Book 3), That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy

I have really enjoyed other C.S. Lewis books so I was excited to read his Sci-Fi Space Trilogy. I loved the 1st book, it had great story, good charter development and wonderful description of the places. All that is missing from the 3rd book, so while I hate to say it .... I didn't enjoy this book.

I noticed that many people were disappointed that the main charter of the series Ransom plays such a minor role in this book. I can forgive the fact that he devotes much of the book to a new set of charters. What is disappointing is that the people were so flat and the story line disconnected. It suppose to be a battle between good and evil but... none of the characters really do anything to shape the story. Instead pages are spent on the mundane day to day squabbles, or esoteric commentary on theology. Dr. Ransom and the main charters are not part of the struggle against evil. They barely even observe "the battle". In addition to being anti-climatic,the allegory/theology/philosophy was also very difficult to follow.

Second, all of the fantastic imagination and vivid imagery from the first two books was non-existent in That Hideous Strength.

Last I found his portal of women's role very disappointing. He is overtly sexist and insulting. The female characters are almost entirely subordinated to men; and the book preach obedience as an explicit virtue! It's absurd. There is no reason to no reason to empathize with the character of Mark. He is weak, arrogant, self absorbed, immature and frankly stupid. But Jane who supposedly joins the right side is still suppose to be obedient to her husband who's picked the "wrong" side.

If you feel you have to finish the series, good luck and prepare to be disappointed

The third book was a disappointment. I was expecting something completely different. The first part of the book was introducing people who weren't in the first two books and I had a hard time following who was who and how they fit in with the folks in the other two books. I wasn't able to figure out who this odd character was with the bleeding foot or if he was a main character or not until he was called by another name somewhere in the middle of the book. But I am sure the folks that like mysteries, would figure this out rather quickly. Anyway, this was not my style of book.

I very much enjoyed the first too books in this trilogy, but this third book has some problems. While the sci-fi purist concept of a 'corporation' taking over and essentially looking to sterilize the planet and 'create the superior being' is well founded, Dr. Ransom's character really does little in this book other than 'sit and wait' for the higher forces to come to put a stop to it. The addition of Merlin was interesting insomuch as his dialog with Dr. Ransom, but the way in which he is sent to resolve the conflict at hand is a bit much, and to be honest entirely to grusome. Also, there is really little to no reason to empathize with the character of Mark, and Lewis' treatment of Jane is typically patriarchal to the point of (personal) insult. Even the fact that her name is "jane" (very non-entity-like) compared to "Mark" (apostle), is a bit much. But of course, that was part of the 'message' I was supposed to receive I suppose (being a female reader).

I was always a Kinks fan and this cut just evoked dormant memories, the quality of the sound is superb plus the CD contains sixteen tunes and all are good. I recommend this product for an unforgettable revival of the 70's. Keep on dancing.

I love C. S. Lewis. My dad read me The Chronicles of Narnia in my formative years, and they will always have a special place in my heart. I enjoyed Mere Christianity. I loved The Screwtape Letters. I am amazed at the analysis of the human psyche in ‘Till We have Faces and The Great Divorce. Even compilations of various essays such as The Weight of Glory and The Problem of Pain I found simply riveting—even in the areas I disagree with Lewis.

Then there is this Space Trilogy. I read Out of Silent Planet several years ago and found it, well, interesting. I enjoy Lewis’s prose and style of writing, but it was unlike the others. I read Perelandra soon after, and I enjoyed it a bit more than the first, but it seemed to drag in the endless back and forth dialogue. The series seemed just so different from everything I have previously read from Lewis. Upon finishing “That Hideous Strength” and, after thinking about it, and after some internal dialogue—I think it is one of my favorites.

Now, this is a book that demands another reading. It is the kind of book that makes you long for a reading group to bring to light hidden insights and subtleties. I have a feeling that it is a sort of book, following the Dostoyevsky model, where the reader should concern himself less with the intricacies of the very complex plot, and more with the truth represented in the characters and their interactions with one another. Without giving too much away there is just too much going on for the reader to have a fool-proof understanding of the plot. It is an unquestionably “weird” book with an extraterrestrial / supernatural dimension, which will make any book weird.

But this book is also profound. Relevant to our times today perhaps more than it was for Lewis’s. The story follows married couple Mark and Jane Studdock in their various revolts against the created order. They do not see themselves this way, of course. Both are young, budding progressives in their ideas and aspirations. Jane is about breaking free from archaic shackles of what it means to be a woman, and she is continually trying to set herself apart as unique and important. Mark is about getting on the inside of the inside at the progressive group at the local college; and then on the inside of the inside of the friendly neighborhood Marxist organization: N.I.C.E. He starts out as a progressive, then becomes a propagandist, and further goes to find that he has almost lost himself in an entirely dark, spiritual power at the center of the evil organization. What begins as seemingly innocent, through the slippery slope of desire and capitulation, does not remain innocent.

But there is an opposition, led by the celebrated philologist Ransom. His community is strikingly different than the one portrayed in the NICE. This story provides a continual back and forth between each community which has a way of accentuating the contrasts. At the N.I.C.E we see continual “self-actualization”. The members are “self-makers”, doing everything within their power to make a name for their individual selves. With militancy they try to undo the natural order; false faces and back stabbing are commonplace occurrences from members.

But, Ransom’s community is characterized by submission to the created order. And in his community we see roles and distinctions. We see personality. We see sacrifice. We see frequent, good-natured humor. We see a love for the organic and the natural; and, perhaps most importantly, we see identity formed, not by self, but by the Creator and with the help of the community. It is in submission to this identity that we see real joy and meaning achieved! The difference between the two communities are night and day; and this continual compare and contrast from Lewis help show us what the correct model of humanity is; and which is the one that has terribly gone wrong.

The more I think about this book, the more I love it (though I can see that stylistically it is not for everyone). I would recommend a prior reading of the other two books to help clarify the broader plot; but such background is not necessary. This is a bizarre book in many ways, but it is also an awesome book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Admittedly, I could not put this down. From start to finish, over less than a week, I would read during the day whenever I could, and at night, I would get up at all hours when I could not sleep to read a bit more until sleep caught up with me again.

In my other reviews of Out of the Silent Planet, and Perelandra, I posed the question of how the elements in those first two novels in the series would be resolved by the third and last volume. Apart from having to stumble over colloquialisms in Latin, and going goggle-eyed at some highly-academic writing, I was please with the fairy-tale ending to the story.

To what fairy story should this series be compared? There are so many elements from numerous classic myths and legends, as well as fairy stories, that it would be hard to pin it down to just one example. However, the story is classic in that like in the traditional fairy story, much of the action takes place in and around and in relation to forests, and there is a "bear".

I wish that Lewis could have written more about the implied closing, "and they lived happily ever after".

This final book in the Space Trilogy feels very different from the other two. It reads very much like one of the mystical “spiritual warfare” novels written by Lewis’s friend and fellow-Inkling Charles Williams ('War in Heaven,' 'Many Dimensions,' etc.).

The book takes place entirely on earth as earth’s bent oyarsa (aka Satan) and his minions seek to further corrupt the earth through a bizarre fusion of naturalistic thinking (man is just a machine) and good old-fashioned spiritism (communication with supernatural entities) implemented by the state-funded “National Institute of Coordinated Experiments” (N.I.C.E.). The protagonists are an unhappy young couple who end up on opposite sides of the conflict between the N.I.C.E. and the remnant of Logres (King Arthur’s Britain – Ransom, the protagonist of the first two books is tied to this as a major secondary character). By the end the story is a weirder than usual hodgepodge of Arthurian legend, Greek mythology, Numinor (spelled differently, but clearly meant to be the same as Tolkien’s Numenor), and Christian mysticism.

When I was younger I liked this book quite a bit because it had the most action in it of the three, but on this re-reading it just didn’t measure up to the other two in terms of coherence. Lewis still explores some interesting philosophical points relating to humanity’s attempt at self-improvement and sociological tinkering (probably the best aspect of the book), peer-pressure and craving for acceptance, roles within a marriage, mythology as a reflection of deeper truths, a righteous “faithful remnant” throughout history, etc.. However, a lot of it is wrapped in so much mysticism, symbolism, and non-Christian thought that I did not find it nearly as profitable as the first two books.

Overall: worth reading because it rounds out the story and some aspects of the N.I.C.E. are great satire, but far below the quality of the first two books.

The Space Trilogy is best read in sequential order. The first two are similar and this the third is very dissimilar. The first two present extremely vivid descriptions of existence on Venus and Mars. This one is set on Earth, just after the end of WWII. It is jarring in many parts and can be compared with "Nineteen Eighty Four" in that regard. There are similarities to "Lord of the Rings" as well. Some parts of this book gave me the creeps, such as how the evil forces insinuated themselves into the communities by presenting themselves as being for the common good. Some of the situations that Jane and Mark faced made me want to lock my doors and batten down the hatches. I liked the first two books much better but am glad to have read this one, for contrast if nothing else.

To the Christian, the marriage relationship is symbolic of the relationship Jesus has with His church. Lewis seizes this theme as the context for his story which explores the nature and consequences of faith and its opposite, unbelief, in God. To this end, Lewis introduces a married couple who are likely headed for divorce. Their relationship with each other mirrors their responses and objections to belief in God. As the story progresses, the two come to love each other again, but only after relinquishing their stubborn selfishness and pride which has kept them both from each other and from God.

This story is a romance, but not a romance in the sense that most people will recognize it as such. There are no feel good, sappy moments as seen on Hallmark Channel holiday romance movies. The setting of the story is post war England where a college town and surrounding hillsides become ground zero for an epic battle between good and evil. A research company purchases much land in this area and proceeds to use its inhabitants and fauna for grotesque experiments in both the social and natural sciences. Along the way, Lewis introduces spiritual forces which are really the ones in control but few actually acknowledge.

Readers should understand that Lewis views mythological gods as the embodiment of truths and virtues. He makes these virtues actual beings in his book. We know from history and theology that the gods were not worshipped in virtue but sensuality and cruelty, and so Lewis separates the gods into those which possess the virtue in purity and those which represent its opposite. Venus represents love in its purest sense between man and wife who respect and honor each other in unselfish love consummated in the marriage bed, but she has an opposite, a gaudy, cruel, lust filled goddess who sets the world on fire in a blasphemous parody of the true Venus.

