A ferret-review a little while ago made mention of the fact that most science-fiction and fantasy novels that deal with religion don't do it very well, because the authors haven't thought very hard about what religion is, and so you end up with some marginally altered version of what the author thinks religion is like in this world, based on the small corner of this world that the author is most familiar with. In this trilogy, C. S. Lewis does something a little similar, although no-one could accuse him of not having thought seriously about religion. He takes his Christian views of the relationship between God and Man in this world as his starting point, and then imagines a populated solar system with interplanetary travel, built around that foundation. One might call it Narnia with spaceships, but that wouldn't quite capture it.

One point of interest in this trilogy is that the main character, Ransom, is based on Lewis' friend J.R.R. Tolkien, so if you're interested in seeing a fictional portrayal of the most famous fantasy-fiction writer ever, as written by another famous fantasy-fiction writer who knew him well, this is the place to start! And almost certainly, to finish. Unless there is a rich tradition of fictional portrayals of Tolkien that I don't know about? At any rate, by the end of the trilogy Ransom has been turned into a rather Christ-like figure, which, if one of my friends did to me in a story, I have to say I would find a little embarrassing. In fact, there are a few things that I find a bit embarrassing about this trilogy, but that can wait for the bit after the plot summary and the bits that I like, being the bits I don't like. So, plot summary...

...The first book is kind of like any pulpy 40s sci-fi book about travelling to other planets, except with less violence and more veiled allusions to Christianity. And more philology, I guess. Lewis is a good line-writer and creates believable characters and imaginative scenarios, but as a book this is a bit slow-moving and for aficionados of hard sci-fi it will definitely raise a lot of questions about realism.

The second book starts out a lot like the first book, but then it becomes a lot more explicitly Christian. Basically, there's a planet with only one woman and one man on it, kind of a garden of Eden thing, and Ransom has to try to stop the snake from bringing sin into the world. Will he make it in time?! This starts out rather slowly but becomes quite gripping toward the end although also, quite disgusting. See my comments below.

In the third book, the struggle takes place entirely on Earth, and from memory there's rather more fantasy in it and rather less sci-fi than in the previous two books, which kind of makes this so-called "space trilogy" into a "space duology with fantasy sequel", not that I really mind. Anyway, one of the main characters in this is a sociologist, which, as a sociologist I have to say I find quite exciting, even if the character is not very sympathetic and sociologists in general are portrayed as being the enemies of everything good and natural in the world, because as a member of a profession that is just about never represented in any way in any kind of fictional form, I'll take what I can get. The setting for a large part of the action is a research institute, which gradually is revealed as a Satanic research institute, and the book is about a kind of climactic struggle for the soul of England, or the world, or something. It's actually quite absorbing, if rather disgusting, more about which in a moment.

So, stuff that I liked about this trilogy. Hmm. Lewis is a very easy writer to like, I think, just in the way that he puts his sentences and paragraphs together. I find it hard to say exactly what it is about his writing that I like; it's a lot easier to describe why bad writing is bad than why good writing is good. I suppose bad writing has a way of making you feel embarrassed for the author, for having created such an ugly sentence/image/metaphor/whatever, and such feelings have a way of pulling you out of the narrative and into an awareness of your position as a reader of a story, rather than feeling the story as something that is "really" occurring. And, from my perspective, anyway, Lewis never does this. Everything feels... carefully made, if you see what I mean. He also does a good job of making characters and situations seem real, and the sense of horror in some of the nastier scenes is quite palpable. The first book is nothing very special but it has a sort of charming innocence about it, somewhat like the pulpy sci-fi that it resembles. Charming innocence is the very last thing you'd ascribe to the last two books, though. And... while not a Christian myself, I have to say that if I were, I imagine I'd find his "religious exultation" passages pretty moving. You can tell that he really feels the things that he's writing about, and the intensity with which he feels the "religious reality" that he experiences infuses the text.

What I did not like was... well, I guess there are two or three main things, depending on how you divide them up. One is the open and shameless sexism of the third book. He appears to sincerely believe that not only is it a woman's place to be barefoot and pregnant in the home, preparing meals and cleaning glassware out of the sight of the men, but that that is in fact God's plan for women (on other planets too, apparently) and when they put shoes on or aren't pregnant or leave spots on the glass, then God is very angry. And speaking of anger, the really gross aspect of these books is the way in which Lewis takes it upon himself to imaginatively act out all the revenge he'd like to take on those who don't agree with him about Jesus. There appear to be some portrayals of philosophers or other academics that Lewis knew personally, saying things that Lewis found personally offensive, and then we get to see these academics (among others) being horribly killed. Which brings me to what I found most ugly and objectionable in these books and, in a way, what I find most troubling about certain types of Christianity. Because Lewis sees his Jesus-aligned characters as being so starkly in the right, so perfectly morally good, he sees those who oppose them as being starkly in the wrong, perfectly evil, utterly morally irredeemable. And as a consequence, when it comes time for them to be punished in the denouement, (well, the "denouements", technically, since there's a mini-resolution at the end of the second book, followed by a massive-all-encompassing denouement in the third) then he feels no compunction about creating scenes of absolutely gut-churning brutality with which to punish them. In the absence of any kind of mercy or restraint, Lewis lets go and - it seems to me, anyway - openly fantasizes about the kind of cruel and barbaric things he would like to do to people who don't believe in God, or don't believe in God in quite the same way that he does. Perhaps I'm just over-sensitive but it seemed there was a real edge of sadism in these scenes which I found quite disturbing. I suppose in a way it's a testament to Lewis' power as a writer that he could make those scenes so disturbing, but at the same time, I think it says something rather unflattering about Lewis as a person, and in turn makes these novels a rather unflattering portrayal of the kind of Christianity that Lewis intended for them to promote.