Out of the Silent Planet - C. S. Lewis
"The love of knowledge is a kind of madness."
C. S. Lewis is, of course, well-known for his Narnia series, and also for his writings on Christianity (from Mere Christianity to The Screwtape Letters), but his Space Trilogy isn't quite as famous. It's a peculiar genre, science fiction mixed with religion, and reminds me a little bit of certain of Ray Bradbury's stories. It's not quite like Narnia, though the connections to Christianity are easily apparent and not at all veiled.
The story itself is about Ransom, a philologist who finds himself abducted and taken to the planet Malacandra. He escapes from his captors and encounters the natives of the planet, gradually learning their language and a bit of their culture. The book's anthropological fictions are better than any of its physics, but that's probably to be expected from Lewis. (Who else would make the hero of his story a linguist?) He creates a spiritual realm which is compatible with Christianity but exists beyond simply Earth and humans, and gives an idea of what an unfallen world may be like.
It probably wouldn't satisfy most hard-core science fiction readers, but if you like Lewis' other work, it's definitely worth checking out.
Fed to jonathan's brain | May 12, 2006
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