![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd26c430b-dc24-4b3f-9c00-76aba60a10b7_1024x1024.jpeg)
Dear Friends,
Step into my study! Shall I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!
I’ve at long last begun my third attempt to read C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy and it’s going a lot better than the previous ones. I’ve now finished Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, and am making good progress through That Hideous Strength. I suspect that when all is said and done, I’ll have a lot to say about this series as a whole, so stay tuned. Or pick up the series and read it for yourself so that you’ll more easily track with future Pipe & Dram issues. We’re going to talk about angels and archangels and the Trinity and Greek mythology and the cosmic ramifications of Christ’s redemption and the nature of evil and all sorts of fun things.
Today I thought I would share some preliminary thoughts since they are fresh on my mind. First, I am actually glad I didn’t really engage with this series until my middle age. I just don’t know how many of Lewis’s deeply theological and deeply profound ideas I could have really grasped in my younger and less educated years. Reading it as a theologian is quite exhilarating. His incredibly vivid imagination is tethered to some really sound theological insights, even when they are speculative.
I imagine that Lewis has been criticized for not really writing “science fiction.” The genre is simply a utilitarian vehicle for him to present an agenda, that being a pretty forthright advocacy of the Christian story and worldview. Really, it is a work of Christian apologetics. I think this criticism, as a criticism, is poppycock, of course. Every single science fiction writer is using the genre to advocate for their overall worldview, and there are probably zero exceptions. Asimov wanted people to be atheists. Heinlein was a pristine humanist. Orson Scott Card cannot help his characters from having endless and tedious monologues about the gods and the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. What makes Lewis different is that he uses the genre in explicitly Christian ways. And that alone makes him one of kind and very refreshing.
Now, for a few random highlights. In the “Authors Note” to Perelandra, I adore—just adore—how Lewis says “All the human characters in this story are purely fictitious and none of them are allegorical.” That’s a very sly way of saying that his non-human characters are quite possibly real. That’s “based,” as the kids say these days.
I am delighted that Lewis, in large part, is emphasizing something about spiritual warfare that tracks so closely with some things I have written. The war is not something happening “up there.” It is happening down here. This, the realm of our mundane everyday lives, is the battleground, the locus of spiritual action. Already in That Hideous Strength he’s shown that a boring administrative meeting of College fellows can be the site of a great spiritual battle. It just never looks like it.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Square Inch to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.