That Hideous Strength (The Space Trilogy #3)

by C.S. Lewis

“But consider the advantages! You get tired of him in one place: two workmen carry him somewhere else: wherever you please. It never dies. No leaves to fall, no twigs, no birds building nests, no muck and mess.” “I suppose one or two, as curiosities, might be rather amusing.” “Why one or two? At present, I allow, we must have forests, for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet.” “Do you mean,” put in a man called Gould, “that we are to have no vegetation at all?” “Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet.” “I wonder what the birds will make of it?” “I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt.” “It sounds,” said Mark, “like abolishing pretty well all organic life.” “And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, ‘Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,’ and then drop it?”