Introducing the Space Trilogy readthrough

I suppose I may be one of the relatively few people—Christians, at least—who appreciate C. S. Lewis more as a man of letters than an apologist.

Though I'm sure my route to discovering Lewis is the same as many others': I read the Chronicles of Narnia in about third or fourth grade. (Still have that paperback box set, too.) Then, in university, I found a stash of his nonfiction books in the school library: short books like Broadcast Talks and Beyond Personality, two of the three titles that were edited into Mere Christianity. And, of course, The Screwtape Letters, still probably my favourite piece of satire.

But it was in 1991 that I borrowed Lewis's Space Trilogy for the first time from the public library in Huntsville, where I was living that winter. And as much as I appreciated Narnia, it was through Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength that I came to love Lewis as an author.

Less so as an apologist or a theologian. The revelation in The Last Battle that Aslan reckoned sincere worship of Tash as worship of himself never sat right with me even as a ten-year-old who couldn't define theology, let alone explain it. And his theory of the atonement, as expressed in Mere Christianity—Christ confessing sin vicariously as the "perfect penitent"—also rankles me. I don't question the genuineness of Lewis's faith, but he had his weak spots. As we all do, I'm sure.

As a preteen or early teen, I discovered science fiction, starting with Asimov and Clarke. It wasn't long before I found H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, too, particularly The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. They weren't the hard(ish) SF I had been accustomed to, being as much in the realm of fantasy as science fiction, but I enjoyed the style nonetheless. Out of the Silent Planet was a clear homage to the stories of men like Wells and Verne, as Lewis himself acknowledges in his preface.

I last read Out of the Silent Planet in 2004, and wrote a review then. Re-reading the novel (and the review) a few weeks ago, I don't find that I've changed my opinion at all. So while officially this is a readthrough of the Space Trilogy, in practice I'm going to deem Out of the Silent Planet done, and start instead with Perelandra.

When I read through the Chronicles of Amber last year, I settled on a rate of two chapters per week. That was doable, but it kept me busy. For this series, I'm going to stick to one chapter per week. There are 34 chapters total in the remaining two novels, and only 21 weeks left in the year, so I'm going to overrun into 2026. Which is fine; I'll just choose to read through something a bit less ambitious next year.

I have a paper copy—a paperback omnibus that calls the series the "Cosmic Trilogy" instead—but I'll be reading from ebooks instead. Fortunately, C. S. Lewis is in the public domain in Canada (though maybe not in your country, so let your conscience be your guide), and all three novels can be downloaded from Fadedpage:

• Out of the Silent Planet
• Perelandra
• That Hideous Strength

Feel free to read along. Hopefully, the first chapter of Perelandra drops tomorrow, although it might be delayed—I haven't found my writing-editing-posting rhythm just yet.