Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis

Hey guys. You remember last year when Emma went to college and only posted once in a blue moon and I was all "Pfft, Emma. WEAK" and she was all "Shut up Angela, college is busy." Well... She's right. It is pretty busy. In fact, I should be writing a response to a play right now but guess what? Not happening. Well, not now at least. Though actually my drama teacher loves me so perhaps I could get away with it... I didn't read a play and completely BSed a response and she based her whole lesson off of it. So she loves me now. And I also have further proof that a PhD in BSing is a viable option for me. I actually think I was awarded one when I was born, you know? I may not know what I'm talking about, but damn can I make it sound good. Now we pray she never, ever finds this blog. Ever. Anyway, other differences between college and high school: Guys are attracted to me? What? Like four guys like me. Weird. ...And, that's about it. Some similarities? The people in my English class undoubtedly hate me, as I'm just kicking ass here. Guys, it's what I do. (Puts on sunglasses.) Mmm-hmmm.

Anyway... like I said, Emma is right. There's not a lot of time to read and write about stuff. It took an obscene amount of time to finish this one book. Seriously, what? It's like one-hundred fifty-eight pages. Plus, CS Lewis wrote it, so you think I'd be all ZOMG MUST READ EVERY WORD OF IT THIS VERY SECOND. Speaking of, I misquoted CS Lewis on a quiz in drama and there's another reason my teacher loves me. High five?

Let's see, this book comes completely one hundred percent out of CS Lewis's and JRR Tolkien's bromance. According to Scheiber, this book came out of a deal between the two. JRR Tolkien was all, "You write a book about space travel and I'll write a book about time travel and it will be so RAD." Or vice versa. Whatever it may be, what came of that is The Space Trilogy (this is first in the trilogy) and Tolkien wrote The Silmarillion. (This anecdote isn't backed up by Wikipedia, but I actually trust Scheiber more than Wikipedia on this matter.) And it probably was rad. Well, maybe, I haven't read the other two bits of this trilogy and Fabrizzles doesn't seem particularly affectionate towards The Silmarillion, which isn't a good sign at all. But for Tolkien and CS Lewis it was probably really rad, they probably went on a date or something. Or, like, ninety.

So, right, the book itself. So there's this doctor, JRR Tolkien--er, Doctor Ransom, who is having a perfectly average walk in the country, enjoying his vacation and whatnot. The long and short of this is, he ends up at a house where a commotion is going on within. Ransom attempts to break it up and instead gets drugged and knocked out and he wakes up on a space ship. By the time he lands on the planet Malacandra, he discovers he's intended to be a human sacrifice for the residents of the planet. Not wanting to die, he escapes his captors and wanders about on the planet, which is pretty much most of the book.

"He walked fairly fast, and doggedly, without looking much about him, like a man trying to shorten the way with some interesting train of thought. He was tall, but a little round-shouldered, about thirty-five to forty years of age, and dressed with a particular kind of shabbiness which marks a member of the intelligentsia on holiday. He might easily be mistaken for a doctor or schoolmaster at first sight, though he had not the man-of-the-world air of the one or the indefinable breeziness of the other. In fact, he was a philologist, and fellow of a Cambridge college. His name was Ransom" (10). Are you so sure that it wasn't JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis? Because I'm pretty sure the fellow you just described is actually John Ronald Reagan Tolkien Black Child. Also, I have really bad insomnia which my roommate exacerbates and a few nights ago I was up for two hours writing and doodling in the dark. I managed to get a half hour of sleep before my alarm rang, but that's beside the point: in the morning, I found a scribble on those papers which reads as follows: "Q: What was JRR Tolkie[n]? A: A phiLOLogist!!!"

The men in the house who eventually abduct Ransom are Devine and Weston. The house's gates are locked--the reason why he wants to go in at all is because he met a woman who explained her son worked there, and she was worried that he wasn't home yet, and he promised he'd go and get the boy. So he's a little agitated that these gates are locked. He, not knowing the men inside yet, refers to the as-yet professor fellow as an eccentric, with the insult--"the sort of man who kept his gate locked in the country" (12). ...Well, I thought it was a funny insult...

