The Space Trilogy or Cosmic Trilogy is a series
of science fiction novels by C. S. Lewis,
famous for his later series The Chronicles
of Narnia. A philologist named Elwin Ransom
is the hero of the first two novels and an
important character in the third.
== Contents ==
=== 
Summary ===
The books in the trilogy are:
Out of the Silent Planet (1938), set mostly
on Mars (Malacandra). In this book, Elwin
Ransom voyages to Mars and discovers that
Earth is exiled from the rest of the solar
system. Far back in Earth's past, it fell
to an angelic being known as the Bent Oyarsa,
and now, to prevent contamination of the rest
of the Solar System ("The Field of Arbol"),
it is known as "the silent planet" (Thulcandra).
Perelandra (1943), set mostly on Venus. Also
known as Voyage to Venus. Here Dr Ransom journeys
to an unspoiled Venus in which the first humanoids
have just emerged.
That Hideous Strength (1945), set on Earth.
A scientific think tank called the N.I.C.E.
(The National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments)
is secretly in touch with demonic entities
who plan to ravage and lay waste to planet
Earth.In 1946, the publishing house Avon (now
an imprint of HarperCollins) published a version
of That Hideous Strength specially abridged
by C. S. Lewis entitled The Tortured Planet.
=== Publication history ===
Lewis, C.S. Out of the Silent Planet. London
: The Bodley Head, 1938.
Lewis, C.S. Perelandra: A Novel. London : The
Bodley Head, 1943.
Lewis, C.S. That Hideous Strength: A Modern
Fairy-Tale for Grown-ups. London : The Bodley
Head, 1945.
Lewis, C.S. The Dark Tower and Other Stories.
Walter Hooper, ed. London: Collins, 1977.
=== The Dark Tower ===
An unfinished manuscript published posthumously
in 1977, named The Dark Tower by Walter Hooper,
its editor, features Elwin Ransom in a less
central role as involved with an experiment
that allows its participants to view on a
special screen their own location in a parallel
universe. Its authenticity was impeached by
Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog in her scholarly
criticism of Walter Hooper, but in 2003 Alastair
Fowler established its authenticity when he
wrote in the Yale Review that he saw Lewis
writing the manuscript that would be subsequently
published as The Dark Tower, heard him reading
it, and discussed it with him.
== Influences and approach ==
Lewis stated in a letter to Roger Lancelyn
Green:
What immediately spurred me to write was Olaf
Stapledon's Last and First Men … and an
essay in J.B.S. Haldane's Possible Worlds
both of wh[ich] seemed to take the idea of
such [space] travel seriously and to have
the desperately immoral outlook wh[ich] I
try to pillory in Weston. I like the whole
interplanetary ideas as a mythology and simply
wished to conquer for my own (Christian) p[oin]t
of view what has always hitherto been used
by the opposite side. I think H. G. Wells's
First Men in the Moon the best of the sort
I have read …
The other main literary influence was David
Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (1920): "The
real father of my planet books is David Lindsay’s
A Voyage to Arcturus, which you also will
revel in if you don’t know it. I had grown
up on Wells's stories of that kind: it was
Lindsay who first gave me the idea that the
‘scientifiction’ appeal could be combined
with the ‘supernatural’ appeal."The books
are not especially concerned with technological
speculation, and in many ways read like fantasy
adventures combined with themes of biblical
history and classical mythology. Like most
of Lewis's mature writing, they contain much
discussion of contemporary rights and wrongs,
similar in outlook to Madeleine L'Engle's
Kairos series. Many of the names in the trilogy
reflect the influence of Lewis's friend J.R.R.
Tolkien's Elvish languages.
