Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Designed by Brooke Koven
Published by Scribner
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
CS Lewis is most widely remembered for Narnia, his seven-volume fantasy series for children. However, Lewis was a man of many talents, and is also well-known for his non-fiction, particularly his Christian apologetics such as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. And he also wrote a trilogy of science fiction novels, of which this volume is the first.
Lewis's Space Trilogy has a most unusual genesis. He and JRR Tolkien were close friends, and often shared early manuscripts of their works to one another for comment and critique, similar to what is often called beta reading today. They did not always share one another's tastes, especially after Tolkien began to move away from the more Victorian views of elves as being altogether too twee and turned into a serious world-builder who would forever transform Secondary World fantasy. But the two men could respect each other's tastes enough to look at a work on its literary merits rather than just personal taste.
Some time during the 1930's they decided upon a sort of writing challenge. Although their fiction leaned more toward fantasy, they decided to each write a work of science fiction. Tolkien would write a work of time travel, while Lewis would write a work of space travel. Tolkien's effort to write the story of a modern father and son traveling backward in time to Numenor, which he titled The Lost Road, soon foundered, resulting in a collection of partial manuscripts and sketches of possible storylines. However, Lewis was able to complete his novel, of a man kidnapped and taken to Mars.
Given that this novel was written in the 1930's, it's unsurprising that it should contain a considerable amount of Zeerust. It features an inhabited Mars, complete with Percival Lowell's canals -- although unlike those of Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet or Richard Elam's Young Visitor to Mars, they are not simple water channels. Instead, they are vast canyons carved into the Martian surface, more like the Valles Marineris on the actual Mars, except they are where breathable air can be trapped to preserve some portion of the world's inhabitants as Mars slowly but steadily loses its ability to support life. It's also a 'verse in which spaceflight is trivially achievable through some kind of handwavium gadget, requiring little or no ground support, and one flies a spacecraft rather like an airplane, pointing it at where you wish to go with no regard to orbital mechanics. Yet the storyline remains surprisingly engaging in spite of all the dated science and technology, perhaps because it is as much the story of a metaphysical journey as a physical one.
The story begins with the protagonist, Ransom, literally stumbling upon the antagonists while on a walking tour in the English countryside. We can see almost at once that Weston and Devine are up to something nefarious, but the exact nature of their plot comes out only slowly. Of course some of the things they are saying sound more sinister now than they would to the original audience, for the simple reason that the horrors of World War II showed where some of those notions lead. So we may be less surprised than the people who read that first printing, when Weston and Devine drug Ransom and haul him away.
Ransom wakes up in a most peculiar room, which he soon discovers is part of a spaceship on its way to a world called Malacandra by its natives. His initial reaction at discovering he is in space is panic bordering on stark raving terror, the sort you'd expect in something by HP Lovecraft. But it doesn't last long before he regains his bearings enough to engage in some verbal sparring with his captors, trying to find out their intentions in taking him on this voyage. Slowly he discovers that they had previously been to this mysterious world, where they were accosted by a being known as a sorn and told they might not gather gold or other treasures until they'd presented a suitable offering to their local god.
Ransom makes the rest of the journey in dread of his intended fate. Small wonder that he should find the landing and his first sight of this alien world should elicit abject terror. So it's unsurprising that, when some of the natives finally make their appearance, Ransom should break free and run for his life.
Once he gets away from his captors, he begins to take stock of his situation. He can tell he's on a world with lighter gravity, but beyond that he can make no meaningful determination. Although he does not feel safe, he is overcome with weariness and decides to rest for a little while. When he awakens, he slakes his thirst in a nearby waterfall, then tries to find some kind of edible food.
His quest is interrupted by the arrival of an aquatic creature reminiscent of a seal or an otter, yet walking upright. It takes a moment for Ransom to realize he is dealing with an intelligent being, but once he does, he begins the process of establishing communication. As a philologist, he has a leg up on the process, and it is not long before he can converse with this hross on abstract subjects of history and philosophy. Many of the things that he is most concerned about -- warfare and competition in particular -- leave this creature utterly bewildered. It appears that they have a very limited sexually active period, at the beginning of their adult years, and once they have produced the next generation they have no further desire for the marital embrace. As a result, overpopulation and resource competition is unknown, even incomprehensible to them. The idea of wishing to mate out of its proper place in one's life, or of desiring a second mate, is repellant to them, like the idea of somehow growing a second head.
