Perelandra

 

See here for my review of Out of the Silent Planet: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/06/out-of-silent-planet.html.
The sequel to CS Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet, the middle of the Space trilogy, is very different to the first book. Its pace is much slower, especially at the beginning. It takes a while to get going properly, I'd say; something totally absent in more recent literature. The first few chapters of the story are spent describing the planet Venus in enormous detail and how the hero, Elwin Ransom, came to be there. It begins as the last book ends, in a docufictional style with the author as narrator. He goes to visit his friend Ransom at an isolated country house which he is using as a base for his expedition. Venus, called Perelandra in the language of the story, is even more Pandora-like than Malacandra. It is a deeper and more colourful planet of freshwater oceans, sea creatures, large patches of floating vegetation that are called "islands" and exotic planets and animals. As I mentioned before, scientists knew very little about our planetary neighbours when these books were published, 1938 to 1945. Mars had been observed to some extent since telescopes were invented and even crudely mapped, but Venus was a total enigma. All the astronomers knew was that it was covered with a permanent blanket of very reflective cloud. This time Ransom is not transported as a prisoner, he travels there willingly on a mission, to save the planet from the forces of evil. This time he doesn't need a spaceship, he lies in a box resembling a coffin made of ice and the Eldila carry him there almost instantly. After a while he meets a creature resembling a human woman almost perfectly, except she has green skin. I wonder if this was inspired by the children of Woolpit saga, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2024/03/hpanwo-show-542-podcast-neil-ward.html. She keeps referring to somebody called "the King", but we don't see him until the end. She is a friendly and warm individual who seems naive and almost infantile. She uses the words "young" and "old" a lot, but has no concept of aging, birth and death. For her the words mean to lack knowledge and to have knowledge.
 
After a while, the spaceship from the first novel lands and out comes Weston, something rather predictable. However, he is a changed man and not for the better. The mere ruthless cosmic expansionist from the previous story has gone from bad to worse. He is no longer even himself. What follows is one of the best descriptions of demonic possession I have ever read. In one scene Weston, or what is called "the un-man" or the thing "inside Weston's body", keeps calling Ransom's name and when Ransom answers with: "What is it?" the being replies: "Nothing." But then he just does the same thing again and again. I've known people who do that, or they say something like: "I've got something very important to tell you, Ben!" and then when I ask them what they beat around the bush and hesitate and prevaricate. There's a scene where somebody, not a demon, does that in the Left Behind series, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/05/left-behind.html. It soon becomes clear that this is a modern repeat of the Garden of Eden story. The green girl is like eve and the demon inside Weston is the snake; only this time there is a third party. Ransom is faced with the daunting task of trying to undo the tempter's persuasion and so change the history of the planet, making it different and happier to earth's. He eventually ends up fighting the un-man with force, chasing him across the ocean on the backs of aquatic creatures you can ride like a horse, up high mountains of the "fixed land", the continents, and even into dark caves. The story ends in a truly apocalyptic way. The word can mean something good, not just bad; see the background links below. We witness the coronation of the green girl, who is the rightful queen of Perelandra, to her king and the Eldila of all the planets in the "Field of Arbol", the solar system, some together to celebrate. This includes the return of Oyarsa, the supreme Eldil of Malacandra. The planet has now been freed from evil and it is now the way earth was meant to be before Adam and Eve ate the apple and everything went wrong. Perelandra is worth sticking to even if the first act is a bit slow and inert. It soon becomes fascinating and thrilling. It ends with Ransom being returned to earth; this time there is no epilogue, but there is a bit of suspense. During this scene it is hinted that the earth itself, Thulcandra, has to be restored to grace from its famous Fall and that the conclusion of the Space trilogy might be about that. I look forward to reading it. It is ironic that a couple of decades after Perelandra was published, scientists finally discovered the truth about Venus with the landing of the Venera probes. It is actually the opposite of Perelandra; very hot with a dense atmosphere and acid rain. Life as we know it could never exist on its surface. It is as close to Hell as it's possible to create in the physical world. However, CS Lewis would have an answer for this. He believed that imaginary stories possessed their own reality because, to quote him: "Stories convey the primary reality of life itself." Or as one of the characters said in another of his novels: "I'm going to live my life as a Narnian even if there really is no such thing as Narnia!"
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/08/apocalypse-soon.html .
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/01/ben-emlyn-jones-live-at-truth-seekers.html.