the Silent Planet , which Lewis writes as science fiction in the vein of H.G. Wells, but with the intention of communicating a medieval cosmology. The second book Perelandra reads more like a myth. In many ways it's a re-imagining of Milton's Paradise Lost, except in this case, Paradise Retained. That Hideous Strength is a fairy tale, or romance. It's full of academic satire, Arthurian legend, and a critique of scientism and theological liberalism.

It's the longest of the three books (longer than the first two combined), and it starts rather slowly. But it's worth trudging through the first 50 pages or so to get into the plot. The characters are thin (that's pretty normal for a fairy tale), but the focus is not in character development, but in ideas and ideologies and the battle between good and evil.

Recommended for anyone interested in theology, medieval worldview, Arthurian legend, fairy tales for adults.

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