Anyway, the boy and the men appear to be struggling. Knowing they've been caught in the act, they let the boy go free and talk it off. It becomes clear later that they intended to send the boy up... Well. Ransom, a little hesitantly, takes them up on the offer for refreshments and rest.

"'I'm on a walking-tour,' said Ransom... 'Can the attraction of it be explained to the uninitiate?' asked Devine... 'To begin with, I like the actual walking--' 'God! You must have enjoyed the army'... 'No, no. It's just the opposite of the army. The whole point about the army is that you are never alone for a moment and can never choose where you're going or even what part of the road you're walking on. On a walking-tour you are absolutely detached. you stop where you like and go on when you like. As long as it lasts you need consider and consult no one but yourself'... 'But can you even disappear like that? No wife, no young, no aged but honest parent or anything of that sort? ...Do you really mean to say that no one knows where you are or when you ought to get back, and no one can get a hold of you?'" (19). Ransom, you idiot. I know you know Devine from school but still, you shouldn't let people know thing like that, especially if you don't trust them. That's how people die in horror movies, Ransom!

Also, I was going to use this as more proof that CS Lewis can't spell his bromantic partner's name correctly, but apparently he was in the war too, so that's probably just him speaking straight-up through Ransom. Also, I really like the section before Devine gets all sinister on him.

Okay, so Devine obviously knocks Ransom out and when he awakens they're in space. Ransom is more than a little shocked at his situation and also that no-one has heard of the events because, come on, it's kind of hard to conceal a rocket ship. But Weston explains the momentous effects of his ship and what it means (which rather disgusts Ransom and the inhabitants of Malacandra, but we'll get there when we get there): "'As far as we know, we are are doing what has never been done in the history of man, perhaps never in the history of the universe. We have learned how to jump off the speck of matter on which our species began; infinity, and therefore perhaps eternity, is being put into the hands of the human race. You cannot be so small-minded as to think that the rights or the life of an individual or of a million individuals are of the slightest importance in comparison to this.' 'I happen to disagree,' said Ransom, 'And I always have disagreed, even about vivisection'" (29).

As Weston clearly has no qualms about leading Ransom to what he believes will be Ransom's demise, or the demise of even a million, it makes him sort of a strange hypocrite, as he clearly wants to give humankind "infinity" and "eternity". As Oyarsa (one of the inhabitants of Malacandra) will put it later on: "'You do not love any one of your race... You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are'" (137). He simply cares for mankind continuing to regenerate and the race to survive, but balls on the individual people. As long as man survives somehow, it is a success. Oyarsa's speech confuses me a little, but I'll touch back upon this later, okay? (Regardless of any confusion, knowing CS Lewis, it's clear from this if it wasn't before that Weston has been marked. This isn't the sort of thought-pattern he'd approve of.)

Oh, and I thought Ransom's rejoinder was a tad humorous, even if it was not entirely intended to be; I honestly cannot tell.

Ah, and this is just a side little note, which is mostly me nitpicking: in the ship, the men can't really talk often for fear they'll waste the air. CS Lewis... they're called plants. They make oxygen. Problem: solved.

"For the most part [Devine's] conversation ran on the things he would do when he got back to earth: ocean-going yachts, the most expensive women and a big place on the Riviera figured largely in his plans. 'I'm not running all these risks for fun'" (33). These two sentences are basically the equivalent of CS Lewis taking a bullhorn and shouting, "THIS IS A BAD MAN!" two feet away from you. CS Lewis doesn't approve of gettin' the bitches, or that other stuff. And Devine's completely serious comment just cements it.

"A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off of [Ransom]. He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fantasy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now--now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. he could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: he saw now that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes--and here, with how many more! No: space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens--the heavens which declared the glory..." (34). CS Lewis and Carl Sagan just high-fived in the hereafter.

