See here for my
review of Perelandra: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/07/perelandra.html.
When I started
That
Hideous Strength, the third and final part of CS Lewis' Space trilogy, I
had to double-check I had downloaded the correct audiobook. The first few
chapters are a story of a kind that I had never imagined Lewis writing; what
felt to me like a criminal conspiracy thriller, almost like
The Godfather. Ransom is not present at
first and apart from a very brief referral to Weston it apparently had no
connection at all to the two previous books of the trilogy. The main characters
are called Mark and Jane, an English couple who live in an imaginary grand old
university town called Edgestow, modelled on
Oxford
or
Cambridge. Mark is a lecturer at
the university. An organization with the insidious name of National Institute
for Coordinated Experiments, NICE, wants to buy a piece of beautiful forested
parkland in one of the colleges to turn into a new laboratory. The land will be
ripped up and cemented over, HS2 style. They end up offering Mark a job, which
he accepts. At the same time Jane is having clairvoyant dreams and she goes to
see a psychologist. It doesn't take long for Mark to regret his change of
career, but he soon finds out that nobody ever
leaves the NICE. The land is sold and the local countryside
destroyed; the river is rerouted down a canal. The NICE actually has a secret
objective to transform the world into a diabolical, post-modernist, robotic
technocracy. It even involves radical transhumanism and eugenics. In this way
it will sound astonishingly familiar to modern readers who are concerned about
the Tavistock Institute or the WEF. Mark is bullied with an increasing level of
intimidation. The very names of his persecutors are menacing; Hardcastle,
Wither, Frost. It is a very skilful and perceptive portrayal of subversion by
bureaucracy, social violence, induced confusion, moral blackmail, passive
aggression, exposure to degenerate artworks, ostracism and what you might call
"gaslighting". It reminds me of a scene in the recent TV series
3 Body Problem in which one of the
characters is offered a job, which they decisively refuse; yet their would-be
employers just keep talking as if the character has accepted the job, see:
https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2024/03/3-body-problem.html.
The extremely sinister individuals who make up the leadership of the NICE
remind me a bit of the angels in
Good
Omens, but without the humour, see:
https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2020/02/good-omens.html.
Readers like me who are very familiar with
The
Chronicles of Narnia might not be able to make the transition easily to
That Hideous Strength. While
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and
its sequels is aimed at children, this earlier novel is definitely adult
material. In its pages you will find black magic, violence, murder and torture.
It actually includes some horror elements.
CS Lewis wrote
That
Hideous Strength during the last couple of years before the end of World
War II when the British government had already made preparations for
"redevelopment", ostensibly to repair the damage done by the Blitz;
but, with typical bureaucratic lust, they ended up repairing much that was
undamaged. They demolished thousands of beautiful old buildings and replaced
them with new ones that were considered far less aesthetic. It was this dark
age of architecture that coined the phrase "concrete jungle". One of
my favourite city centres,
Bath,
had a very narrow escape from this "urban improvement". The
elimination of ancient structures and especially the natural world also
inspired Lewis' friend JRR Tolkien. The NICE uses tactics to achieve its ends
that we would today call false flags including engineered riots. One of the
other best elements of the narrative, and one of the most disturbing, is the
reader sees the process of corruption by evil in real-time from the viewpoint
of a central character. However, as Galdalf said, there are forces of good as
well as evil at work in the world. Ransom reappears following his return from
Venus and, together with allies, fights against the destructive and hateful
"bent" eldila. They use Jane for what in the modern world is called
"remote viewing". It's interesting that the bad guys' organization is
called "nice".
Nice is a
word that means benevolent and pleasant, but it is rarely used that way
colloquially. I've found that if you are called "nice" it is often a
subtle insult. I like warm and friendly people and I try to be one myself;
however I've learned to be wary of people who appear "too nice". Very
often that niceness is a haze of treacle intended to camouflage malevolent
aspects of their personality. The personnel at the NICE organization smile,
shake hands and speak politely and eloquently; but it's all a ruse, a crafty
lure. They are really a gang of megalomaniacs who literally want to create hell
on earth. The villains are complex and detailed, a bit like Ayn Rand's. I think
they will be very recognizable to most modern readers. For example the NICE
deputy director, Wither, talks in long monologues full of uncommon words that are
impossible to comprehend yet deliver the superficial impression of being very
clever. This reminds me of the satirical TV comedy series
Yes Minister in which a feckless statesman, James Hacker, is
constantly manipulated by his sneaky assistant Sir Humphrey Appleby. The evil
that has infected the earth cannot be beaten by any physical weapon. It is in
essence a spiritual war and good people will need to call on the ancient
mythological forces of virtue to win it. Such as it is in real life, I believe.
Our battle is between the divine and the profane. In the story, this battle is
played out and the book's connection to the rest of the Space trilogy is made
clear. The isolation caused by the "bent" forces controlling the
earth is lifted. There is a brief but touching afterword by the author's best
friend and fellow writer, JRR Tolkien.
