Over the last couple of years, I’ve really started getting into the works of C.S. Lewis. I’ve loved The Chronicles of Narnia for a long time and decide it was time to tackle something aimed for a little older audience.
Out of the Silent Planet is the first book in Lewis’ space trilogy. The book reads like a 1930’s pulp science fiction novel harkening back to the stories of H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov and others. The main character, Ransom, is kidnapped by the archetypical evil scientist and carried off on a spaceship to Mars. Here, the story takes a tangent from the typical old fashioned science fiction novel and becomes a fascinating case study of a world that Original Sin never touched. Ransom interacts with the fascinating inhabitants of the planet and learns their language and their culture. We are given a peek at what a world that never fell to sin *might* look like. We also get to learn a language where some of our terms and meanings don’t apply, so Ransom must come up with explanations or translations for earthly terms like hate, greed, and desire.
Lewis takes some artistic license with the planet of Mars. We are now fairly certain there is only a minimal atmosphere on the surface of Mars, certainly nothing a human could survive on, but Lewis creatively places an atmosphere within the deep crevaces of the planet and a warm water-like substance that flows from rivers into lakes in thoses crevaces. Lewis’ description of the planet’s surface are breath-taking, particularly of the jagged mountains that haven’t been pulled down by gravity or erosion and also of the highlands above the crevaces where the air is thin and the stars are brilliantly bright.
It has been theorized that J.R.R. Tolkein based the booming, pondering ent Treebeard from Lord of the Rings after his fellow professor Lewis, who enjoyed loudly humming and booming around the halls of Oxford. If so, it is highly likely Lewis returned the favor by basing the calm, rational Ransom after Tolkein, who was also a philologist. Ransom’s interactions with the aliens and his willingness to learn from them makes him a fascinating and likeable character to follow, even if he is a little wooden and academic as was befitting many pulp science fiction books from the same era.
Of the three books, Out of the Silent Planet was to me the most “science fiction” of the three novels and the most straightforward to read. I particularly enjoyed the descriptive landscapes and alien language. The alien culture was totally unexpected for me, unlike any of the aliens I’ve read or seen in any movie, and thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating. The book sets the trilogy up nicely and prepares the reader for the next two books.