Human beings have their opposites as well. Merlin, England’s most famous myth, makes an appearance when he is awakened from his millennia of sleep in a kind of resurrection from the dead. Merlin possesses a mythological kind of power which makes him true Master exercising dominion over the earth, the natural world. He is in a sense, the true man, as Lewis would see the truth in man as master of Creation. His counterpart is an experiment which seeks eternal life through keeping the head of convicted criminal alive through artificial means.

The book is science fiction but does not focus on technology. The book is a romance but does not focus on romantic feeling. The book is an epic battle but it does not focus on action scenes. The book is spiritual but does not focus on the supernatural. It is mostly a book told by the dialogue and inner thoughts of the characters and their perceptions of what happens around them and to them. Dialogue in the hands of modern writers reads like a screenplay, short, quick little quips which are interesting in a movie but bore the reader because of their banality or preachiness. Dialogue in the hands of a genius like Lewis reads like a discussion between genuine, thinking men which is deep enough and true to life enough to span the greatest questions and cries of the human heart. The characters’ words take on a kind of poetry in Lewis’s hand, reminding the reader of the ancient bards whose stories have illuminated souls through dark nights since the beginning of time—they are never boring, never extraneous, never banal. They are an answer to mankind’s deepest longings and our dear companions on sleepless nights.

Companion books to this one are many. One the fiction side, there are themes as seen in MacDonald’s Curdie books, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, as well as Lewis’s Prince Caspian and The Last Battle. On the philosophy side, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy as well as Lewis’s Miracles and The Abolition of Man come to mind. Of course, Lewis was a Christian so his ideas of Christian marriage come from the New Testament built on the foundation of the Old. I attempted to read That Hideous Strength as a child several times. It was closed to me then. Only after I had a few years of marriage and a few of the above books under my belt did I understand and appreciate this work of Lewis’s. I hope readers are not as slow to discover this treasure as I was.

I can say with perfect confidence and without the least exaggeration that this book may well prove to be the most important English language novel to have been written in the last 100 years. A fictionalization of the ideas first discussed in Lewis’s book-length essay The Abolition of Man, That Hideous Strength deals with nothing less than the very real possibility that Mankind may be on the verge of annihilating everything that makes him human – a danger that exceeds those of war, economic collapse, plague, or environmental degradation and climate change.

Sometimes fiction is the most effective way of driving otherwise esoteric points home. In this case, the alarm bells sounded in The Abolition of Man acquire a fierce urgency when the dangers are portrayed affecting individual and identifiable persons, places, and institutions. For example, bewailing the loss of a belief in objective morality is all well and good, but one cannot truly grasp its full implications until you watch its effects upon Mark Studdock, Bracton College, and the town of Edgestow. Then and only then does the full horror become visible.

But the greatest danger being warned against in this novel is that of the idea of somehow improving the human species, of artificially creating a new race of supposedly superior beings. That this danger is all too real can be shown by the recent rise in interest of the so-called trans-humanist movement. Couched in oh, so beguiling terms, transhumanism promises a world of super geniuses, freed from disease and various weaknesses - possibly even immortal. But Lewis saw through all that, long before the idea’s current incarnation. To illustrate:

(Lord Feverstone speaking) – “If science is really given a free hand, it can now take over the human race and re-condition it: make man a really efficient animal. … Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest.”

(Filostrato speaking) – “You know as well as I do that Man’s power over nature means the power of some men over others with nature as the instrument.”

And that is but the merest taste. Slowly.. perhaps a bit too slowly, people are waking up to the perils now confronting the human race. Reading That Hideous Strength could go a long way toward hastening that awakening.

Two final notes.

1. Although it’d be possible to read this book without having first read the two preceding novels, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, I do not recommend doing so. You risk missing out on much of the groundwork laid there. Plus, the many references made in That Hideous Strength to events in those two works would be largely unintelligible.

2. Besides its urgent theme, That Hideous Strength is a cracking good yarn – extremely readable and intensely exciting. A real page turner.

That Hideous Strength, the third book in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy is not much like the previous two books, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. It is about twice as long, the story is set entirely on Earth, though the angelic Oyarses, the rulers of the planets, make an appearance at the climax. Elwin Ransom is not the protagonist of That Hideous Strength but he appears midway in the story and plays an important role in it. The supernatural plays a far greater role in That Hideous Strength than in the previous two books and it might be classified as more in the realm of fantasy than properly science fiction.

The story of That Hideous Strength centers on Mark and Jane Studdock, a recently, though somewhat unhappily married couple. Mark Studdock is a professor of Sociology at Bracton College, part of the University of Edgestow. He is ambitious, desiring most of all to be in the inner circle. He is delighted to be part of the “Progressive Element” at Bracton and supports their intrigues to sell some of the college’s land to the National Instituted for Co-ordinated Experiments. Mark is excited to meet Lord Feverstone, aka Dick Devine one of the antagonists from Out of the Silent Planet. Feverstone is both a senior fellow of Bracton and a leading figure at the NICE and when he offers to take Mark to the institute at Belbury for a possible job, Mark eagerly agrees to go.

At the NICE, Mark meets a variety of strange characters including John Wither, the Deputy Director who seems only vaguely aware of his surroundings, Dr. Filostrato, a physiologist who has managed to keep the severed head of an executed murderer alive, and Major “Fairy” Hardcastle, the sadistic, lesbian head of security. At first, Mark is not sure what his new job is supposed to be, or even if he actually has a new job. He falls in and out of favor with the authorities at The NICE seemingly at random and is never sure where he stands. This is gradually revealed as a method to bring him further into the mysteries surrounding NICE. It turns out that the leaders of the NICE have been in contact with demons or fallen eldilla, though they are not aware of their true nature, believing them to be superior beings called “macrobes”.

Meanwhile, Jane Studdock while supposedly working on her dissertation on John Donne is dismayed to find that she has become merely a housewife. She has begun to have clairvoyant dreams. When she confides in the wife of her tutor, Mrs. Dimble, she is taken to a manor at St Anne’s where she meets Mr. Fisher-King, Elwin Ransom. Ransom has been much changed by his travels to Malacandra and Perelandra and is no longer the simple philologist he was at the beginning of the Space Trilogy. Because he has lived in Paradise on Venus, Ransom appears younger and no longer ages, though still bears a wound on his heel inflicted by Weston during their fight. Ransom has become the Pendragon, the heir of King Arthur and has gathered around him a small group of people dedicated to fighting the evil represented at the NICE.

Jane’s clairvoyant dreams indicated that the NICE is attempting to disinter the body of Merlin from his resting place in the land they purchased from Bracton College. Merlin is not dead but in a suspended state and the leaders of the NICE hope to make use of his knowledge of the ancient lore of Numinor to effect a union between modern science and ancient magic. Merlin, however has his own ideas.

In his review of That Hideous Strength, George Orwell said that the introduction of the supernatural weakened the story and that one always knew who would win in any fight between God and the Devil. I don’t agree. Leaving aside the fact that Lewis would not have written any fiction that was not infused with his worldview that contains the possibility of miracles, I did not find that the supernatural elements of the story in any way lessened the suspense. In fact, I can honestly say that That Hideous Strength was one of the few books that I couldn’t bear to put down, since I was desperate to know just what the villains at the NICE were up to. There is something of a deus ex machina effect at the climax in which the ruling oyarses of the various planets, identified with the Roman gods the planets are named after, descend to Earth to upset the plans of the NICE, but Lewis skillfully builds up to the climax. The repentance of Mark Studdock is also well handled as he realizes that everything he had been working toward isn’t really what he thought he wanted. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think it is the best of C. S. Lewis’s fiction I have yet read.

THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH (THS) is the most oblique book of the space trilogy. I read it in high school because I thought I should. I never got it. Then, in grad school, I took a class called Later Renaissance Literature. Over Christmas break I rushed home and read the old paperback again, and I got it. It was life changing.

Two things will help puzzled readers understand this book: Read some Orwell, and read Lewis' own non-fiction book called THE DISCARDED IMAGE (skip section 1.) ALL of the Space Trilogy is written from a medieval concept of the heavens. That concept is strongest in THS.

Superficially, the novel focuses on a "modern" marriage between an educated woman and an educated man, the Studdocks. Though they are young, their marriage is already on the rocks, though neither admits it. The story splits into two parts as Mark, the husband, is drawn into the devilish society called the N.I.C.E., and Jane, the wife, seeks refuge with Elwin Ransom (the main character in the previous two novels) and the company of friends who reside at St. Anne's.

First warning, the beginning of the book is dull as doorknobs. Things pick up when Mark gets drawn into the N.I.C.E by none other than the wealthy and corrupt Devine from the first novel. The sections dealing with Mark's initiation are very readable.

The book builds very slowly to its conclusion, but it's worth the read if the reader comprehends that Lewis is describing the manifestation of the Real in the world of the ordinary or material. I don't want to give too much away, except to complain that Jane is not made nearly as odious as Mark, who fails in every way, and even when he does develop some courage, he fumbles so much that you're not sure if he's not just more afraid of agreeing with his tempter.

Once again, the ending is fantastic, as the hideous evil of the N.I.C.E. descends into a burlesque of confusion brought on by their evil.

You will like THS if you like Lewis and want to see the world as he paints it, through medieval eyes. I really liked this book, but it's not for everybody.

Written in the 1940s, growing out of the English experiences of the Second World War, Lewis's trilogy is truer today than it was then. I first read these books in the 1970s editions of The Macmillan Company, and did not have any idea how prophetic they were. While we have yet to travel to either Mars or Venus, that is becoming more and more likely with every passing year, although we may not EXPECT to find what Professor Ransom found there. However, the final volume of this trilogy, "That Hideous Strength" brings to bear all that Lewis saw occurring in England in regards to morality, philosophy, capitalism, and the environment. Presaging what has today come to be called neoliberalism, Lewis in this volume describes an Earth that is in the process of being subjugated by a national corporation (N.I.C.E.) which is the forerunner of soulless capitalism, precisely the animal the OCCUPY movement protested against. With total disregard for the spiritual needs of humanity or the damage caused to the environment by their projects, N.I.C.E. intentionally destroys a small college town in the heart of England, searching for a mystical power that will grant them eternal life, a mere precursor to their intent for the entire planet. Over the millennia, Earth has been sealed away from the other planets by a dark force, and humanity has been kept from the truth about the true nature of humanity and God. The mindless capitalists, under the sway of this dark force, almost bring about our complete destruction. Save for the intervention of Lewis' hero, a humanized Christ by the name of Ransom, the dark powers are defeated in a dramatic and bloody final conflict. Drawing heavily from Biblical themes, Lewis describes a world of the 1940s. He could have had no idea how closely what he described would more closely parallel the world of today than the world from which he took his subject. This series, written at roughly the same time as his friend's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, dealt with similar themes, but from a much more philosophical and religious standpoint. This series is NOT at all like Lewis' juvenile Narnia series, although both draw heavily from Biblical themes. The final book of the trilogy is one of the most significant I have read in quite a while, and ranks up there with Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" as among the five best of this genre.