== Setting ==
=== 
Ransom ===
Ransom appears very similar to Lewis himself:
a university professor, expert in languages
and medieval literature, unmarried (Lewis
did not marry until his fifties), wounded
in World War I and with no living relatives
except for one sibling. Lewis, however, apparently
intended for Ransom to be partially patterned
after his friend and fellow Oxford professor
J. R. R. Tolkien, since Lewis is presented
as novelizing Ransom's reminiscences in the
epilogue of Out of the Silent Planet and is
a character-narrator in the frame tale for
Perelandra. In That Hideous Strength Ransom,
with his royal charisma and casual acceptance
of the supernatural, appears more like Charles
Williams (or some of the heroes in Williams's
books).In Out of the Silent Planet it is suggested
that "Ransom" is not the character's real
name but merely an alias for a respectable
professor whose reputation might suffer from
his recounting such a journey to the planet
Mars.
In the following books, however, this is unaccountably
dropped and it is made clear that Ransom is
the character's true name. As befits a philologist,
he provides an etymology: the name does not
derive from the modern word "ransom" but rather
is a contraction of the Old English for "Ranolf's
Son". This may be another allusion to Tolkien,
a professor of Old English.
=== Cosmology ===
Ransom gets much information on cosmology
from the Oyarsa (presiding angel) of Malacandra,
or Mars. Maleldil, the son of the Old One,
ruled the Field of Arbol, or solar system,
directly. But then the Bent One (the Oyarsa
of Earth) rebelled against Maleldil and all
the eldila (much as Morgoth rebelled against
Eru and the other Valar in Tolkien's Silmarillion)
of Deep Heaven (outer space). In response
to this act, the Bent One suffered confinement
on Earth where he first inflicted great evil.
Thus he made Earth a silent planet, cut off
from the Oyéresu of other planets, hence
the name 'Thulcandra', the Silent Planet,
which is known throughout the Universe. Maleldil
tried to reach out to Thulcandra and became
a man to save the human race. According to
the Green Lady, Tinidril (Mother of Perelandra,
or Venus), Thulcandra is favored among all
the worlds, because Maleldil came to it to
become a man.
In the Field of Arbol, the outer planets are
older, the inner planets newer.
Earth will remain a silent planet until the
end of the great Siege of Deep Heaven against
the Oyarsa of Earth. The siege starts to end
(with the Oyéresu of other worlds descending
to Earth) at the finale of the Trilogy, That
Hideous Strength. But there is still much
to happen until the fulfillment of what is
predicted in the Book of Revelation, when
the Oyéresu put an end to the rule of the
Bent Eldil and, on the way, smash the Moon
to fragments. This, in turn, will not be "The
End of the World", but merely "The Very Beginning"
of what is still to come.
=== Eldila ===
The eldila (singular eldil) are super-human
extraterrestrials. The human characters in
the trilogy encounter them on various planets,
but the eldila themselves are native to interplanetary
and interstellar space ("Deep Heaven"). They
are barely visible as pillars of faint, shifting
light.
Certain very powerful eldila, the Oyéresu
(singular Oyarsa), control the course of nature
on each of the planets of the Solar System
(similar to the Valar in The Silmarillion).
They (and maybe all the eldila) can manifest
in corporeal forms. The title Oyarsa seems
to indicate the function of leadership, regardless
of the leader's species; when the Perelandran
human Tor assumes rule of his world, he styles
himself "Tor-Oyarsa-Perelendri" (presumably
"Tor, Ruler of Perelandra").
The eldila are science-fictionalized depictions
of angels, immortal and holy, with the Oyéresu
perhaps being angels of a higher order. (As
Lewis implies in Chapter 22 of Out of the
Silent Planet, the name Oyarsa was suggested
by Oyarses, the name given in Bernard Silvestris's
Cosmographia to the governors of the celestial
spheres. Bernard's word was almost certainly
a corruption—or a deliberate alteration—of
Greek οὐσιάρχης [ousiarches, "lords
of being"], used with the same meaning in
the Hermetic Asclepius.) The eldila resident
on—actually, imprisoned in—Earth are "dark
eldila", fallen angels or demons. The Oyarsa
of Earth, the "Bent One", is Satan. Ransom
later meets the Oyéresu of both Mars and
Venus, who are described as being masculine
(but not actually male) and feminine (but
not actually female), respectively. The Oyéresu
of other worlds have characteristics like
those of the corresponding Classical gods;
for instance, the Oyarsa of Jupiter gives
a feeling of merriment (joviality).