Politics proves to be an even deeper comprehension gap, even after he arrives at his rescuer's home village. Asking about their leaders gets only references to the mysterious Oyarsa, and to Maleldil the Young and the Old One. Bit by bit Ransom gathers that there are three separate species of intelligent being on Malacandra, and that they somehow all live in peace.
But his time among the hrossa is but a pause, and soon he receives his summons from an eldil, an entity he cannot see and can barely hear, who announces that he must journey to a place called Meldilorn and present himself to the mysterious Oyarsa. However, he chooses to delay just long enough to join his new-found friends in killing the hnakra, a vicious predator. It's just enough of a delay that Ransom's pursuers are able to catch up to him, with tragic results.
Thus it is with a heavy burden of both grief for a friend and shame for his own people that Ransom goes to Meldilorn to present himself to Oyarsa. On the way he nearly perishes in the thin air of the highlands, until he is rescued by Augray the sorn, and for the first time sees that species not as terrifying monsters, but as people -- and discover that they do indeed live in peace with the hrossa. Yet attempts to understand the nature of the mysterious Oyarsa give him answers that are more riddle than answer.
Augray the sorn then delivers Ransom to Meldilorn, judging him too small and frail to travel there by foot. On the way he stops in a sorn village and speaks with some of the children about Earth society, which they find as puzzling as that of Malacandra to him.
At last Ransome is delivered to Meldilorn, which proves to be an island in a shallow watercourse, such that the sorns can wade across to it. There he sees sculptures which he recognizes as the peoples of Malacandra, and then another which he interprets as the Solar System, indicating the various planets in a way that strongly suggests that something terrible has happened to Earth.
Ransom is still pondering them when Oyarsa arrives -- a being of light, or energy, whom Ransom can barely glimpse. Here the story becomes more metaphysical, particularly after the hrossa bring Weston and Devine, along with those of their own number the two humans killed, including Ransom's first friend on Malacandra. We learn the story of the Fall of Satan from the eyes of what we can only term an angel, the tutelary spirit of a heavenly body. It's an account that has fascinating parallels with Tolkien's story of the Music of the Ainur in The Silmarillion, yet in a way that strives to reconcile it with the Copernican view of the Solar System, albeit one in which the other worlds are also inhabited.
It's a fascinating idea, although it does raise some theological issues, particularly in the relation of sin and death. The peoples of Malacandra are portrayed as mortal, yet unFallen: naturally monogamous and content in their places, living without strife and save for those slain by accidents all living their full natural span. This would seem to contradict the Biblical assertion that death is the wages of sin, a statement which would suggest that the unFallen would be immortal, unless one posits that the Fall was so complete and catastrophic that all beings throughout the universe became mortal at that moment. However, one could also argue that the Bible is written for human salvation, and thus does not discuss other worlds and their inhabitants.
One thing is very certain: Oyarsa's judgment of the humans is profoundly negative. They are not welcome on Malacandra, and are not to return unless sent for. If they attempt to return as trespassers, he will deal with them, unmaking their spaceship and their physical presence while they are still in the heavens so that they will not do further harm as a result of the Bent Oyarsa's influence upon humanity.
It is interesting to note that C.S. Lewis would later take a profoundly negative view of the American and Soviet space programs, which had just begun in the last years of his life. He died in 1963, after President Kennedy's famous mandate to put a man on the moon, and said in response that humanity would likely repeat in space all the atrocities of terrestrial colonialism, until the heavens would become a source of shame rather than wonder for humanity. As it has turned out, the other planets of the Solar System are devoid of macroscopic life and potentially life-bearing exoplanets are too far away to reach by any known technology, yet I think that he would likely be pleased that the six lunar landings were followed by a retreat to Low Earth Orbit, which he would probably view as within the bounds of humanity's proper scope and reach.
Buy Out of the Silent Planet from Amazon.com
Review posted January 2, 2022.