And, to further mark the two as bad people, Ransom overhears Weston telling Devine that he may keep some of the aliens (though it seems strange to refer to them as such) as pets, and sleep with them if he wants (and should interbreed with them in fact, if he's so willing to stay on the planet). Devine gets disgusted, but still, CS Lewis is spray painting on the wall outside of your room: "THESE MEN ARE LOATHSOME THEMSELVES!"

Ah, so eventually they do land, and Ransom escapes the two bent men. Eventually he runs into a Hross, a friendly creature that's like a big talking otter-stoat creature. Before it notices him, it talks to itself, and Ransom gets all excited because, surprise! Ransom is a phiLOLogist. Immediately, upon realizing the creature has its own strange tongue and is actually speaking, he becomes excited at the prospect of studying the language and perhaps even making a book of it.

"The love of knowledge is a kind of madness. In the fraction of a second which it took Ransom to decide that the creature was really talking, and while he still knew that he might be facing instant death, his imagination had leaped over every fear and hope and probability of his situation to follow the dazzling project of making a Malacandrian grammar. An Introduction to the Malacandrian language--The Lunar verb--A Concise Martian-English Dictionary... the titles flitted through his mind. And what might one discover from the speech of a non-human race? The very form of language itself, the principle behind all possible languages, might fall into his hands" (56). John, your BFFL is taking pot-shots at you!

Well, the alien proves to be much more 'human' than either of Ransom's companions. Even though they cannot communicate or anything, its first action is completely one of kindliness and brotherhood: it offers him some of his drink. Then it introduces itself, teaches Ransom some very basic words of its language, and feeds him.

"The huge, seal-like creature seated beside him became unbearably ominous. It seemed friendly; but it was very big, very black, and he knew nothing about it... Was it really as rational as it appeared? It was only many days later that Ransom discovered how to deal with these sudden losses of confidence. They arose when the rationality of the hross tempted you to think of it as a man. Then it became abominable--a man seven feet high, with a snaky body, covered, face and all, with thick black animal hair, and whiskered like a cat. But starting from the other end you had an animal with everything an animal ought to have--glossy coat, liquid eye, sweet breath and whitest teeth--and added to all these, as though Paradise had never been lost and earliest dreams were true, the charm of speech and reason. Nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other. It all depended on the point of view" (59).

So, the hrossa accept Ransom almost like that. Unsurprisingly, they have a theology which sounds oddly familiar. Maleldil is the being which made the world, but he lives with the Old One who is "'not the sort... that he has to live anywhere'" (69). They go into this later on, but the bare-bones explanation is of course that the Old One is God and Maleldil is... also... God. Just an able-to-be-comprehended by mortals version of God. Mayhap.

There are three classifications of sentient aliens on this planet, by the way. They're all equally amiable (though the sorns are fearful to look at, hence the men automatically fear them and why Devine and Weston assume they want human sacrifice when really they're offering for the men to meet their prime religious fellow-local deity sort of deal). The smallest and squattest are good builders and love digging for metals and then solder it to make things. The Hrossa are the best singers and writers; they especially love writing poetry. The sorns are described as the most intelligent by the Hrossa in that they're good astronomers and act almost as priests or translators for Oyarsa, and they record history--so they admit their intelligence even if the sorns care little for poetry, a fact that totally befuddles the hrossa. The hrossa also find it kind of surprising that the sorns cannot swim and cannot fish. Sounds like somebody was sharing ideas with another old Brit... (Well, they pretty much just hung out all the time and did just that, so it's no real surprise that that should be the case...

And this is just a comment on how the book is formatted: in cases where the plural is possessive (ex workers', doctors', etc) instead of just doing the one apostrophe, the editor put a set of quotation marks (so it would be doctors", workers", etc). It's no biggie, really, but it bothered the hell out of me.

The hrossa also practice pretty admirable customs, social commentary from CS Lewis. Which isn't a huge surprise because he wrote the book...? Well, in this case the idea that is being explained to him is that hrossa only mate once in their lives with one mate (hrossa, so far as I can figure, produce litters), which keeps from stressing available resources, unlike man. (A side-note, the hrossa also do not understand war or why it should ever happen. They also share freely and without any question.)