=== Hnau ===
Hnau is a word in the Old Solar language which
refers to "rational animals" such as Humans.
In the book, the Old Solar speaker specifies
that God is not hnau, and is unsure whether
Eldila (immortal angelic beings) can be termed
"hnau", deciding that if they are hnau, they
are a different kind of hnau than Humans or
Martians.
The term was adopted by some other people,
including Lewis's friend J. R. R. Tolkien,
who used the term in his (unpublished during
his lifetime) The Notion Club Papers - distinguishing
hnau from beings of pure spirit or spirits
able to assume a body (which is not essential
to their nature). Similarly, a character in
James Blish's science fiction novel A Case
of Conscience wonders whether a particular
alien is a hnau, which he defines as having
"a rational soul".
In recent times the term has been used by
some philosophers, for example in Thomas I.
White's "Is a Dolphin a Person?", where he
asks if Dolphins are persons, and if such,
if they can also be reckoned as hnau: that
is sentient beings of the same level as humans.
Other uses of the term include the term as
used by some Christians: here as with Tolkien's
use of the term "hnau" refers to sentient
beings possessing independent will, and thus
by extension a soul.
=== Old Solar language ===
According to the Space Trilogy's cosmology,
the speech of all the inhabitants of the Field
of Arbol is the Old Solar or Hlab-Eribol-ef-Cordi.
Only Earth lost the language, due to the Bent
One's influence. Old Solar can be likened
to the Elvish languages invented by Lewis's
friend, Tolkien. The grammar is little known,
except for the plurals of nouns. The plurals
of some words (hross, eldil) are simple, only
adding a final -a or -i; others (as for Oyarsa,
sorn, hnakra), are quite complex broken plurals,
adding an internal -é-, and adding or altering
a final vowel (usually to -i or -u), and may
also include internal metathesis (Oyéresu,
séroni, hnéraki).
Terms used throughout the trilogy Eldil, pl.
Eldila—an everlasting, rational, "multidimensional
energy being" that is not organic; an angel.
Some act in the capacity of "Oyarsa" of a
planet.
Field of Arbol—the Solar System
Glund or Glundandra—Jupiter
hnau or 'nau—a rational being, capable of
speech, intellect, and personhood, and containing
a soul.
handra—a planet or land
hrū—blood
Lurga—Saturn
Malacandra—Mars
Maleldil— the Christian God, described in
Perelandra as having been incarnated as Jesus.
Neruval—hapax legomenon in Perelandra and,
from context, apparently Uranus
Oyarsa, pl. Oyéresu(Title)—Ruler of a planet,
a higher-order angel, perhaps an arch-angel.
Perelandra—Venus
Sulva—The Moon
Thulcandra—Earth, literally "The Silent
Planet"
Viritrilbia—Mercury
== Parallels and adaptations ==
=== 
Other written works ===
The cosmology of all three books—in which
the Oyéresu of Mars and Venus somewhat resemble
the corresponding gods from classical mythology—derives
from Lewis's interest in medieval beliefs.
Lewis discusses these in his book The Discarded
Image (published much later than the Ransom
Trilogy). Lewis was intrigued with the ways
medieval authors borrowed concepts from pre-Christian
religion and science and attempted to reconcile
them with Christianity, and with the lack
of a clear distinction between natural and
supernatural phenomena in medieval thought.
The Space Trilogy also plays on themes in
Lewis's essay "Religion and Rocketry", which
argues that as long as humanity remains flawed
and sinful, our exploration of other planets
will tend to do them more harm than good.
