“The love of knowledge is a kind of madness” (55)

Nearing the end of our Sibling’s Book Club for 2019, we’re touching on a series that’s been part of our plan for years. I can’t believe that this first book, Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis, is more than 80 years old, even though it’s fantasy akin to that of Jules Verne and others long ago who had no clue about the realities of space. Still, it’s an enjoyable read that I finished in two days, and I greatly look forward to the next two books in the series.

Classics of Christian literature, these stories follow the adventures of a man named Elwin Ransom, aged 35-40, a philologist and Cambridge fellow (7) who in this first book gets kidnapped to a new world outside his own. Malacandra (which we later discover is Mars, 112) is a desolate landscape of pink, petrified forests, but is also cut deeply with ravines which still support life.

Summary

Life on this planet is made up three intelligent species: the pfifltriggi (frog-like miners and builders), the hrossa (giant seal-like sailors), and the sorns (what Ransom first calls “spooks on stilts”, 47, but then later likens to “‘titans’ or ‘angels'”, 101). It’s this third species which Ransom fears the most at first, for it’s to them that his kidnappers—Weston and Devine—have determined to deliver him, supposing he’s nothing more than a human sacrifice.

There’s a fourth and higher species dwelling in Malacandra, however, who actually have been given control of all the worlds in the Solar System. These are the eldil, and Oryosa is their leader. It is he who in fact has desired an audience with a real live human from Earth—a place known to them as Tulcandra, or “The Silent Planet”—so that he might learn more of what has occurred there since “The Bent One”, an eldil of ancient times, chose to corrupt his planet.

It’s all a bunch of fanciful sci-fi craziness, which I’m not often into, but I zipped through this book so fast, it shocked even me. I know that Lewis’ Narnia series was likely one of the most allegorical Christian works in history (behind John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, of course), so it doesn’t surprise me that this book contains as much philosophy and theology as it does fantasy and weirdness. But my unaccustomed pea-brain couldn’t quite grasp all the connections…at least not as much as the reader before me.

Discussion

The paperback copy I own (published in 1965) is a well highlighted and annotated version previously owned by a reader from 1991, a reader who seems to have been a believing college student who, at the time, was feeling guilty for having been caught so deep in the grip of worthless secular fantasy (I picture a guy with a peach-fuzz mustache, the Bible in one hand and a D&D manual in the other with Lewis’ book open on the table). His notes seek allegory on every page, in the verbs, the names, and the scenarios. Many are a stretch, and most make zero sense to me. Certainly, the names “Ransom” and “Devine” are non-coincidental, and Maleldil proves to be as God-like as any fanciful creation, but Lewis wrote this book as science-fiction, and trying to find connections in every line seems like a waste of a good reader’s time.

For example, when Ransom first arrives on Mars (what the annotator considered a version of the Garden of Eden before the Fall), he has trouble making out the details. “Colors that refused to form themselves into things” affected the annotator so much, that he found a spiritual application. From Lewis’s words, “you cannot see things til you know roughly what they are”, (42) the reader drew some metaphysical application, suggesting that Lewis’ implication was that Truth was unapproachable until we first became familiar with it. Not only is that common-sense kindergarten logic, it’s also a prime example of how one’s wording of basic realities can come across (at least to oneself) as high philosophy. I usually love reading annotated used-copies of novels, but this one just got annoying!

The eldil certainly do seem to represent the angels, and “The Bent One” must have been Satan who rebelled against Maleldil, or God. All of this can be found in Oyarsa’s explanation of what little they know about Thulcandra on page 121.

We know no more of that planet: it is silent. We think that Maleldil would not give it up entirely to the Bent One, and there are stories among us that He has taken strange counsel and dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One in Thulcandra. But of this we know less than you; it is a thing we desire to look into.

But my purpose in this post is not to tear apart every scene or shade of meaning in Lewis’ novel, but rather to suggest that readers don’t even try. This book was entirely entertaining as a science-fiction yarn. It was written by a great Christian thinker and apologist. It’s fun and enlightening, but—like your pet pfifltriggi—it deserves to be enjoyed not dissected.

Conclusion

I look forward to Book 2 in the series, Perelandra, and hope I can read it out of pure enjoyment as well. The lessons it might have to teach, I trust, will come in recollection not in real time.

©2019 E.T.

See More by C.S. Lewis:

• Nonfiction:
  The Screwtape Letters (1942)
  Reflections on the Psalms (1958)
• Space Trilogy:
  Out of the Silent Planet (1938)
  Perelandra (1943)
  That Hideous Strength (1945)
• The Chronicles of Narnia: 
  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
  Prince Caspian (1951)
  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
  The Silver Chair (1953)
  The Horse and His Boy (1954)
  The Magician’s Nephew (1955)
  The Last Battle (1956)
• Other:
  Till We Have Faces (1956)