I read the second one - 'Voyage to Venus'. I have to say: The concepts in it were brilliant, but Lewis mishandled some of his material and so failed to bring out the best in it.
The concept of the book was: What IF Eve had not eaten the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden? Lewis sends his main character to an unfallen world, where there is an 'Eve' and an 'Adam'. The main character's task is to prevent the 'Eve' of this world from listening to the cunning wheedling of the 'devil' who has appeared on this world. The main character succeeds. This is baldly the book, but Lewis' poetic and lyrical language - and his willingness to 'think outside the box' - make it much more than that.
BUT - it needs to be remembered that Lewis was drawing on a rich history of Christian life and lore to write 'Voyage to Venus', and this is what I mean by Lewis failing to do his material justice. Sometimes, he (Lewis) failed to understand incidents in these lives (real lives). So when he put 'versions' of those incidents into his fiction, he often 'missed the point'. He tried, but his own limitations prevented him from seeing the full vista.
I think of 'Voyage to Venus' as a 'concept book' - more valuable taken incident by incident than as a whole.
The Space Trilogy is a SciFi series consisting of the books Out of the Silent Planet (set on Mars, or Malacandra in the lingo), Perelandra (set on Venus, or Perelandra) and That Hideous Strength (set on Earth, or Thulcandra).
It's quite good, and I've read them all several times.
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The concept of the book was: What IF Eve had not eaten the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden? Lewis sends his main character to an unfallen world, where there is an 'Eve' and an 'Adam'. The main character's task is to prevent the 'Eve' of this world from listening to the cunning wheedling of the 'devil' who has appeared on this world. The main character succeeds. This is baldly the book, but Lewis' poetic and lyrical language - and his willingness to 'think outside the box' - make it much more than that.
BUT - it needs to be remembered that Lewis was drawing on a rich history of Christian life and lore to write 'Voyage to Venus', and this is what I mean by Lewis failing to do his material justice. Sometimes, he (Lewis) failed to understand incidents in these lives (real lives). So when he put 'versions' of those incidents into his fiction, he often 'missed the point'. He tried, but his own limitations prevented him from seeing the full vista.
I think of 'Voyage to Venus' as a 'concept book' - more valuable taken incident by incident than as a whole.
It's quite good, and I've read them all several times.
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