Furthermore, much of the substance of the
argument between Ransom and Weston in Perelandra
is found in Lewis's book Miracles. Links between
Lewis's Space Trilogy and his other writings
are discussed at great length in Michael Ward's
Planet Narnia and in Kathryn Lindskoog's C.S.
Lewis: Mere Christian.J.R.R. Tolkien was a
friend and sometime mentor to Lewis. In That
Hideous Strength, Lewis alludes several times
to Tolkien's Atlantean civilization Numinor
(spelt Númenor by Tolkien), saying in the
foreword “Those who would like to learn
further about Numinor and the True West must
(alas!) await the publication of much that
still exists only in the MSS. of my friend,
Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.” Villains in
both Tolkien's Lord of the Rings cycle and
here are very hostile toward the natural world
(specifically in the wanton destruction of
trees in Tolkien's and the manipulation of
life in Lewis's).
Stephen R. Lawhead's Song of Albion trilogy
contains numerous references to and parallels
to the Space Trilogy. The main character is
an Oxford student whose first name is Lewis.
The books combine themes of Christianity and
pre-Christian mythology, while the plot involves
materialistic endeavors to gain access to
forbidden worlds for material gain. There
is also a minor villain named Weston.
John C. Wright's War of the Dreaming duology
also references the Space Trilogy, with Sulva
as a name for the Moon and references to fallen
'planetary angels'.
Arthur C. Clarke's three science fiction novels
The Sands of Mars, Earthlight, and Islands
in the Sky have been published together as
The Space Trilogy (in 2001), but have no connection
to the works of Lewis, and are in fact only
loosely connected to each other.
=== Popular music ===
Christian horror punk band Blaster the Rocket
Man, whose lyrics frequently subsist on monster
themes, borrowed heavily from The Space Trilogy
in their album The Monster Who Ate Jesus.
Their song "Ransom vs. The Unman" is a direct
retelling of the struggle between Ransom and
the Unman in Perelandra. The very next song,
entitled "March of the Macrobes," alludes
to the N.I.C.E. Institute's attempts to disembody
the heads of those who wish to gain immortality
with lines such as, "Leave flesh behind / There's
only mind / Or set the brain apart / To elevate
the heart / Whatever happened to the individual?
(N.I.C.E.) / Where is his soul? (R.A.P.E.)."
Lastly, "Tundra Time on Thulcandra" is a tribute
to Out of the Silent Planet, with an allusion
to the planet Perelandra as well. "Malacandra
on my mind / Perelandra all the time / Nevermind
it's tundra / It's tundra time."
Becoming the Archetype, a Christian progressive
death metal band, produced an album titled
Dichotomy which was inspired by The Space
Trilogy. The album explores themes that are
prevalent in the trilogy: biology versus technology
and man versus machine.Circle of Dust, a Christian
industrial band, reference The Space Trilogy
on Disengage, an album which includes two
instrumental tracks named Thulcandra and Perelandra.
The band's 2016 album Machines of Our Disgrace
features a track named Malacandra.
Progressive rock band Glass Hammer have based
the concept of their album Perelandra on the
stories of The Space Trilogy and The Chronicles
of Narnia.
The Christian band Massivivid has two songs
that contain quotes from That Hideous Strength.
Progressive hard rock band King's X titled
their first album Out of the Silent Planet
and included a song of the same name on their
second album, Gretchen Goes to Nebraska.
German progressive rock band Eden titled their
second album Perelandra.
Iron Maiden recorded a song called "Out of
the Silent Planet" on their album Brave New
World.
Hip-hop artist and singer-songwriter Heath
McNease has a song titled "Perelandra" on
his C.S. Lewis tribute album, The Weight of
Glory.
A Christian metalcore band is named Silent
Planet, after the first book of the trilogy.
They currently have one full-length LP and
two EPs.
Space Music composer Kevin Braheny, on his
album The Way Home, has a track named "Perelandra".
== Notes