[Throughout the years, I have written a number of reviews that have never been published online on the store. These writings comprise two types of reviews: unfinished reviews, abandoned during various stages of composition, and completed reviews that for life reasons were never posted. Of the later type, back in September 2001 I wrote a cache of work, a full sixteen reviews of several different C. S. Lewis books which have never been released. I am publishing these reviews now for the first time, over a decade after they were initially written. Mike London 10-3-2012]

"That Hideous Strength", the third volume in Lewis's "Space Trilogy", stands as central novel of his that gives me the most pleasure in reading it. While "Till We Have Faces" is certainly his best work, "That Hideous Strength" is the central novel in my own imagination that I most sympathize with in terms of where I want to go with my own fiction.

There is so much in "That Hideous Strength" that absolutely fascinates me, and much of the themes I also want to deal with in my own fiction. The abuse of language stands as one of the most terrifying elements in the novel. Wither stands as one of my personal favorites on the side of the N. I. C. E, as does Fairy Hardcastle. Wither is very developed and incredibly diabolical, and Fairy is a very masculine woman involved in sadistic police torture. The Nazis have a very strong place in this work. Much of the more hideous and hellish scenes in this book comes from the inclusion of the N. I. C. E as the dominant villainy that works evil throughout the text. Much of what they want to do tie into the Nazi movements, and each are equally terrible.

The inclusion of Merlin makes it a much more interesting text, for there is the key theme of Nature against Anti-Nature, and Merlin very much is in harmony with Nature. What makes this such a strong work is that each group parallels the other, and wherever there is a vision of total evil there also stands an equally dramatic picture of that which is good.

One thing that the critics seem to really harp on is the fact that this text has such a complex structure, but for myself that is one of the most exciting things about it. It is the fact that Lewis manages such a huge cast of characters, and does so rather well, that makes this one of my favorite of his novels, and certainly my pick for the Space Trilogy.

While I respect "Perelandra" and find it a very fine artistic effort, it is this book that I keep picking up to reread when I make my jaunts through Lewis's imaginative gauntlets. This is truly the most fascinating of the "Space Trilogy".

(These reviews covered all seven books of "The Chronciles of Narnia", the three novels of "The Space Trilogy", "The Abolition of Man", "The Four Loves", "A Preface to Paradise Lost", a revised version of my 2000 review of "Till We Have Faces", "Surprised By Joy", and "The Screwtape Letters". I have published newly written reviews of "The Space Trilogy" composed long after I wrote the three original reviews of Lewis's science fiction.)
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[In Late 1999 or early 2000 I also wrote this abandoned, unfinished review to "That Hideous Strength"]

The first time I've heard of the trilogy, it was from a pastor's wife. I was only then reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS (this was back in 1994), and I decided I would try it. Being a fan of Narnia (although I do not like Lion nearly as much as the others), I figured this would be good also.

THAT HIDEOUS STRENGHT, which is longer than the other two books combined, is a book like no other I've read. Its main weakness is it jumps from modern to mythical too soon. It is a novel of ideas, and then at the climax the story becomes mythical, with a violent ending. Also, Lewis assumes to much of the readers on the matter of Merlin. Merlin was an incubus, and had no father.

"That Hideous Strength" is the 3rd and final book in C.S. Lewis' space trilogy. Although "That Hideous Strength" takes place entirely on Earth, supernatural elements from the first two books make an appearance in this one.

Anytime a book (such as this one) makes me underline passages on nearly every page and anytime a book makes me stop to think about ideas or care about the characters or re-read passages for the sheer delight they bring, I know I've just read a classic.

While difficult and dense at times, "That Hideous Strength" is a classic that should provoke an enlightening joy in its readers!

Lewis called his book "A fairy tale for grown ups," which is actually a pretty good summary of the whole thing. What Lewis attempts (and mostly achieves) is to represent the invisible spiritual realities through the ordinary, humdrum things of the world. As in fairy tales, "That Hideous Strength" starts out with the ordinary but ends up in the most extraordinary way.

I won't ruin the plot for those who haven't read it, but Lewis primarily deals with the life of a married couple, Mark and Jane Studdock. It's important that the novel begins with marriage, refers to marriage throughout, and ends with marriage. While marriage, especially one like the Studdock's, may seem humdrum, it is, in reality, a profound spiritual picture of both the union between Christ and the Church and of the union of love that is to exist among men.

When I recently taught "That Hideous Strength" to a high school class in Apologetics at the classical Anglican school where I teach, I had them read the book through the lens of "influence," "peer pressure," and "motivations." As you read the book, pay attention to why Mark and Jane acts the way they do, who influences them, and what their motivations are. Lewis has given us a profound imaginative look at how our lives are really governed. This book ended up being the perfect companion to my Apologetics class in which I tried to get my students to see the necessity of every Christian giving an account of the hope that is within them. We've also spent a lot of time this year talking about peer pressure and how it can lead Christians closer to or further away from God.

Another way of reading "That Hideous Strength" is to look at it through the lens of the different worldviews that are presented. Among these are the unthinking atheism of Mark, the selfish practical atheism and individualism of Jane, the modernistic dream of human reason, a more postmodern mix of reason and the occult, and Christianity. It's fascinating to see the war of the worldviews at work in "That Hideous Strength"! Lewis clearly understood the spiritual state of England in 1946, and his analysis of that condition continues to have relevance for the Western world in the 21st century. Lewis' fairy tale succeeds in alerting his readers to the very real presence of the supernatural in our ordinary lives.

One of the things that make the book such a joy to read is Lewis' insight into human nature. While the "I" passages of the book are unnecessarily obtrusive, Lewis nevertheless gives the reader a lot of keen insight into the nature of man, the nature of marriage, and the psychology that lies behind our thoughts and actions.

Another sumptuous part of the novel is Lewis' language. As with so many of his other works, he has many quotable lines from either the characters or the narrators. At other times, a lyrical beauty sings through the passages, such as those where he describes the effects that earthly characters feel when in the presence of the eldil or angels.

Even the plot itself, filled with most fantastic twists and turns and bizarre occurrences, will not only delight but also shock the reader into wanting to read until the consummation of events in the final chapter.

Finally, I find Lewis' injection of not only Merlin but also Arthurian mythology to be not only out of place but also a positive distraction from the Christian meaning and symbolism of the rest of the novel. It's almost as if Lewis, being the classical and medieval scholar he was, couldn't help himself. It makes for fascinating reading, but it's not entirely favorable in its effect.

In spite of a few odd things I didn't care for, "That Hideous Strength" remains a wonder and delight that I highly recommend to serious readers, especially those who are Christian.

"That Hideous Strength" is the 3rd and final book in C.S. Lewis' space trilogy. Although "That Hideous Strength" takes place entirely on Earth, supernatural elements from the first two books make an appearance in this one.

Anytime a book (such as this one) makes me underline passages on nearly every page and anytime a book makes me stop to think about ideas or care about the characters or re-read passages for the sheer delight they bring, I know I've just read a classic.

While difficult and dense at times, "That Hideous Strength" is a classic that should provoke an enlightening joy in its readers!

Lewis called his book "A fairy tale for grown ups," which is actually a pretty good summary of the whole thing. What Lewis attempts (and mostly achieves) is to represent the invisible spiritual realities through the ordinary, humdrum things of the world. As in fairy tales, "That Hideous Strength" starts out with the ordinary but ends up in the most extraordinary way.

I won't ruin the plot for those who haven't read it, but Lewis primarily deals with the life of a married couple, Mark and Jane Studdock. It's important that the novel begins with marriage, refers to marriage throughout, and ends with marriage. While marriage, especially one like the Studdock's, may seem humdrum, it is, in reality, a profound spiritual picture of both the union between Christ and the Church and of the union of love that is to exist among men.

When I recently taught "That Hideous Strength" to a high school class in Apologetics at the classical Anglican school where I teach, I had them read the book through the lens of "influence," "peer pressure," and "motivations." As you read the book, pay attention to why Mark and Jane acts the way they do, who influences them, and what their motivations are. Lewis has given us a profound imaginative look at how our lives are really governed. This book ended up being the perfect companion to my Apologetics class in which I tried to get my students to see the necessity of every Christian giving an account of the hope that is within them. We've also spent a lot of time this year talking about peer pressure and how it can lead Christians closer to or further away from God.

Another way of reading "That Hideous Strength" is to look at it through the lens of the different worldviews that are presented. Among these are the unthinking atheism of Mark, the selfish practical atheism and individualism of Jane, the modernistic dream of human reason, a more postmodern mix of reason and the occult, and Christianity. It's fascinating to see the war of the worldviews at work in "That Hideous Strength"! Lewis clearly understood the spiritual state of England in 1946, and his analysis of that condition continues to have relevance for the Western world in the 21st century. Lewis' fairy tale succeeds in alerting his readers to the very real presence of the supernatural in our ordinary lives.

One of the things that make the book such a joy to read is Lewis' insight into human nature. While the "I" passages of the book are unnecessarily obtrusive, Lewis nevertheless gives the reader a lot of keen insight into the nature of man, the nature of marriage, and the psychology that lies behind our thoughts and actions.

Another sumptuous part of the novel is Lewis' language. As with so many of his other works, he has many quotable lines from either the characters or the narrators. At other times, a lyrical beauty sings through the passages, such as those where he describes the effects that earthly characters feel when in the presence of the eldil or angels.

Even the plot itself, filled with most fantastic twists and turns and bizarre occurrences, will not only delight but also shock the reader into wanting to read until the consummation of events in the final chapter.

Finally, I find Lewis' injection of not only Merlin but also Arthurian mythology to be not only out of place but also a positive distraction from the Christian meaning and symbolism of the rest of the novel. It's almost as if Lewis, being the classical and medieval scholar he was, couldn't help himself. It makes for fascinating reading, but it's not entirely favorable in its effect.

