At the same time, the abuse of science—its capacity to dehumanize its masters as well as its victims—would also be a major theme of their works. Rather than liberating human beings from their ancient frailties, science enslaved them. The dystopian world in Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, for example, is dominated by an ostensibly scientific institute, the N.I.C.E., a cover for supernatural and sinister purposes. “There was now at last a real chance for fallen Man to shake off that limitation of his powers which mercy had imposed upon him as a protection from the full results of his fall,” Lewis
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