"'Is the begetting of young not a pleasure among the hrossa?' 'A very great one, Hman. This is what we call love.' 'If a thing is a pleasure, a hman wants it again. he might want the pleasure more often than the number of young that could be fed.' It took Hyoi a long time to get the point. 'You mean,' he said slowly, 'that he might do it not only in one or two years of his life but again?' 'Yes.' 'But why? Would he want his dinner all day or want to sleep after he had slept? I do not understand.' 'But a dinner comes every day. This love, you say, comes only once while the hross lives?' 'But it takes his whole life. When he is young he has to look for his mate; and then he has to court her; and then he begets young; then he rears them; then he remembers all this, and it boils inside him and makes it into poems and wisdom.' 'But the pleasure he must be content only to remember?'" (74). I'm just going to interject really quickly here. I find 'boils' to be a strange choice of words. I mean, it makes sense, but boil usually has negative connotations, like "he was boiling mad" or "his temper was at the boiling point", and so on.

Anyway, in response to Ransom's question, Hyoi (the hross) explains as follows: "'A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing... What you call remembering is the last part of pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be as I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then--that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it'" (74).

Thus, Ransom (and other men) are focused on the physical, sexual pleasure of begetting. The hross see it all together as one big, great, pleasureful... thing. They're not focused on the sex, they're focused on the whole... The best word I can think of--the better word I can think of--would be joy. Also, Hyoi is talking about the corruption of memory, but corruption in a good, affectionate way. Kind of like how some people romanticize their childhood but it actually was really lame and actually kind of sucked. Of course, Hyoi (and most other people) don't have to worry about accidentally stumbling back into their past and getting the tar beaten out of them and realizing that their childhood sucked...

"'But a world is not meant to last for ever, much less a race; that is not Maledil's way'" (100). A Sorn tells Ransom this. Remember what Weston said...?

"[The sorns] were astonished at what [Ransom] had to tell them of human history--of war, slavery, and prostitution. 'It is because they have no Oyarsa'... 'It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself'" (102).

"'Your thought must be at the mercy of your blood'" (102).

So eventually, Ransom is brought to Oyarsa, which... I guess you'd say he was an archangel?Might I add that he's not exactly ethereal as well. "'Have you servants out in the heavens?' 'Where else? There is nowhere else.' 'But you, Oyarsa, are here on Malacandra, as I am.' 'But Malacandra, like all worlds, float in heaven'" (119). Okay, I thought this was cool. I mean, you say heaven and immediately one thinks of religious connotations: it is above us, in the clouds, and for the most part it is believed God(s) live there. You say space though, and you think of the planets and stars and... you know. Space. I mean, sometimes the air above us is called the 'heavens', but normally those two ideas aren't really collapsed, even when you use that phrasing. But CS Lewis just successfully collapsed it without hardly breaking a sweat. And in that he's kind reminding us that heaven is all around us... but... in a scientific way... Well, it's a different if not new (new for me!) way of phrasing and thinking, and also yet another example of CS Lewis's rad-ness.

And Oyarsa isn't even a real name either--its more like a generic name. From what I understand, each Oyarsa 'creature' was given its own planet, or a group of them were or some such...? Well, these Oyarsas communicate between each other through the heavens, but Earth is silent and doesn't communicate, because Earth's Oyarsa was great and intelligent, but he became bent. He then wanted to travel to other worlds and ruin them (parallels with Weston and Devine, anyone?) but he was bound to Earth. I trust you can figure out who exactly our Oyarsa is. If you still need some hints: "'We think that Maledil would not give it up utterly to the Bent One, and there are stories among us that He has taken strange counsel and dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One'" (120). I also find this curious because I'm pretty sure that CS Lewis implied that only our planet is fraught with misfortune and suffering.

"'Bent creatures are full of fears'" (121).

"But Weston did not know the Malacandrian word for laugh: indeed, it was not a word he understood very well in any language" (127).