In spite of a few odd things I didn't care for, "That Hideous Strength" remains a wonder and delight that I highly recommend to serious readers, especially those who are Christian.

The final volume of Lewis's Space Trilogy is a major departure from the first two volumes, which really serve as a prologue for this novel, wherein the forces of God and Satan (or their allegorical equivalents) face off in final battle.
Dr. Ransom, the hero of the first two books is a secondary - although quite significant character - in this book, and he doesn't even appear till over a hundred pages have passed. Instead, the story focuses on Jane and Mark, a newly married couple with difficulties already developing in their relationship.
Although they are a couple, they are apart for most of the book, each involved in their own adventures. Mark is lured into the service of the sinister organization NICE, where he is convinced to do small services that seem legitimate enough but are designed to further their agenda. Meanwhile, Jane, plagued by clairvoyant visions, winds up joining with Dr. Ransom's group, which is out to save the world from NICE.
Jane and Mark, physically separated and emotionally estranged, find themselves also on opposite sides in a cosmic conflict between good and evil. Although this is a high-stakes battle, it is not overly supernatural, as the forces of good and evil operate with human agents/pawns. And Lewis is not as interested in the adventure aspects of his story as using it as a vehicle for presenting certain theological (especially Christian) concepts in an entertaining manner.
The end result is a story that is a bit dry in spots but generally good. This story is more sophisticated than the Narnia books, which are aimed towards a younger audience, but this trilogy is also not as much fun as the Chronicles of Narnia. If you read this trilogy expecting Narnia, you may be disappointed, as you will if you are expecting what is normally considered science fiction. On the other hand, if you want to read a thought-provoking fictional work, this may be to your liking.

Out of the Silent Planet & Perelandra are great "what if" stories that can be enjoyed by most people who just want fun, fast reads, regardless of their theological foundations. That Hideous Strength is a different animal altogether. C.S. Lewis described THS as a 'fairytale for adults'. He was right. THS requires a maturity of scholarship & introspection that generally comes only with experience. I am not referring to enjoyment, but enlightened appreciation. One must have looked deeply into the mirror of their soul to understand the Uppie trap in which Mark & Jane find themselves caught. Mark wants to climb the ladder of success at 'any' cost. Jane is terrified of the commitment of marriage & motherhood. I don't think you could find a more iconic couple of the late 20th Century.

To fully appreciate THS, a rudimentary knowledge Lewis' friends, Christian theology, Arthurian legends, modern psychology, and the occult are essential. If you really want to experience the true depth of the terror that Lewis wished to convey, I suggest that you read 1984, research the Illuminati, and start following current events. Agenda 21 & Common Core good examples of what is being foisted upon the World. Go to Google Images & look up "United Nations meditation room". Check the 'off' angles of the room. Notice any similarity to the NICE initiation room? Lewis knew exactly what was going on before 1945! Are we going to be smart enough to recognize what is staring us in the face?

I've read the 3 books from this series and they are all excellent. I really enjoyed That Hideous Strength, but it's almost impossible to explain how well it was written. It will sound a bit farfetched from my descriptions, but somehow it keeps all its varying aspects perfectly blended into the story.
Overall it is an engaging fantasy mingling with sci-fi. It tells the story of a young couple who are caught between good and evil. On the side of good is the old-fashioned England, the spirits of the deep heavens, and characters like Mr. Bultitude and Ivy Maggs that charm and delight. McPhee is hilarious while Ramson himself is wise and yet human. On the side of evil there is the movement towards 'social progress' with characters like Frost and Withers that fascinate with their perverse logic. Lord Feverstone is a familiar smiling bastard while The Fairy is repulsive and pitiful.
Caught between these are Jane and Mark, the pragmatic newly married couple whose failure in love provides interesting fodder in and of itself. It covers the moral aspects of forward progress really well, the old-fashioned English village with all its quirks is pitted against the facist social purity of labratory and government merged. Then add an appearance by Merlyn and old magic, giving it an interesting Arthurian slant I've never seen done before.
I admit that a few of the essay-style conversations about morality were wordy, but I loved this book. The descriptions are beautiful and enticing, and even briefly appearing characters are meaningful. It is at once engaging and fascinating and fun at different levels. I highly recommend it, and the series!

It seems that people either like That Hideous Strength the best or least of the Space Trilogy. I think the reason is that That Hideous Strength is very different than the other two books. It took me a couple of chapters to realize that this book was not going where Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet went, but when I realized that I could enjoy the book on its own merits. In fact, this is my favorite book in the trilogy. Although a Christian theme runs throughout the trilogy, when it is presented in That Hideous Strength it becomes more accessible. The evil in the book could and does happen. The basic good in the book is no less extraordinary (with certain exceptions). The adventures of Ransom on other planets in the first two books of the trilogy were to prepare him for the battle on Earth in That Hideous Strenth. An interesting phenomenon of this book for me was that when I was reading about Mark and the N.I.C. E. I longed for the story to switch to Jane and the group at St. Anne's. The people at N.I.C.E. were so disagreeable and petty and backstabbing that it made me realize what C. S. Lewis was saying about the nature of evil (or the devil). This book can be read for its story alone, but it is much more rewarding if you think about the ideas and beliefs present as well.
Even if you are not religious or a christian the book can inspire you to think about what you believe in.

Lewis's writing seems always to be about the struggle

of good and evil. His "evil", as I see it, consists

of a separation from the joy of love and life, and a

descent into passionless, dull destruction and

time-wasting. While I am not a Christian, I deeply

appreciate his insights on how we get caught in habits

of this kind of evil, and drawn away from joy.

Lewis's portrayal in this book of the advancement of evil through individuals' petty efforts at self-aggrandizement rang true. It was frightening to watch unfold through nearly content-free board meetings and hall conversations.

There were also some choice insights in the course of the book about how we can help or hinder ourselves in being good. Lewis tends to be clear about the point that devotion to God (or goodness) has nothing to do with looking saintly every Sunday in the right sort of church, and everything to do with cultivating generous impulses, enjoying the life given to us, and being good to one another, without regard for personal status.

I enjoyed the first part of the story quite a bit, as both literature and spiritual exploration. When Lewis suddenly introduced Martians (I am wildly oversimplifying for the sake of clarity) the effect was ludicrously awkward, IMHO, but I was willing to let it go, particularly since he had in fact spent two previous books, only one of which I've read, presenting these entities in more context.

The ending, unfortunately, shared this awkwardness. After a book-long buildup, it seemed to all fly to pieces in a rather unsatisfying manner that felt less like a resolution than like Cecil B. DeMille pulling out all the stops and using all his ancient Roman and Biblical costumes, props, sets, and wild animals at once.

Some great bits, good spiritual insights, thought-provoking, but flawed as a novel. I recommend it if you can forgive that and want some thoughts about goodness and evil to chew on.

I raved about the first 2 books of this trilogy. I can't about the last.

Lewis makes a very significant change in his voice and approach here in the final book of his "Space Trilogy." Knowing some of the history of its writing, this is in large part due to his closer association with and the influence of the fellow author and member of "The Inklings," George MacDonald.

MacDonald's influence upon Lewis is evidenced by this book being much darker and much less connected to the theme of the first 2 books. It's almost like watching Lewis trying to do a literary exercise.

Still excellent writing and worth the read, but when I read the work I found the feeling to be much more heavy and dark. Even the change in character focus contributes toward the feeling of discontinuity.

That having been said, Lewis very much hits the mark with the ethical and philosophical conundrums that have multiplied and confounded our modern era. It is almost prophetic how the biological ethical issues of today are foreseen and portrayed in a book written in 1945.

Yes some of it can be explained by the context of the times in which it was written (WWII) and the darker influence of the melancholic MacDonald, but some of it comes from the nature of the material and logical progression as Lewis begins to deal not with fantasy worlds, but our own world and all of its far too evident foibles.

Ironic too is the focus upon the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (NICE). Echoes of Orwell abound.

Do not come to this work expecting more of Ransom and company. This work feels disconnected from the others. "Bent," if you will. Once you get over that and begin to read and digest the very meaningful portrayals of our future world through Lewis' eyes, you will have a fresh appreciation of his unique voice and writing skills.

A very satisfying and worthwhile read. Not quite a rave review, but certainly an endorsement.

This final book in Lewis' space trilogy is very different from its predecessors. It starts a lot more slowly, but builds to a higher crescendo. The characters are more nuanced, less like cardboard cutouts labeled "good" and "evil." Finally, more than the others, the ending is clear, timely, and very satisfying.

It's hard to describe this book, but try to picture Orwell's 1984 rewritten from a Christian view. The world had not reached Orwell's nightmare, but was headed decisively in that direction. The leaders of that putsch had all too familiar an appearance, and were ready to make every use of people uncertain of their own morality.

The end of the book, just a few pages following the end of the conflict, took me quite by surprise. (No, I won't give it away.) In retrospect, though, it makes a lot of sense. Lewis was acutely aware of mankind's combined nature, physical and spiritual, with no need for distinction to be made. In "The Screwtape Letters", Lewis stated the importance of physically kneeling to pray because of how the physical act of kneeling affects the mind made from that physical body. I am quite sure that the ending was written to be as devout as Lewis could possibly make it, and it is a very beautiful vision of sacred duty.

This book is immensely more mature a work than the two that preceded it. The others create context for this one, but this stands very well by itself. If you have patience with its slow start, you may be happily surpised.

