The Space Trilogy
This striking one-volume edition marks the 75th anniversary of Lewis’s classic SF trilogy featuring the adventures of Dr Ransom on Mars, Venus and Earth. It includes an exclusive Foreword compiled from letters by J.R.R. Tolkien, who inspired Lewis to write the first volume.The Space Trilogy is a remarkable work of fantasy, demonstrating the powerful imagination of C.S..Lewis. This new one-volume edition marks the 75th Anniversary of the first publication of Out of the Silent Planet with an exclusive Foreword by J.R.R. Tolkien, on whom the main character of Ransom was largely based.OUT OF THE SILENT PLANETDr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His captors are plotting to plunder the planet’s treasures and offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the creatures who live there…PERELANDRAHaving escaped from Mars, Dr Ransom is called to the paradise planet of Perelandra, or Venus. When his old enemy also arrives and is taken over by the forces of evil, Ransom finds himself in a desperate struggle to save the innocence of this Eden-like world…THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTHInvestigating the truth about her prophetic dreams, Jane Studdock encounters the fabled Dr Ransom, who is in great pain after his travels. A sinister society run by his old adversaries intends to harness the ancient powers of a resurrected Merlin in their ambition to subjugate the people of Earth…
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THE SPACE TRILOGY
OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET
PERELANDRA
THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH
by C. S. Lewis
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Out of the Silent Planet first published 1938 by John Lowe (The Bodley Head) Ltd. Perelandra first published 1943 by John Lowe (The Bodley Head) Ltd. That Hideous Strength first published 1945 by John Lowe (The Bodley Head) Ltd.
Copyright © 1938, 1943, 1945 C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd.
Foreword & Afterword excerpted from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien copyright © 1981 The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007528417
Ebook Edition © October 2013 ISBN: 9780007530335 Version: 2018-07-30
Contents
Foreword
OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET
Preface
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Postscript
PERELANDRA
Preface
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH
Preface
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Afterword
About the publisher
Mr C. S. Lewis tells me that you have allowed him to submit to you ‘Out of the Silent Planet’. I read it, of course; and I have since heard it pass a rather different test: that of being read aloud to our local club (which goes in for reading things short and long aloud). It proved an exciting serial, and was highly approved. But of course we are all rather like-minded.
It is only by an odd accident that the hero is a philologist (one point in which he resembles me) ... We originally meant each to write an excursionary ‘thriller’: a space-journey [his] and a time-journey (mine) each discovering Myth. But the space-journey has been finished and owing to my slowness and uncertainty the time-journey remains only a fragment, as you know.>[*]
I read this story in the original manuscript and was so enthralled that I could do nothing until I had finished it. My first criticism was simply that it was too short. I still think that criticism holds ... But the linguistic inventions and the philology on the whole are more than good enough. All the part about language and poetry – the glimpses of its Malacandrian nature and form – is very well done, and extremely interesting, far superior to what one usually gets from travellers in untravelled regions. The language difficulty is usually slid over or fudged: here it not only has verisimilitude but also underlying thought.
I realize of course that to be even moderately marketable such a story must pass muster on its surface value, as a vera historia of a journey to a strange land. I am extremely fond of the genre ... I thought Out of the Silent Planet did pass this test very successfully. The openings and the actual mode of transportation in time or space are always the weakest points of such tales. They are well enough worked here ... But I should have said that the story had for the more intelligent reader a great number of philosophical and mythical implications that enormously enhanced without detracting from the surface ‘adventure’. I found the blend of vera historia with mythos irresistible. There are of course certain satirical elements, inevitable in any such traveller’s tale, and also a spice of satire on other superficially similar works of ‘scientific’ fiction – such as the reference to the notion that higher intelligence will inevitably be combined with ruthlessness. The underlying myth is of course that of the Fall of Angels (and the fall of man on this our silent planet) ...
