Editorial: The joyous surprise of C. S. Lewis's mundane sf novel

In keeping up with efforts to read older works of fiction often mentioned as pro-liberty, I recently turned to C. S. Lewis's space trilogy. Published in the late 1930s and early 1940s, they form a trio of unique books, starting with Out of the Silent Planet (set on Mars), Perelandra (set on Venus), and That Hideous Strength (set on Earth). The last book is a perennial nominee for the Hall of Fame Award, which until this year I had not even read, though always kept meaning to attempt.

Although I read all the Narnia books as a child, I struggled to get into Lewis's sf books, abandoning them upon several occasions. Although I finished Out of the Silent Planet last year, it reminded me too much of David Lindsay's 1920 novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, a somewhat boring but far better book than Lewis's novel. Perelandra remains unread, but after aborting the effort to read them in order, I skipped ahead and picked up That Hideous Strength.

I had been familiar with Lewis's life, his Oxford career, and his friendship with other writers, especially J. R. R. Tolkien, and also the whole Inklings gathering of literary minds in the 1930s. I also knew of Lewis's strong Christian views. As an atheist, I didn't think that his 'adult' books with their overt Christian themes would appeal to me. Yet while That Hideous Strength as a novel contains many flaws (especially its deus ex machina of an ending), this book has far more life and vigor than the other books. Perhaps the fact that the setting was more familiar to Lewis played a role. As the book takes place on Earth, Lewis doesn't need to invent strange flora and fauna, or peculiar words and linguistic exercises. Instead, he focuses on the bizarre world of collegiate professors and bureaucrats, with which he was quite familiar from his years at Oxford.

These few words lay no claim as a real review of That Hideous Strength, but rather a statement of surprise and appreciation. Certainly, there are pro-liberty sentiments in the book, or at the very least anti-statist views. Much like the socialists that Freidrich Hayek denounced many times over for their planners' conceit, we see the same experimental sociology denounced by Lewis, in quite a convincing fashion.

After finishing the novel I turned to a biography, the very personal one by George Sayer, a former student, a book simply called Jack. I also picked up a set of books, both fiction and non-fiction, including The Screwtape Letters. Lewis is going through a period of rediscovery, as his Narnia tales reach the big screen. In the meantime, if you haven't read any of the space trilogy books, take a look at That Hideous Strength, a well-written and nearly timeless work of fiction.