//wiredweird

Lewis's writing these days is widely regarded as of exclusive interest to the God Squad and that is a pity. Certainly this is a work of pretty straightforward religious propaganda, a supernatural thriller written by someone who takes the supernatural stuff with the utmost seriousness but, hey, so is "The Exorcist" and that needn't disqualify it from entertaining the unconverted.
This novel is the last and the only earthbound instalment of Lewis's Space trilogy. It's a theological; thriller in which the forces of darkness are seeking to destroy humanity through the agency of the sinister National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments or NICE.
The plot had two distinct threads. One involves Mark Studdock, a young don at the rather All-Souls-like Bracton College in the fictitious English town of Edgestow (which Lewis in a preface insists is not based on Durham). Mark is a weak man with a desperate desire for recognition and inclusion and is all to easily sucked into the unpleasant world of NICE. He fondly imagines they are headhunting him in recognition of his many talents but in fact they are mainly interested in him as a way to get at his wife, Jane, whose visionary dreams they perceive, rightly, as a threat. And Jane is the subject of the second plot line. While Mark is being sucked in to the world of the baddies at their headquarters at Belbury, a former blood transfusion centre, Jane is falling in with the goodies, a disparate band of desperately nice people at the manor at St Anne's, under the leadership of the charismatic Director, the Ransom of "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra".
The St Anne's parts of the story are the less impressive. Ransom has been turned by his experiences on Mars and Venus into an outrageously charismatic, ageless and near-superhuman religious leader who is really a lot less interesting than the very human Ransom of the earlier stories and who spends most of his time delivering rather dull and condescending anti-feminist lectures to Jane. (We are constantly told she would ordinarily have found such lectures insufferable but he is just so charismatic, you see...) Recently fashionable stuff about the wisdom of being a "surrendered wife" really just recapitulates Ransom's line here though Lewis surely writes far better than more recent advocates of such doubtful ideas and perhaps succeeds making them as attractive and compelling as it is humanly possible to make them.
The Belbury-Mark story is a lot more fun and comprises a splendid and acute essay in political satire. The picture it paints of a grimly rotten beaurocratic institution guided by what pass for "progressive" social ideals is one of the nicest things Lewis ever wrote. (Lewis's intellectual agenda here echoes in a fictional context thoughts he develops in "The Abolition of Man", one of his most interesting non-fiction essays.) Particularly well done is Belbury's "Deputy Director" Wither, whose talks a wonderful and hilarious form of verbal anti-matter that is all too recognisable as only a slight exaggeration of the worst sort of British public sector Managementspeak. The news management techniques espoused by the NICE are again satirically telling and in a strikingly contemporary way: New Labour, one fears, would have loved the NICE with their fascination with spin and "modernization".
Perhaps the best and most insightful thing about the book is the characterization of Mark Studdock, an extremely telling, frighteningly plausible portrait of a man drawn into collaboration with evil not by wickedness but by weakness, a desperation to belong, to feel himself accepted in the world of those who wield the power and pull the strings. It's enormously unlikely that Hitler's Germany or Mao's China contained enough simply wicked people to sustain such poisonous regimes. But it is also enormously likely that they contained many many people who were foolish and weak in just the ways Mark Studdock was, people whose collaboporation makes them appropriate objects more for pity than for hatred.
The climax is inevitably rather over the top, involving as it does the resurrection of the Arthurian druid Merlin whose ancient powers are crucial to determining the outcome of the conflict. Obviously things get a bit bonkers at this point but Lewis is rare among thriller writers for his scholarship and has the erudition in matters Arthurian to carry it off as well as anyone ever could. A real curiosity then, strange and sometimes a bit nuts but also very well-written, satirically telling, often psychologically and politically insightful and very readable.

Many fans of Lewis' work rate this least of the Space Trilogy books; it lacks "Out of the Silent Planet"'s wonder and "Perelandra"'s lyricism. However, for a look at where a situationally-moral, rationalist, humanist society is bound to wind up, it is priceless.

The main characters are a young couple who got married out of love and are finding it hard going in "the real world". The wife, Jane, has an unusual ability to 'dream true' and when her dreams start applying to her own life, she finds it unsettling. Her husband, Mark, a young don (or professor) is no help; he's too wound up in college politics (and some very loathesome friends) and the possibility of a job with a new scientific foundation to pay much attention to her.

The story really begins moving when the foundation, called Belbury, begins moving in on everyday life. But, as always with Lewis, there is a moral opposite ready to stand against Belbury; in it, we find an old friend and several new ones.

This book is astonishingly accurate about where society is now -- as with some of Lewis' other observations (Screwtape's toast to the college comes to mind), it's hard to remember that Lewis wrote them nearly 50 years ago -- they're that close to current events and modern society.

This is the second best novel I've ever read. It was a little difficult to read the first time, but then again I was twelve and wasn't so familiar with certain parts of the Arthurian Legend at the time. I have read it several times since then, however, I have only read the first two books of the Space Trilogy once. I have mentioned that this is the second best novel, the first would also be by C.S. Lewis. It is TILL WE HAVE FACES: A MYTH RETOLD.

While many of his books are far more popular than THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH and TILL WE HAVE FACES, these two books are certainly his best works, and some of the best works in the English language. However, I must warn that if you are a Lewis fan and have read the Chronicles, you might find these much more difficult to read.

The N.I.C.E. (Nat'l Inst. for Controlled Experiments) wants that part of Bracton College's land that is said to contain the body of Merlin. Mark Studdock is drawn into the N.I.C.E, whose temporary headquarters are elsewhere, even as his wife Jane sees at first hand the things the N.I.C.E is doing. The two follow different paths throughout the book, each on different sides without realizing it. And it turns out that Merlin never really died, and furthermore, really was buried at Bracton College....The plot is much more complex than that, but that's the skeleton, stripped completely of flesh so as not to give away any surprises. The characterizations are good--some great. Jane is good--Mark is much better; literature has seldom had such a likeable twerp. Feverstone, Curry, Dimble, Ivy, the tramp, are all good. (McPhee, criticised as being 'unidimensional' by a previous reviewer, is, ironically enough, based on a man Lewis knew well.) Some of the best parts of the book are those that describe the politicking that goes on at Bracton and at N.I.C.E, and amusing little comments are strewn regularly throughout the text. However, the same previous reviewer is right on the mark in saying that the change in Ransom is both disappointing and unexplained, and I personally find some of Lewis's remarks on men and women grating. Some are funny, as when Jane wonders when Mark will really be back, thinking, 'for when men say that they will be away two days they mean that that is the minimum, and they hope to be away a week.'The way Jane despises women who shop for a new hat to comfort themselves and then turns right around and does the same thing is good too. What grates is the author's placid assumption, not that masculinity is good, but that it is the highest good, and that good spiritual beings grow more masculine as they grow more spiritual and perfect. That sort of thing can be ignored, however, especially on the second time through, and it's a rare reader who won't want ot read this book again. And then again.

This is an entertaining depiction of the experience at the low end of the academic hierarchy. It clearly reflects CSLewis' bitterness about some aspects of his own academic career. The constant uncertainty of ones standing, the unceasing tension, the inbred community on whose foibles ones livelihood depends. And, of course, the book is an expression of the not-unreasonable anxiety response at the time by professors of (a certain type of) religious faith to the overwhelming competitive successes of the hi-tech fields, at explaining the world and at bringing money into the universities.

CSL is very skillful at demonizing (literally) his intellectual opponents. As so often happens, the villians redeem what would otherwise be a stodgy book with a canned plot (Merlin lives! Science is demonic! Reanimating dead human body-parts is baaaaad!). The good guys, even, unfortunately, Ransom, are totally blah, as Lord Feverstone might say. CSL's pretentious patronizing at its worst. Read it for the quirky character-villians, fully worthy of a James Bond flick or the Brit late-sixties TV show "The Avengers". They include a sadistic lesbian (nicknamed "The Fairy") who runs a private security force consisting entirely of sexy young women in uniform. When has CSL ever written anything anywhere near this campy?

Today in the USA the commercial religious right claims CSL as one of theirs. I'm not at all sure he would like this. (It's hard to picture him voting for Sarah Palin!) Then again he probably wouldn't appreciate the "Chronicles of Narnia" video games either.

Four stars for vivid narration and entertaining personalities, especially John Wither, a master of rhetorical misdirection, meanlingless reassurances, and impossible-to-follow advice. Judo with language. Try imitating his talking style when your boss asks why you haven't gotten more done!

This is the second best novel I've ever read. It was a little difficult to read the first time, but then again I was twelve and wasn't so familiar with certain parts of the Arthurian Legend at the time. I have read it several times since then, however, I have only read the first two books of the Space Trilogy once. I have mentioned that this is the second best novel, the first would also be by C.S. Lewis. It is TILL WE HAVE FACES: A MYTH RETOLD.

While many of his books are far more popular than THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH and TILL WE HAVE FACES, these two books are certainly his best works, and some of the best works in the English language. However, I must warn that if you are a Lewis fan and have read the Chronicles, you might find these much more difficult to read.

The N.I.C.E. (Nat'l Inst. for Controlled Experiments) wants that part of Bracton College's land that is said to contain the body of Merlin. Mark Studdock is drawn into the N.I.C.E, whose temporary headquarters are elsewhere, even as his wife Jane sees at first hand the things the N.I.C.E is doing. The two follow different paths throughout the book, each on different sides without realizing it. And it turns out that Merlin never really died, and furthermore, really was buried at Bracton College....The plot is much more complex than that, but that's the skeleton, stripped completely of flesh so as not to give away any surprises. The characterizations are good--some great. Jane is good--Mark is much better; literature has seldom had such a likeable twerp. Feverstone, Curry, Dimble, Ivy, the tramp, are all good. (McPhee, criticised as being 'unidimensional' by a previous reviewer, is, ironically enough, based on a man Lewis knew well.) Some of the best parts of the book are those that describe the politicking that goes on at Bracton and at N.I.C.E, and amusing little comments are strewn regularly throughout the text. However, the same previous reviewer is right on the mark in saying that the change in Ransom is both disappointing and unexplained, and I personally find some of Lewis's remarks on men and women grating. Some are funny, as when Jane wonders when Mark will really be back, thinking, 'for when men say that they will be away two days they mean that that is the minimum, and they hope to be away a week.'The way Jane despises women who shop for a new hat to comfort themselves and then turns right around and does the same thing is good too. What grates is the author's placid assumption, not that masculinity is good, but that it is the highest good, and that good spiritual beings grow more masculine as they grow more spiritual and perfect. That sort of thing can be ignored, however, especially on the second time through, and it's a rare reader who won't want ot read this book again. And then again.

This is an entertaining depiction of the experience at the low end of the academic hierarchy. It clearly reflects CSLewis' bitterness about some aspects of his own academic career. The constant uncertainty of ones standing, the unceasing tension, the inbred community on whose foibles ones livelihood depends. And, of course, the book is an expression of the not-unreasonable anxiety response at the time by professors of (a certain type of) religious faith to the overwhelming competitive successes of the hi-tech fields, at explaining the world and at bringing money into the universities.

