Crom Your Enthusiasm (13)

By: Flourish Klink
August 15, 2015

One of 25 installments in a series of posts analyzing and celebrating a few of our favorite fantasy novels from the Thirties (1934–1943). Enjoy!

PERELANDRA | C.S. LEWIS | 1943

“Look on him, beloved, and love him. He is indeed but breathing dust and a careless touch would unmake him.”

Is that what angels, or aliens, would say about a human being, if they met one? Perelandra is one weird Garden of Eden tale, featuring a man sent to save Venus from Satan. Naked. Accompanied by dragons. Some of its parallels are even more crudely drawn than “Aslan is Jesus.” There’s no pretending here: Dr. Ransom (our hero) proclaims himself a Christian and says that what he is doing is in the name of Christ. But “Christ,” in this novel, is really “Maleldil,” an ancient and otherworldly being that also caused many other planets full of aliens to be. Which is the genius of Perelandra, and of C.S. Lewis, of course. So many stories ignore faith altogether, or focus on fuzzy issues of morality rather than the actual tenets held by people who actually consider themselves part of a religious faith.

Lewis does not have this problem. “What if,” he asks, “Christianity was true — but so much weirder than you ever imagined?” And then he actually does it.

That’s part of why you might call Perelandra (and Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength) fantasy instead of science fiction. They don’t have a lot to do with science at all, concerned more with older, mythological ways of making sense of the planets, concerned with mythological ways of making sense of the world. The aliens on Venus aren’t really aliens at all — they’re humans, of a different sort. The eldila are angels by any other name. The universe is whole, all emanating from the same origin story. Each planet’s history recapitulates Genesis in its own individual way.

Is Ransom a hero, then? He’s the lead character of the book, he has a humble origin, but is he a Conan or an Arthur? Perhaps. He’s certainly a Christ figure (albeit one living in a world where Christ really did exist). Is Christ a hero? Is the Bible heroic fantasy? Perhaps Lewis would say “yes.”

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CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2015): Erik Davis on Jack Williamson’s DARKER THAN YOU THINK | Sara Ryan on T.H. White’s THE SWORD IN THE STONE | Mark Kingwell on C.S. Lewis’s OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET | David Smay on Fritz Leiber’s THIEVES’ HOUSE | Natalie Zutter on Robert E. Howard’s QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST | James Parker on J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE HOBBIT | Adrienne Crew on Dion Fortune’s THE SEA PRIESTESS | Gabriel Boyer on Clark Ashton Smith’s ZOTHIQUE stories | John Hilgart on H.P. Lovecraft’s THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD | Barbara Bogaev on William Sloane’s TO WALK THE NIGHT | Rob Wringham on Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN | Dan Fox on Hergé’s THE SEVEN CRYSTAL BALLS | Flourish Klink on C.S. Lewis’s PERELANDRA | Tor Aarestad on L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s THE ROARING TRUMPET | Anthony Miller on H.P. Lovecraft’s THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH | Suzanne Fischer on E.R. Eddison’s MISTRESS OF MISTRESSES | Molly Sauter on Herbert Read’s THE GREEN CHILD | Diana Leto on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s TARZAN AND THE LION MAN | Joshua Glenn on Robert E. Howard’s THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON | Andrew Hultkrans on H.P. Lovecraft’s AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS | Lynn Peril on Fritz Leiber’s CONJURE WIFE | Gordon Dahlquist on H.P. Lovecraft’s THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME | Adam McGovern on C.L. Moore’s JIREL OF JOIRY stories | Tom Nealon on Fritz Leiber’s TWO SOUGHT ADVENTURE | John Holbo on Robert E. Howard’s CONAN MYTHOS.

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Crom Your Enthusiasm (13)

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