Why We Need C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy

Book cover art from “That Hideous Strength”

Gunfire on Mars. Mermaids. Interplanetary coffins. An enchanted water planet. A green-skinned alien. A sinister cabal. A head without a body. Merlin. These are some of the fantastical, eyebrow-raising features of C. S. Lewis’ space trilogy.

Lewis is familiar to many Christians as the author of Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia. He is less known as a writer of science fiction. According to legend, his unique sci-fi trilogy was birthed out of a wager with J. R. R. Tolkien. They each agreed to write a sci-fi story that would focus on “true myth.” One scholar would write a space travel story, the other would write a tale of time travel. As the story goes, they flipped a coin, and Lewis was assigned the task of penning a space-faring adventure that would communicate the Christian story (Tolkien began a time travel story, but eventually agreed with his publishers to instead focus on The Lord of the Rings; sadly, the time travel adventure was never finished.).

The Lewis-Tolkien wager hatched a cosmic adventure that we now call the space trilogy. Comprised of three books (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), this trilogy charts a path into “Deep Heaven” and back again. Along the way, it introduces us to its protagonist, a linguistics professor named Elwin Ransom, who travels to both Mars and Venus and is caught up in an interplanetary struggle.

This semester I’m leading our apologetics class in a discussion of Lewis’ space trilogy. Without giving away the plot twists, I want to offer some suggestions about why we should all read these books.

First, we should read the trilogy because it offers a stronger spell that can disenchant our secular age. In a previous era, the woods were haunted. Or at least that’s what people thought. The pre-modern world was overflowing with angels, demons, magic, and miracles. In the aftermath of seismic shifts in science, technology, philosophy, and religion, the social imaginary of the late-modern world became disenchanted. In our “enlightened” imaginations, the world has been stripped of wonder, the universe no longer crackles with a sense of the divine, and miracles never happen.

Lewis viewed himself as a “dinosaur” – a living relic of another era, whose job it was to introduce “stronger spells” to break the grip of modernity’s curse. He wanted to reenchant the cosmos, and he used story as his chosen medium. The space trilogy introduces us to worlds that are breathtakingly beautiful, mysterious, and contested. In short, Lewis depicts a pre-modern cosmos. When we slowly savor the trilogy, it suddenly dawns on us that we are living in a world that is the “theater of God’s glory.” Our secular neighbors need to be reenchanted, and the space trilogy might just be the stronger spell that we need.

Second, we should read the trilogy because it awakens us to the reality of spiritual warfare. In the space trilogy, the Bent One is the evil spirit who exercises dominion over “The Silent Planet” (earth). He seeks to wage interplanetary war against all that is true, good, and beautiful. He possesses the trilogy’s chief antagonist and deploys him in a cosmic struggle between good and evil. Because most contemporary American Christians have not witnessed an exorcism, we can be tempted to dismiss spiritual warfare as a sensationalistic topic. But many Christians around the world attest to the ongoing spiritual struggle involving what the Bible calls the “cosmic powers” (Eph 6:12).

In Lewis’ trilogy, the Devil is alive and powerful (Peter would tell us he is a prowling lion). He is waging war against God and against God’s people. Yet, God is stronger than the Bent One, and provides victory over the dark powers. The trilogy is important because it awakens slumbering Christians to the reality of the spiritual struggle underway in our cosmos.

Third, we should read the trilogy because it emphasizes the formation of a countercultural community. Near the end of the first volume, we are told, “What we need for the moment is not so much a body of belief as a body of people familiarized with certain ideas.” Although Lewis understood the power of doctrine, he also was intuitively aware of the power of a people who embody the Christian story.

“As we enter its world of mermaids and bears, of aliens and wizards, we just might discover that it equips us to reenter our own world on a hope-filled mission.”

In the climactic volume, That Hideous Strength, we get a glimpse of such a community. It includes academics, a maid, a student, a wizard, and a bear. As the story spins towards its suspenseful finale, each of these characters function as a part of a larger whole. The stories are meaningful because they are interconnected.

Lewis understood that God’s people would only be equipped to bear witness to Christ and resist the dark powers through counter-formation. Through their time spent together, in community, God’s people were formed for their mission in the world.

In biblical terms, this is God’s design for every local church. We are to foster places of counter-formation. In these churches the world does not squeeze us into its mold, but instead we are shaped for our vocation of everyday gospel witness. Only when we are shaped together can we emerge into the secular age to speak about Jesus and resist evil in his name.

The space trilogy isn’t perfect. As with any book, it has its flaws. But I believe it is essential reading for Christians in the secular West. As we enter its world of mermaids and bears, of aliens and wizards, we just might discover that it equips us to reenter our own world on a hope-filled mission.