Now, Weston is eventually taken away from Oyarsa's counsel. Oyarsa instructs that his head be soaked in water in an attempt to clear it or at least humble him. He's brought back of course, and the hross tell a story reminiscent of the incidents with Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew. "'We dipped [Weston's] head in the cold water seven times, but the seventh time something fell off it... Then some said we had done your will with the seven dips, and others said not. In the end we dipped it seven times more. We hope that was right. The creature talked a lot between the dips, and most between the second and seven, but we could not understand it'" (131). Uncle Andrew faints in Narnia, and the animals attempt to revive him, though they're not sure what he is, having never seen a man before. They decide that he is a tree of some sort, so they bury him to his knees in mud and the elephants douse him in water. Eventually he begins to awaken and speak, and the animals attempt to be even more helpful by feeding him--throwing nuts and honey and more to him. Uncle Andrew views this all as an assault (as he refuses to accept what he sees and so he becomes unable to comprehend it) and so fumbles about and sobs for brandy. Because he becomes unable to understand the animals, they can't understand him--except for that one word, which they christen him with (because he "said it so often").

Okay, back to Oyarsa's statement on 137. He ends what I have already quoted (Ctrl+F that because I am lazy) with "'...What you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left'" (137). So... with the "'begotten by your kind as they now are'" (137), would that be saying that what Weston really cares for is just sex itself? Which would be an exact parallel of the hross view of propagation, and most likely the other sentient beings of Malacandra--most likely, the views of inhabitants of any other planets as well. So... yeah. Lust. Seven deadly sins. Bam.

One thing that bothers me is how CS Lewis steps into this story. He does this a lot in The Chronicles of Narnia, saying things like "I won't go into details of this that or the other thing", "Surely you wouldn't want to hear about that" and so on. However, this book sounds more like--maybe not that he was writing it expressly for adults, but it gives the feeling of being more like one of his books intended for adults, like say The Screwtape Letters. I suppose the intelligent way of saying what I just said would be to say it seems more mature. But being that it feels that way, his interjections look silly and are also a little annoying. In one case it is completely unavoidable (Oyarsa has a private conversation with Ransom about the workings of the universe, and of course CS Lewis can't very well go on about that) but even so. I am going to complain like it's my job.

Although the book ends like a normal book would, CS Lewis throws in an epilogue and also a letter to CS Lewis from JRR--eh--Ransom. They were, according to that, acquaintances--of course, the word bromantics probably wasn't coined until recently, and BFFs probably wasn't either. Still, we all know that that's a huge downplay on what recent scholars have come to call "one of the most intense bromances of all time".*

Okay. So the book was pretty cool, and it's also pretty standalone which is also nice, because I've never seen the other books in this series in existence. It's not my favorite by CS Lewis, but considering what it's up against, is anyone really surprised? It's not really sci-fi; a hardcore sci-fi fan is going to be disappointed. But I feel like a Ray Bradbury fan would enjoy it, since he tends to have sci-fi elements, but they tend to focus on other things more. So... Yay Ray Bradbury? I also have two more comments. About each planet having its own archangel-esque being, apparently that was a popular Medieval idea. It's discussed a little--well, in a footnote--in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Also, I didn't realize the title of this book until just now (as in, what it refers to). I am fantastic.

MLA Citation information: Lewis, CS. Out of the Silent Planet. Scribner: New York, 2003.

Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Shores of California by The Dresden Dolls

This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Take a look at that lawman beating up the wrong man, I wonder if he'll ever know he's in the best-selling show, is there life on Mars?

Also: Emma, I saw your post. I could lie and say I'd do the same, but let's face it. My twitter (unfortunately) gives people a pretty clear idea of my life without a blog post being necessary. What I mean to say is, I can sum my twitter up in this: British actors, LEGOs, bad puns/jokes, Quoting CS Lewis/song lyrics, Obscure jokes about obscure movies/books, jokes about books in general, dinosaurs, David Bowie, Doctor Who, and Kool-Aid. No further explanation is required other than please don't beat me up.

*D., Angela. Text Message to Emma M. Oscar/Wilde: Connecticut, 2010.