CSL is very skillful at demonizing (literally) his intellectual opponents. As so often happens, the villians redeem what would otherwise be a stodgy book with a canned plot (Merlin lives! Science is demonic! Reanimating dead human body-parts is baaaaad!). The good guys, even, unfortunately, Ransom, are totally blah, as Lord Feverstone might say. CSL's pretentious patronizing at its worst. Read it for the quirky character-villians, fully worthy of a James Bond flick or the Brit late-sixties TV show "The Avengers". They include a sadistic lesbian (nicknamed "The Fairy") who runs a private security force consisting entirely of sexy young women in uniform. When has CSL ever written anything anywhere near this campy?

Today in the USA the commercial religious right claims CSL as one of theirs. I'm not at all sure he would like this. (It's hard to picture him voting for Sarah Palin!) Then again he probably wouldn't appreciate the "Chronicles of Narnia" video games either.

Four stars for vivid narration and entertaining personalities, especially John Wither, a master of rhetorical misdirection, meanlingless reassurances, and impossible-to-follow advice. Judo with language. Try imitating his talking style when your boss asks why you haven't gotten more done!

While not as good Perelandra, That Hideous Strength is certainly worth reading. Although the first ~40 pages are confusing and a little boring, the story quickly begins to pick up when the frightening designs of the N.I.C.E. are revealed. Mark, a young sociologist at a British University is offered a higher position with N.I.C.E., a sort-of-facade organization with a dark social agenda. Most interesting is the progression of thought by which Mark realizes his humanist or materialist presuppositions can lead to some shocking conclusions if followed through to their extreme. Intertwined are several connected storylines that sometimes delay the suspense of various climaxes within the story. While this was somewhat annoying, Lewis's witty writing kept me intrigued. Overall it was interesting how Lewis wove together philosophy with fantasy, and I was amused at his reference to Tolkien's land of Numinor as a historical reality.

Originally posted at FanLit. Come visit us!

"Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by. Now we kick her away."

That Hideous Strength is the final volume of C.S. Lewis's SPACE TRILOGY. This story, which could be categorized as science fiction, dystopian fiction, Arthurian legend, and Christian allegory, is different enough from the previous books, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, that you don't need to have read them, but it may help to vaguely familiarize yourself with their plots. Generally, in the previous stories, Dr. Elwin Ransom has been to both Mars and Venus and discovered that the planets are governed by heavenly beings and that Earth's governor is a fallen angel. These forces are at war and the fate of the universe is at stake.

In That Hideous Strength, Ransom is back on Earth and is preparing a group of people who can fight the forces of evil. This evil is manifesting as a corporation called the National Institute of Coordinated Experimentation (N.I.C.E.) which is trying to purchase some wooded property owned by Bracton College at the University of Edgestow in England. To do this, they've had to exert their influence over some of the "progressive" faculty by getting them to buy into their subtle message of saving the human race through (but not obviously yet) sterilization, selective breeding, re-education, and biochemical conditioning. The end-goal, though they only talk about this in the inner circle, is a future in which the working class is no longer needed to support the brains that run the world. NICE wants the talents of the progressive faculty on their side as they generate propaganda, but they also want to recruit some more ancient magic -- they plan to dig up the body of Merlin, which they believe may be buried on the college's property.

Dr. Mark Studdock, a sociologist and a new Bracton faculty member who doesn't feel like he quite fits in yet, is tempted to join NICE when they offer him a high-status job. At first Mark is suspicious of the group and their recruitment methods and he's bothered by the vague job description, but their insistence that they need him, their appeal to his vanity, and his low self esteem combine to make their offer seem attractive. Having left Bracton to join the NICE administration, Mark is unaware of the police tactics that NICE is using to make the college town comply with their new order. Meanwhile, also back at Bracton, Mark's new wife, Jane, is having ominous visions. Thinking she may be going crazy, she seeks help and ends up among the group, lead by Dr. Ransom, which is fighting NICE.

One thing that C.S. Lewis does so well in this novel is to portray the slippery slope of Mark's gradual slide into evil which is caused by a lack of his own moral compass. Though he doesn't realize it at first, he is foremost a people-pleaser. He wants to increase his status in the eyes of both his colleagues and his wife, and though he's not actually concerned about his character for himself, he wants others to admire him. Wanting to seem both successful (financially and professionally) and of good character, and without any moral grounding of his own, he has no idea how to behave in this situation and eventually succumbs to the pressure. When he becomes better acquainted with NICE's tactics and plans, the cognitive dissonance he feels leads him to wholly embrace the evil. It doesn't help that Mark discovers that even when he tries to be good, there is no natural law that the universe must reward him for it.

In contrast, characters who have a stronger sense of self, like Jane, have more concrete ideas about right and wrong and are not as easily influenced or corrupted. Yet Lewis doesn't condemn Mark while wholly commending Jane. Instead, Mark's inferiority complex seems heartbreaking, and Lewis makes Jane, an educated feminist, deal with her hatred of masculinity. Other good characters are forced to examine their own self-righteousness.

Another thing that is beautifully done in That Hideous Strength is Lewis' melding of the ancient and new, especially in England's history -- the dark ages with its ancient forest magic, mythical creatures, and irrational superstition, and the new age of rationalism, science and technology. Lewis also speaks eloquently about the difference between organized religion and real spiritual experience. There are also some lovely literary allusions in That Hideous Strength; no fantasy literature lover is likely to miss Lewis' reference to the work of his friend J.R.R. Tolkien.

That Hideous Strength is a deeply philosophical novel which, except for the mention of corsets, doesn't feel dated though it was published in 1945. Some readers may not appreciate all the philosophizing, but I am always fascinated by C.S. Lewis' ideas, finding them logical, enlightening, and superbly said. Some of these ideas can be found in his non-fiction works The Abolition of Man, Mere Christianity, God in the Dock, and probably others that I haven't read. That Hideous Strength -- in fact the entire SPACE TRILOGY -- is a profoundly thoughtful and beautiful work of science fiction. I recommend Blackstone Audio's version narrated by Geoffrey Howard.

The final book in Lewis's Space Trilogy finds Dr. Ransom confronting a huge international organization bent on the submission of the human race and given to all kinds of strange scientific experiments and with one supreme goal--to eliminate all free thinking and emotion. This organization, the N.I.C.E., uses the press, government reform programs, and all kinds of propaganda to make them seem like the new heroes in England, while slowly they subdue the government and begin a takeover of the world. It's Ransom's job to stop them, though this time he has some followers and aid from a recently awakened power that has long slept.
True to his style, Lewis makes this a very entertaining novel with a great underlying message. It is very well-written and teeming with symbolism that ultimately denounces the love of science over the love of God.
This book is a great read--highly recommended.

C.S. Lewis would not have named this series the Space Trilogy. He used the term Deep Heaven for "the packed reality that men call empty space." Everyone else doesn't have a problem with the title so much as the fact that the boxed set of the three books is continually out of print.

Of the three books, I think the second, Perelandra, alternately called Voyage to Venus, is the best. Yet the effect of reading the trilogy together and in order is better than that book alone. The first book, Out of the Silent Planet, is gripping so far as it goes. A friend of mine said the second book, Perelandra, was the best book she'd ever read. But I'd never considered the third book, That Hideous Strength on its own merits until I read an essay by philosophy prof Richard Purtill entitled "That Hideous Strength: A Double Tale." Before that I viewed the last book as starting rather slow, even though it picks up half way through and pulls the three books through to a dazzling ending.

The trilogy is written at a higher reading level than the Narnian Chronicles (the latter were meant for kids), although it's arguably easier to read than The Lord of the Rings. Note: Purtill's essay is scheduled to be included in the revised edition of Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Philosophy and Fantasy in Lewis and Tolkien due out sometime in 2006, along with his most popular essay, "Did C.S. Lewis Lose His Faith?" which argues against the view implied in the film Shadowlands that he did.

The Narnian film may be introducing readers to the books, which, whatever one thinks of the film, is a good thing. But readers closing the Chronicles will be glad to find their way into Lewis' Deep Heaven and the rest of his fiction.

Easily Lewis's best work. This should be on the front shelves at every Christian book store. Lewis frighteningly predicted the rise of the scientific, planning state.

But unlike other books on the New World Order, Lewis advocates (or at least Dr Ransom does), fighting back. And not just fighting back with abstract ideas, but also with revolvers.

Lots of memorable moments: Ransom explains manliness and marriage, beards, and many other things. Shows how the planning state creates disasters in order to bring in their pre-arranged solution.

We read in That Hideous Strength that the first time Jane Studdock looks at Ransom her world is unmade. Why? Because up until that moment Jane believes in a world of total egalitarianism. Now she realizes, once again, in the depths of her soul, that hierarchy holds a deeper truth than the legal fiction of equality. Lewis writes,

She had (or so she had believed) disliked bearded faces except for old men with white hair. But that was because she had long since forgotten the imagined Arthur of her childhood…for the first time in many years the bright solar blend of king and lover and magician which hangs about that name (Lewis is here referring to King Solomon) stole back upon her mind. For the first time in all those years she had tasted the word Kingitself with all linked associations of battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy, and power. At that moment, as her eyes first rested upon his [Ransom’s] face, Jane forgot who she was, and where…her world was unmade; she knew that. Anything might happen now.

The genres of Camelot's magic and modern mad science collide in this novel, and the result is the most exciting and memorable book in what is known as the "space trilogy" by C. S. Lewis.

Clive Staples Lewis is most famous for his fantasy books about earth children's visits to a land called Narnia. He also has a following for his books in the field of apologetics. English scholars know him as the author of what stood for decades as the definitive textbook about Medieval Romance stories, and the writer of an innovative little introduction to literary criticism.

With "That Hideous Strength," Lewis showed the world he could write first-rate adult fiction. There are scenes that rival the beauty and the fright found in the work of the author's friend and fellow Oxford scholar J.R.R. Tolkien. There is even a believable love story, most surprising coming from a confirmed old bachelor writing a decade before he met the love of his life, American writer Joy Davidman.

It is difficult to believe this book was completed in 1943, and it is evidence of why some have called Lewis "visionary." Who else at that time imagined educated 20th Century mankind would search for meaning in Druidism and extraterrestrials? If the subject matter seems far-fetched for '43, the novel's setting was just the opposite. The college, it's faculty and administration, are also realistic Lewis felt compelled to put a disclaimer in the preface.

One caveat should be given the reader. Like his friend Tolkien in "The Hobbit" and "The Fellowship of the Ring," Lewis starts with a first chapter that causes readers to fear they have purchased a smeller. Press on dear reader and you will be rewarded. What starts off like a dreary story about a young marriage dying in a stuffy college town, careens into an intellectually-stirring thrill ride that you won't want to get off.

