“It was all there in that little disc--London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk.”
― C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
PENNED by the late, great Clive Staples Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet is the first book of a space trilogy, a trilogy which has always seemed out of the spot light. C.S. Lewis is renown for his Chronicles of Narnia and other writings, but very few people have even heard of his sci-fi trilogy. I think I've met only one person who has read all three books. So when I found the books stashed among sci-fi garbage in a cheapo dollar-bookstore, I was ecstatic. Nearly as ecstatic as if I had visited another planet...
Out of the Silent Planet concerns a philologist by the name of Dr Ransom (allegory anyone?) who quite by accident suffers the intense experience of being drugged, imprisoned in a space-ship, sent hurdling headlong through the outer heavens, landing upon a distant planet inhabited with ghastly creatures: sorns, hrossa and even pfiffltriggi. Say that ten times fast.
What Ransom discovers is a world called Malacandra, a planet wholly unlike Earth, with inhabitants that challenge everything he's known about physics, biology, intelligence and even religious matters. This was something I found extremely beautiful about Out of the Silent Planet is its blending together of the scientific and the sacred, of things we know as real through our senses and of things we believe religiously by faith. An example--without being too detailed--are the creatures which Malacandrians call eldil, beings of bodies of such speed that they exist in two places at once, so the alien explanation goes. To Ransom, they appear hardly at all, only as plays of light and shadow or a movement of wind where there is no wind, always just out of the corner of his eye.
Out of the Silent Planet occupies a style of literary genre which is all but extinct: classic science fiction. Lewis published this first book in 1938. How much more do we know about space now? Yet during his time, men could believe with H.G.Wells that there were entire forests and giant monsters on other planets. In my opinion, this extra lack reality enriches the literature in comparison with modern science fiction which is so... well, it's blah sometimes, ordinary, mundane, mathematical, hugely tedious.
While this book has more scientific tedium in it than an average adventure does, and there may be little in the way of climax or emotional depth, I really enjoyed this read. Out of the Silent Planet kept me up later than I thought it would, as I read into the night. Here, Lewis maintains his pleasure of examining the human condition. Even the value of death as it gives value to life is pondered: “And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
I was fascinated with the careful world Lewis had crafted and the way in which he tied alien culture with Earthly mythology and religion while at the same time avoiding the exactitude we saw in Narnia, replacing it with mysteries sure to be resolved in the sequels. This alone made it truly unique and I recommend this quick and easy read.
I give Out of the Silent Planet:
6 out of 10 philologists!
What else should be expected from one of the greatest writers of last century? So go out and search for a copy! Good luck!
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