Re: SF: Book recommendations

On Tue, 3 Feb 2026 12:20:30 -0800, John Ames <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On Tue, 03 Feb 2026 07:05:32 +0200
>Steve Hayes <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> > "That Hideous Strength" is kind of a mess, but an audacious one.
>> > His other two "Space Trilogy" books are fine indeed, and all three
>> > had a major influence on me as a writer. A fascinating blend of
>> > old-school "planetary romance," theology/mysticism, and social
>> > commentary.  
>> 
>> As you can see from my ordering, I like "That Hideous Strength" best.
>> If you take "genre" beyond the publishers and booksellers ones, and
>> divide things into subgenres as some like to do, then it comes closer
>> to the genre of Charles Williams's novels, which I also like, but are
>> definitely fantasy rather than science fiction, and that is the
>> element that predominates in THS.
>> 
>> Back to Lewis, the scene at the end of "Out of the Silent Planet" when
>> Ransom tries to translate Weston's bloviating for the Oyarsa of
>> Malacandra is a magnificent send-up of colonialism, and Devine, as
>> I've already mentioned, was probably based on Cecil Rhodes, a
>> budinessman turned politician, one of whose spiritual descendants is
>> undoubtedly Donald Trump. 
>
>Nitpicks aside (Lewis himself admitted to having an "expository demon,"
>and my biggest complaint with THS is that there are a couple crucial
>points where he should be showing rather than *telling* - but then he
>does a fine job of showing in his depiction of a man sliding into
>collaboration with Evil by inches,) I really do enjoy it. Bringing
>planetary archangels and Arthuriana into a proto-Orwellian sci-fi
>political thriller is *exactly* my kind of gonzo genre-busting.
>
>(Thanks for the tip on Williams; will have to check into his work...)

THS is often reffered to as Lewis's attempt at a Williamsish novel.

Williams's novels are all fantasy set in *this* world, with the
irruption of powers from beyond. If you haven't read any of his, I
recommend starting with "War in Heaven" or "The Place of the Lion".


>And it's felt uncomfortably timely, the last 10-15 years; the vintage
>colonialism skewered in OSP seemed like a distant thing to me as a
>young reader (though not nearly so much as I learned more of the side
>of 20th-century history the Powers That Be don't like to talk about,
>later in life,) but the cooption of institutions by authoritarians and
>transformation of an everyday setting into a police state was familiar
>from "Animal Farm," even before I discovered the throughline from THS
>to "1984," and it's going to feel much, much closer to home the next
>time I revisit it :/

I first encountered Narnia just at the time that South Africa had
become a police state, so Captain Maugrim and the statues in the
witch's castle made immediate sense to me. I had read the space
trilogy and Charles Williams several years before, when a lot of the
symbolism went over my head, but rereading them after Narnia made a
lot of other things fall into place. 


>
>> For more on that see here:
>> <https://khanya.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/the-cult-of-rhodes/>
>> 
>> or here:
>> <https://khanya.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/that-hideous-strength-and-rhodes-must-fall/>
>
>That's an interesting perspective - I confess that my familiarity with
>South African history is limited, and I'd noticed but hadn't really
>processed the reference to Rhodes on my last reading. The bit about a
>national "haunting" has stuck with me for years (there's something
>*essential* in there, and one day I'll figure out how to capture it in
>my own work;) all the moreso now that I'm watching the fractures which
>latticed my own country since before my grandparents were born turn
>into seismic rifts...
>
>(That Chesterton quote is *savage* - and, again, eerily reminiscent.)
>
>Interesting take on "Prince Caspian," too - that's one I enjoyed as a
>kid, but didn't fully appreciate 'til I'd grown up enough to understand
>what the smaller oppressions of confining but "normal" society can look
>like next to the Big Things the main plot is concerned with - that the
>liberation from a dreary school and lifeless curriculum isn't just a
>whimsical aside thrown in "for the kiddies," but part and parcel with
>the main theme of the book.
>
>(And it has been *endlessly* amusing, over the years, to hear so many
>starchy, moralizing parents of "Evangelical" conservative persuasion
>laud a series that has this liberation from conformity accomplished
>with Bacchus and his nymphs in the procession...!)

And then there is this:

Mere Ideology: The politicisation of C.S. Lewis 
<https://ondermynende.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/mere-ideology-the-politicisation-of-c-s-lewis/>



-- 
Stephen Hayes, Author of The Year of the Dragon
Sample or purchase The Year of the Dragon: 
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/907935
Web site: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail: [email protected] or if you use Gmail [email protected]