There is another Lewis-Tolkien nexus in connection with this book. When they were introduced to one another by mutual friends, Lewis was doing personal research on time travel and Tolkien on space travel. Their friends considered Lewis an expert on space travel and Tolkien their leading light on time travel, and thought the two could assist one another. They became friends indeed; close enough to encourage and to criticize each others pre-publication work--academic and otherwise. Distressed by much of what they found in popular literature, Lewis remarked: "Tollers, there is too little of what we like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves."

While Tolkien never completed his time travel novel, what Lewis learned from Tolkien about the subject became a critical component of "The Chronicles of Narnia." Time travel and space travel are both factors in "That Hideous Strength." Tolkien feared it was "A bit tripish." If so, it is the right kind of tripe--and a lot of fun.

This is a fascinating book and story that must be read all the way through book three in the series to be truly understood. Once I realized what it was truly about, it became much easier to wade through the diversions that are set up with too much going on about minute details and the thoughts of the characters. More action would have pleased me but I guess I am just accustomed to the masters of those kinds of books.

One needs to remember that it was written so long ago that the prose is, to me, cumbersome and Lewis goes on and on about things philosophizing at great length about the smallest issue. I felt I had to stick with it in spite of this because by the time I began to see this, I had already invested too much time in the reading of it.

I enjoyed this last book in the series more than the first two.

I loved the other two books "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra". They have esteemed places on my shelf. They're wonderful tales of science fiction and fantasy littered with religious references explained by extra-terrestrial doings. C.S. Lewis makes it known he understands linguistics and how to construct culture, flexing his world-building muscles to deliver fantastic (the TRUE sense of the word!) alternate worlds on planets we had not yet explored.
And then there's this book.
It takes place on Earth, which is already more boring than the other two, but that's explained in the end of Perelandra and some parts of OotSP. But that could have been fine if Ransom was the main character. Or even a prominent character. Or even in the book before the 170th page. Instead, we get an entirely-too-long expositional introduction to completely new characters going through British life in a college-driven town dealing with completely menial power struggles among professors. I'm serious. You don't get to the meat of the plot until less than one hundred pages from the end.
Also there's Arthurian legend. WHY is there Arthurian legend?! More importantly, WHY is it so damn important? The big reveal that's been slowly creeping through the book of who exactly the main villains are is completely blindsighted by the fact that the pivotal part of their plan is to awaken a figure from Arthurian Legend. Yes, the villains from the other two books are involved, but incredibly tangentially. The main HEROES of the other books are only tangentially related. This hardly feels like it fits in the series, and that it was instead a fan fiction written by one of Lewis' close friends.
Overall, I would say read it to finish the series, but I can't guarantee you will like it any more than the other two.

QUOTE:

'...Dimble and he and the Dennistons shared between them a knowledge of Arthurian Britain which orthodox scholarship will probably not reach for some centuries.

'What exactly [Merlin] had done [in Bragdon Wood] they did not know; but they had all, by various routes, come too far to consider his art mere legend and imposture, or to equate it with what the Renaissance called Magic. Dimble even maintained that a good critic, by his sensibility alone, could detect the difference between the traces which the two things had left on literature. "What common measure is there," he would ask, "between ceremonial occultists like Faustus and Prospero and Archimago with their midnight studies, their forbidden books, their attendant fiends or elementals, and a figure like Merlin who seems to produce results simply by being Merlin?" And Ransom agreed. He thought that Merlin's art was the last survival of something older and different--something brought to Western Europe after the fall of Numinor and going back to an era in which the general relations of mind and matter on this planet had been other than those we know. It had probably differed from Renaissance Magic profoundly. For Paracelsus and Agrippa and the rest had achieved little or nothing: Bacon himself--no enemy to magic except on this account--reported that the magicians "attained not to greatness and certainty of works." The whole Renaissance outburst of forbidden arts had, it seemed, been a method of losing one's soul on singularly unfavourable terms. But the older Art had been a different proposition.

'But if the only possible attraction of Bragdon lay in its association with the last vestiges of Atlantean magic, this told the company something else...'

--

The words quoted above are to me some of the most haunting words from "That Hideous Strength," the most difficult to understand of Lewis's novels, and the deepest of his books. I'm not sure the Arthurian element really belongs in this book; it was introduced after not being present in the first two books in the trilogy, and spiritually tastes like a something of a spiritual poisoned apple in the book of how the N.I.C.E., a diabolical bureaucracy free to do all in the name of science, was stopped by Maleldil, men, and angels. But then, Lewis was a medievalist and while he knew much other medieval liturature, the Arthurian legends are probably the greatest works of medieval European literature, for good and for ill. The choice is not surprising.

However, the book, which Lewis candidly explains as "a modern fairy-tale for grown-ups" and has some people off on the wrong foot when it is handed to them as one more science fiction novel, is bound to be a disappointment or at least an unexpected surprise, if it answers to the expectations of science fiction. Even with the expectations Lewis lays out, for a novel which follows the fairy-tale formula of starting with the familiar, the almost pedestrian, beginning. As Lewis says in the preface, "the cottages, castles, woodcutters, and petty kings with which a fairy tale opens have become for us as remote as the witches and ogres to which it proceeds"; George MacDonald's Phantastes, which Lewis said baptized his imagination, starts with MacDonald's here and now and a young man inheriting access to a desk, exploring it, meets his fairy grandmother, and has adventures in fairy-land.

About Lewis's words about "a tall tale about deviltry" I have some reservations. Specifically, I have reservations that the bits about deviltry in particular are really that far-fetched. The book accurately portrays how diabolical things happen in real life; the story is about deviltry as falling dominoes in the infernal N.I.C.E., and while the bit about Merlin may be a tall tale and poetic about that, the N.I.C.E. could have been plagiarized as an artistically exceptionally-rendered pastiche of historical accounts about the Nazis, who had a special occult affairs division and whose Fuhrer enjoyed uncanny protection in multiple assassination attempts; the lesser-known WWII Japanese medical experimentors who would infect a man with a fatal disease and after letting the disease develop, vivisect him without anaesthesia; the Marxist death camps that vastly eclipsed the Nazi body counts--to pick examples from Lewis's own historical setting (our own time has seen unsettling developments in the U.S.A., in Europe, and globally). Merlin may be far-fetched; the N.I.C.E. is if anything not nearly far-fetched enough.

Lewis places "That Hideous Strength," in my mind the greatest of Lewis's fictional works, as paired with The Abolition of Man, in my mind the greatest of his non-fiction works. One may be fiction and the other may be non-fiction, but the critique of a real problem where some of the inaccuracies of the fantastic portrayal only underscore the basic point further. In "That Hideous Strength", "There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust." (I would not enjoy explaining to Lewis the place of Internet porn. Even among churches that treat it as a sin, it is the top sin confessed among young men.)

In short, Lewis's work is a masterpiece. I've read a lot of medieval literature. I haven't read anything else like this, even from the pens of medievalists.

C.J.S. Hayward
Author, [...]

I wish I had time to give this a little longer review, because there's so much packed into this final story in the Ransom (or Space) Trilogy. Perhaps the most interesting thing is the way Lewis blurs genre throughout the series. You can call the whole series "science fiction," but that's not quite accurate. It best describes the first book Out of the Silent Planet , which Lewis writes as science fiction in the vein of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, but with the intention of communicating a medieval cosmology. The second book Perelandra reads more like a myth. In many ways it's a re-imagining of Milton's Paradise Lost, except in this case, Paradise Retained. That Hideous Strength is a fairy tale, or romance. It's full of academic satire, Arthurian legend, and a critique of scientism and theological liberalism.

It's the longest of the three books (longer than the first two combined), and it starts rather slowly. But it's worth trudging through the first 50 pages or so to get into the plot. The characters are thin (that's pretty normal for a fairy tale), but the focus is not in character development, but in ideas and ideologies and the battle between good and evil.

Recommended for anyone interested in theology, medieval worldview, Arthurian legend, fairy tales for adults.

This is the third and final book in C.S. Lewis's amazing Space Trilogy. This book was written as a sequel to the immensely popular Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra but Lewis also wrote it so that the story can stand on its own. So if you haven't read the first, you can start here.

That Hideous Strength, unlike the first 2 books in this series, where Ransom leaves earth and fights evil in space and on other planets, the battle in this book takes place on earth.

Ransom must lead a group of faithful believers against National Institute for Coordinated Experiments or N.I.C.E., an organization that believes that Science can solve all of humanity's problems. He must battle the people in this organization, super aliens trying to invade and control earth and use its population against other planets and against God.

On top of all of that, Merlin has arisen from his long sleep and has arisen in England's time of greatest need. But the question is, who will find him first - N.I.C.E. or Ransom and his team? The fate of the world, and possibly the universe, rests on this question.

Lewis called this story an adult's fairy-tale. It is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, and a book that will keep your attention as you raptly turn the pages to find out where Lewis will lead you.

That Hideous Strength was first published in 1945--more than a decade before C.S. Lewis would himself marry. I mention that because the story opens and largely centers on a young, married couple. That Lewis can write of their marital angst as he does, being a never-married man, is nothing short of remarkable, and therein lies his genius. It is not the prose of C.S. Lewis that sets him apart, but rather his unparalleled powers of observation and analysis. He seems to see things more clearly than the rest of us--offering his readers a steady stream of "how did I not notice that before?!" moments.

That Hideous Strength is my favorite book in Lewis' space trilogy--by a lot. Though I'm a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, I'm not a huge fan of science fiction; thankfully, this book doesn't feel much like science fiction. Unlike the first two, it takes place entirely on earth, and while there are certainly supernatural, "magical" forces at work, the characters and conflict have real-world credibility. And the cultural tug-of-war between traditionalists and progressives feels as contemporary as ever.

On the title page of That Hideous Strength, you'll find an interesting subtitle for the novel: "A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups." Appropriately enough, it was C.S. Lewis who helped me understand what the more subtle, literary distinctives of the fairy tale actually are--namely, the lack of a love interest and the lack of psychological access. Commenting on the creation of Narnia, Lewis notes that when he realized his story "demand(ed) no love interest and no close psychology," he quickly settled on the form best suited to such omissions: the fairy tale.

In light of that distinction, it strikes me as a bit odd that Lewis would call That Hideous Strength a "Fairy-Tale"--though perhaps that was a decision made by his editor! I say that because Lewis does give us psychological access into the minds of the story's two main characters--and it is this access which makes the narrative so credible and engaging. It's certainly not a love story, but I would argue that it is much more, both in breadth and depth, than a fairy tale.

