Now, I have in many previous readings over the years found these three titles quite moving and spiritually profound: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). But, as I said, reading them in the midst of this “Great Hunkering Down” has made for exceptional understanding and application.
I recommend them all highly.
However, if you have only time (or inclination) to read one, especially if you desire to get a clearer perspective on how the elites of government, science, and media seek to control the lives of individuals, I suggest That Hideous Strength.
And, for a teaser, I give you a portion of Lewis’ preface to that novel. (You’ll note here an interesting reference to The Lord of the Rings which had not yet been published.)
I have called this a “fairy tale” in the hope that no one who dislikes fantasy may be misled first two chapters into reading further, and then complain of his disappointment. If you ask why—intending to write about magicians, devils, pantomime animals, and planetary angels, I nevertheless begin with such humdrum scenes and persons—reply that I am following the traditional fairy-tale. We do not always notice its method because the cottages, castles, woodcutters, and petty kings with which a fairy-tale opens have become to us as remote as the witches and ogres to which it proceeds. But they were not remote at all to the men who made and first enjoyed the stories. They were indeed more realistic or common place than Bracton College is to me: for many German peasants had actually met cruel stepmothers, whereas I have never, in any university, come across a college like Bracton.
This is a “tall story” about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my “Abolition of Man.” In the story the outer rim of that devilry had to be shown touching the life of some ordinary and respectable profession. I selected my own profession, not, of course, because I think Fellows of Colleges more likely to be thus corrupted than anyone else, but because my own profession I know well enough to write about. A very small university is imagined because that has certain conveniences for fiction. Edgestow has no resemblance, save for its smallness, to Durham—a university with which the only connection I have ever had was entirely pleasant…
Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS. of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The period of this story is vaguely “after the war.” It concludes the trilogy of which Out of the Silent Planet was the first part, and Perelandra the second, but can be read on its own.
(C.S. Lewis, Madgalen College, Oxford, Christmas Eve, 1943.)
