Suddenly the lights of the Universe seemed to be turned down. As if some demon had rubbed the heaven's face with a dirty sponge, the splendour in which they had lived for long blenched to a pallid, cheerless and pitiable grey. What had been a chariot gliding in the fields of heaven became a dark steel box dimly lighted by the slit of a window, and falling. They were falling out of the heaven, into a world.
Out of the Silent Planet, p.39
We touched down on Malacandra last night. We are eagerly hoping to learn why Ransom, our friendly neighborhood philologist, has been kidnapped by the scheming Devine and enigmatic Weston.
My boys, who are 7 and 9, are enjoying our bedtime reading of Out of The Silent Planet. Lewis' ability to paint with words is on full display in this book. I am already starting to hear the desperate pleas of little boys with droopy eyes, "C'mon Dad, keep reading ... pleeeease."
The book does not read quite as easy as the chronicles of Narnia. Lewis uses a wide range of words. I sometimes have to pause and explain what Lewis is saying. For example,
"But Ransom, as time wore on, became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart. A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him."
But for the most part, their little imaginations are being crafted and stretched by Lewis' brilliant mastery of descriptive language.
For example, when Ransom steps out of the space ship onto the surface of Malacandra:
He gazed about him, and the very intensity of his desire to take in the new world at a glance defeated itself. He saw nothing but colours -- colours that refused to form themselves into things. Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are. His first impression was of a bright pale world -- a water colour world out of a child's paint-box; a moment later he recognized that the flat belt of light blue was a sheet of water, or of something like water, which came nearly to his feet. They were on the shore of a lake or river.
That is rich. Kind of like a fuzzy old Polaroid slowly coming into focus. I especially liked Lewis' depiction of the glory of space.
Science fiction fans who are sticklers for "realistic" science fiction may not like the book. The book was published in 1938. Lewis has to use his mind's eye to see what space travel will be like. For us, who live in the age of space shuttles and Mars rovers, it sounds antiquated. We know Mars is a cold, dry planet. We know that you can't breathe on Mars. We know a little of what space travel is like because astronauts have been to the moon and back. What existed solely in the realm of imagination in 1938 has become somewhat more familiar in 2005.
In a strange way, however, that is what makes it kind of fun to read.
Lewis pictures the view of the stars from space as glorious and undisturbed. He describes space as a bright, dazzling, panoply of light. He turns our man-centered view of the Universe on its head, because Ransom discovers that the earth and the planets are dull and dreary places, while the heaven's are full of light and brilliance. I like that.
Now, what will those inhabitants of Malacandra be like? We will just have to keep reading and find out.
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