Sorry, yet another Lewis book, and the second of the SF Trilogy.
Sometimes published as Voyage to Venus, Professor Ransom returns in another space travel, spiritual adventure. This time, at the request of the supernatural being met in the previous book, he is asked to travel to Venus (still assumed not to be, at this point of history, utterly uninhabitable).
He finds an ocean world, where life takes place on large, flexible floating islands made of some kind of matted vegetation (if I remember rightly, I read it over 20 years ago!). Dwelling on the islands is the queen of Venus, a human being newly created by God, and somewhere around, the King as well - though we don't see so much of him. They are living in innocence and will continue to do so as long as they never spend a night on the one point of fixed land on the planet (see where it's all going?). But soon Ransom finds they are not alone, when a figure from his past also arrives, and he has not been sent by the forces of good...
Another great read from Lewis (really, he is a brilliant writer) this book marked another introduction to me into theological thinking. Rather than sledgehammering Christian themes into a conventional story (as so many "Christian novels" do), the story and the theology are woven seamlessly and neither works without the other. What did I, in my formative years, find injected into my thinking from this book, probably subconsciously? The first inkling (ho,ho) of how the Fall 'works', and why, by implication, biting a fruit from a tree is not a silly mythological idea; the idea of indwelling - that Christ (and satan) can be present in people; the sense of preFall innocence, and how being caught up in the wonder of God might fill up all one's capacities to overflowing.
The picture at the top of the page is the cover on the edition I now own (I read it originally in an old Pan Books 70's paperback) - I accidentally (don't ask) ended up buying a hardback first edition for just a few pounds. So the next time I read the trilogy, I will be reading book 2 in exactly the same format that The Bodley Head would have sent Lewis on publication! I might buy a pipe for the occasion...
1 comment:
You are so right that we come to understand in this Space Trilogy an amazing amount of theology at a level that simply studying theology might never have brought us to. Lewis makes ideas that might have remained esoteric in our minds into the most obvious and clear truths. Sheer genius!
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