Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "out-of-the-silent-planet"

Out of the Silent Planet
C.S. Lewis
This book can be downloaded for free from the Gutenberg Project:
http://central.gutenberg.org/articles...

Review by: Dr. Wesley Britton


Apparently inspired by David Lindsey’s 1920 Voyage to Arcturus with obvious nods to the stories of H.G. Wells, the first of C.S. Lewis’s “space trilogy” Came out in the U.K. in 1938, in the U.S. in 1943. Two sequels followed, Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945). In 1977, a related fragment, “The Dark Tower,” appeared in a collection of Lewis’s shorter works.

Out of the Silent Planet opens when philologist Elwin Ransom, on a walking tour of England, is kidnapped by two men, the greedy Devine and physicist Weston. They spirit him away in a metal, spherical spaceship headed for the planet Malacandra where Ransom is intended to be given as a sacrifice to the planet’s inhabitants, the Sorns. But Ransom quickly escapes, and the bulk of the story to follow chronicles Ransom’s travels across what he learns is Mars. We read his descriptions of the colorful world and his interactions with three species of intelligent life, the Hrossa, Ceroni, and Pfifltriggi.

In particular, Ransom meets the very civilized hross named Hyoi, a tall and thin creature resembling an otter or seal who hosts the human for several months in his village where Ransom learns the aliens’ “solar language” and much about their culture and their love for poetry with limited understanding of technology. The hrossa ask Ransom to join them in a hunt for a hnakra, a fierce water-creature which seems to be the only dangerous predator on the planet, resembling both a shark and a crocodile. On the hunt, Ransom is told by an eldil, a nearly invisible being that seems more spirit than anything else, that Ransom must go to meet Oyarsa, the eldilwho who is the ruler of the planet.

After Devin and Weston try to capture Ransom again, killing Hyoi,
Ransom meets Augray, a sorn who demonstrates his people, usually 15 feet tall with seven fingers and bodies covered with feathers, are actually peaceful and nothing like what Devin and Weston believe . Carrying the human on his shoulders, Augray takes Ransom to Oyarsa. On the journey, Ransom encounters The insect-like pfifltriggi and their frog-like bodies which helps them be the builders and technicians of Malacandra.

Ransom learns there are deathless Oyéresu rulers for each of the planets in our solar system. In the four inner planets, which have organic life (both sentient and non-intelligent), the local Oyarsa is responsible for that life. The ruler of Earth (Thulcandra, "the silent planet"), is evil (or "bent" in the local language) and has been restricted to Thulcandra, after a "great war," by the Oyéresu and the authority of Maleldil, the ruler of the universe. As a result, Earth is in a “fallen” state as opposed to the other, more utopian, inhabited worlds. Obviously, this situation parallels the Biblical story of Satan’s fall from heaven.

At the meeting with Oyarsa, Ransom learns he has been summoned to the planet as he is there to try to explain the ways and beliefs of humanity. Devin and Weston are escorted to the sacred site after murdering three more inhabitants. Weston launches into a long speech where he says humans must take over all inhabited planets to preserve humanity at the expense of all other life. This is very much in contrast to the “Martians” who live in harmony and believe all races are equal. After this, Oyarsa passes judgement, commanding Devin and Weston to return to their spaceship and leave the planet. He offers Ransom the choice of staying or returning, and Ransom opts to return home.

During a dangerous 90 day voyage with limited air and food, the trio of humans is watched over by the eldila who can travel in space and consider planets as mere fixed points in the cosmos. After a difficult if rushed journey, the space-ship barely makes it back to Earth.

In a somewhat confusing coda, we hear about how Ransom questions what happened to him and contacts C.S. Lewis who helps him put the true account into the form of a novel. Ransom, realizing few readers will believe him, still wants to do what he can to fulfill the mission that Oyarsa gave him before he left Malacandra, to thwart Weston’s evil. Ransom also wants to initiate a “baptism of imagination.” In Lewis’s words:

“What we need for the moment is not so much a body of belief as a body of people familiarized with certain ideas. If we could even effect in one per cent of our readers a change-over from the conception of Space to the conception of Heaven, we should have made a beginning.”

A brief synopsis like this, of course, cannot fairly give readers a real taste of the book, its descriptions of aliens and places and the metaphysical and philosophical discussions that take place throughout. Nor can a short review really summarize the critical responses that have been published over the decades. Past critics have noted elements of medieval mythology in the book, that the scientific explanations, especially regarding space travel, are rather absurd, and that the theological dimensions of the final chapters are what saves the book from being little more than a pulp-sci fi romance. Lewis himself said the story exemplifies his belief that while reason is the organ of truth, imagination is the organ of meaning.

I must admit, for much of the book, I thought it had much in common with the imaginative yarns of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard with less action and very little suspense. Those were the days, of course, where writers could create elaborate civilizations on Mars that no one could get away with now. Lewis, an accomplished philologist himself, did much with the linguistic possibilities and had much to say about cultural and social differences with an increasingly metaphysical and cosmological approach. This wasn’t surprising considering Lewis’s interest in both Christian theology and European mythology.

We also get generous samplings of his descriptive skills as in this passage from Ranson’s perspective inside the space-ship:

“The Earth's disk was nowhere to be seen, the stars, thick as daisies on an uncut lawn, reigned perpetually with no cloud, no moon, no sunrise to dispute their sway. There were planets of unbelievable majesty, and constellations undreamed of: there were celestial sapphires, rubies, emeralds and pin-pricks of burning gold; far out on the left of the picture hung a comet, tiny and remote: and between all and behind all, far more emphatic and palpable than it showed on Earth, the undimensioned, enigmatic blackness. The lights trembled: they seemed to grow brighter as he looked. Stretched naked on his bed, a second Dana, he found it night by night more difficult to disbelieve in old astrology: almost he felt, wholly he imagined, 'sweet influence' pouring or even stabbing into his surrendered body.”

Beyond Perelandra—, or Venus to earthlings as explored in the sequels, the creatures Lewis created influenced much sci fi literature to follow. For but a few examples, Larry Nivens’ 1999 Rainbow Mars used the three primary species. In the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Ceroni are mentioned as battling the more warlike Martians of The War of the Worlds. In Ian Edginton’s Dark Horse comic series, “Scarlet Traces: The Great Game,” it seems the Hrossa, Ceroni, and Pfifltriggi were the original races of Mars before being wiped out by The War of the Worlds “asteroid Martians.”

Clearly, Out of the Silent Planet has been earning a wide, international audience for over 70 years in a continual stream of new editions in a variety of languages. It seems a full understanding of Lewis’s vision means a reader should not see the book as a stand-alone adventure but should consider the book part one of the story. So, for this reviewer, Perelandra now joins my 2017 reading list.

For a very detailed analysis of Out of the Silent Planet exploring its Christian framework, check out “Chronicles of Heaven Unshackled -C.S. Lewis' 'Out of the Silent Planet'” by Pete Lowman at:
http://www.bethinking.org/your-studie...