Like much of Lewis' work, That Hideous Strength doesn't fit neatly into any one genre. If you ever started into Out of the Silent Planet or Perelandra and decided they're not your cup of tea, it's time you picked up That Hideous Strength and gave it a go. This may be book three, but you'll enjoy it quite as well, even if you've never read the first two. Of course, I suspect that after reading this one, you'll want to go back and read the first two anyway--and your reading of them will be much improved by the relationship!

After reading or rereading the first two excellent books in C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy-- Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra -- it is almost impossible to keep from reading this book, its conclusion. Unfortunately, while the first two grow better with each rereading, this one grows more tedious. Mind you if you have never read it, do so. I am just suggesting that it is the weakest link. Lewis needs no praise and will not be diminished by any adverse criticism from me. He is intelligent, insightful, psychologically acute, imaginative, clever, urban, witty and literate, and everyone knows it. It is just that in this book he does it all a bit too much. This is the story of an impeding battle between the forces of good and evil. But what a cast of characters: archangelic beings, macrobes, a contraceptive subterranean lunar race, the Fisher King who is also Pendragon, a seeress of the House of Tudor, Merlin, magic out of Numinor the true West, a fortune inherited from an Indian Christian mystic, a Scottish skeptic, a menagerie of animals, earthly avatars of heavenly spirits, an institute the figurative and literal Head of which is a decapitated or rather decorporated mad scientist through which unearthly powers speak, and Withers the dithering deputy director who is so vague and obscurantist that one wonders how people in the evil institute (with the ironic acronymic name of NICE) even manage to put on their pants in the morning never mind engineer the extinction of the whole human race and the conquest of the entire universe. Add to all these of course the merely human elements of brutal police, ambitious and pretentious academics, narrow minded politicians and scientists. Lewis seems to want to pull it all together in one volume; he has everything here except moderation. And when the denouement comes, less than a handful of the evil are really in on it all, and almost none of the good forces are really needed. It is all very anticlimactic. There is a clever description of the politics of a small college, and a good recognition scene where Pendragon discovers himself to Merlin, and an initialllly enjoying citation of the maundering style of Withers (which CS seems to have so delighted in that he persisted in presenting it all through the text until it eventually becomes vastly annoying). Lots of insights too on every one of his favorite topics and pointed criticism on all his pet peeves, but do they all really need to be gathered here together? As in Perelandra this is an explicitly and essentially Christian book, possibly making the work of less appeal to readers who do not share that faith. And his attitude to the feminine, perhaps acceptable in his own day, is just too patronizing today. As I say, do read it, but it is by far the weakest of the three books.

C. S. Lewis describes a major battle that all Christians will face during the their life following God. The hidden temptations can be very difficult to see until there a lot of other parts of their lives are influenced. The victory some times requires time and effort to make changes in our lives, attitudes and beliefs. Dr. Ransom is an illustration how Christians cannot depend on our own understanding, valuations and efforts. In this book the real battle of evil does not appear until much later and then becomes much more intense.

Shall I throw this book across the room because its plot hinges on forcing its heroine to accept her "proper role" as a woman in the mainstream Christianity of the era in which Lewis wrote it? Or shall I enjoy it on its own terms? I had to make up my mind about that as soon as I realized where the author was taking me, and at that point I put it aside overnight. With bookmark removed, because I intended to return it whence it was borrowed without reading further.
I found my place again the next evening, and I kept on. I'm glad I did. While certainly I didn't wind up persuaded that birth control is an evil that prevents "preordained" conceptions from taking place, nor did I buy for a minute the notion that Jane Studdock could only gain both salvation and happiness by abandoning her doctoral thesis for a life of childbearing, I found the rest of the book thoroughly entertaining as a dark science fantasy. Lewis's wit more than redeems the rather heavy-handed allegory that the plot doesn't pretend to cloak. He takes myth and Christian doctrine, and settings and characters from his own time and place, and weaves it all together into a fast-moving and memorable tale. If he had only known the first thing about women, instead of sounding always like a bachelor uncle...or if only, as in "Out of the Silent Planet," he'd had the good sense not to attempt writing them as major characters.

I have read this book several times and each time I pick it up find it hard to put it down. C.S. Lewis' satirical insights and observations of human nature are not only the stuff of genius but just as relevant now as they were sixty years ago.

The story is engaging from the very beginning, even though it starts "innocently" enough with the course of a young married couple who put their own selfish ambitions ahead of each other. They are drawn into spiritual worlds quite opposite from one another and the story just continues to build in scale and tension as it heads for its climax. C.S. Lewis was a marvel in particular of his understanding of how evil minds operate (see "The Screwtape Letters"), their political machinations, and how they can suck others into a web of self-destruction by appealing first and foremost to the ego.

I am not surprised to read some of the reasons for some of the negative reviews posted here as they reflect common disappointments with this, the third book in the so-called "Space Trilogy." For one, this third book is different in tone and setting and use of characters than the previous two, perhaps undermining expectations for readers of the first two novels. Don't let that affect your judgment of the book because it is a brilliant conclusion to the series, and one of the reasons I think so is because of the differences I mentioned. A recurring theme in C.S. Lewis' writings is how people put God in a box with preconceived notions of religiosity and that theme is constantly visited in "That Hideous Strength". So it is only appropriate if this book does not fit in with readers' preconceived notions of plot and setting!

Further, if one does not approve of Lewis' depiction of the roles of husband and wife, then one must also take issue with the Bible itself, for it is from that source that Lewis draws his point of view on the subject.

Wonderful, entertaining and wise, "That Hideous Strength" is full of the kind of clever insights and different ways of looking at things that make C.S. Lewis' writings so endearing. It is my favorite book in the series.

Mark and Jane are a newly married couple in mid-20th century England. They're young, and figuring things out for themselves - figuring themselves out. The crisis that moves them through this process is the disintegration of their little university hamlet by dark powers of technology.

C.S. Lewis was a bachelor at the time he wrote this, and a man's man and academic to boot, yet he portrays a sympathetic and believable Jane, the young new wife. His portrayal of Mark, her academic don husband, is less sympathetic and more caricature like. But however realistic they are, the story is a page turner. Lewis pens fantastic dialogue, while slowly racheting up the suspense, and unraveling the complicated tale.

The story brings together several threads of Lewis' work: the space travels of Harry Ransom, the protagonist of Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet; his piercing focus on the workings of human conscience and rationlization; and British legend and mythology.

Well worth the read.

As a fairy tale, this book starts off rather slowly (as many fairy tales do), but the action eventually picks up and the ending is good. Besides the story line, this book presents a more right brained approach to the things Lewis wrote about in THE ABOLITION OF MAN, as well as a depiction of the groups he talks about in his essay "The Inner Ring", the 6th chapter of his book THE WEIGHT OF GLORY. Lewis manages bring in several other mythologies into his own story, including Numinor (from his friend J.R.R. Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS) and Merlin (from the Arthurian saga). If you can patiently work your way through the start of this novel, the body and ending of it will reward your efforts.

This is my 2nd favorite fiction ever, right after Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. "Hideous" is brilliant because it combines a pragmatic look at evil people and diabolical conspiracies with a wit and humor that keeps me laughing on almost every page.
And in classic Lewis style, interwoven everywhere are religious allegories and symbolism. This book is a treat, like a creamsicle on a summer afternoon.
I was confused at the beginning since the story seems to suddenly break from the 1st two in the trilogy, both in storyline, and in the fact that there seems to be no science fiction in Hideous. But everything becomes clear later on, and the trilogy is truly continued.
This may become known as the most undiscovered book of the 20th century, but it's a classic and a literary jewel.

"That Hideous Strength" is the 3rd and final book in C.S. Lewis' space trilogy. Although "That Hideous Strength" takes place entirely on Earth, supernatural elements from the first two books make an appearance in this one.

Anytime a book (such as this one) makes me underline passages on nearly every page and anytime a book makes me stop to think about ideas or care about the characters or re-read passages for the sheer delight they bring, I know I've just read a classic.

While difficult and dense at times, "That Hideous Strength" is a classic that should provoke an enlightening joy in its readers!

Lewis called his book "A fairy tale for grown ups," which is actually a pretty good summary of the whole thing. What Lewis attempts (and mostly achieves) is to represent the invisible spiritual realities through the ordinary, humdrum things of the world. As in fairy tales, "That Hideous Strength" starts out with the ordinary but ends up in the most extraordinary way.

I won't ruin the plot for those who haven't read it, but Lewis primarily deals with the life of a married couple, Mark and Jane Studdock. It's important that the novel begins with marriage, refers to marriage throughout, and ends with marriage. While marriage, especially one like the Studdock's, may seem humdrum, it is, in reality, a profound spiritual picture of both the union between Christ and the Church and of the union of love that is to exist among men.

When I recently taught "That Hideous Strength" to a high school class in Apologetics at the classical Anglican school where I teach, I had them read the book through the lens of "influence," "peer pressure," and "motivations." As you read the book, pay attention to why Mark and Jane acts the way they do, who influences them, and what their motivations are. Lewis has given us a profound imaginative look at how our lives are really governed. This book ended up being the perfect companion to my Apologetics class in which I tried to get my students to see the necessity of every Christian giving an account of the hope that is within them. We've also spent a lot of time this year talking about peer pressure and how it can lead Christians closer to or further away from God.

Another way of reading "That Hideous Strength" is to look at it through the lens of the different worldviews that are presented. Among these are the unthinking atheism of Mark, the selfish practical atheism and individualism of Jane, the modernistic dream of human reason, a more postmodern mix of reason and the occult, and Christianity. It's fascinating to see the war of the worldviews at work in "That Hideous Strength"! Lewis clearly understood the spiritual state of England in 1946, and his analysis of that condition continues to have relevance for the Western world in the 21st century. Lewis' fairy tale succeeds in alerting his readers to the very real presence of the supernatural in our ordinary lives.

One of the things that make the book such a joy to read is Lewis' insight into human nature. While the "I" passages of the book are unnecessarily obtrusive, Lewis nevertheless gives the reader a lot of keen insight into the nature of man, the nature of marriage, and the psychology that lies behind our thoughts and actions.

Another sumptuous part of the novel is Lewis' language. As with so many of his other works, he has many quotable lines from either the characters or the narrators. At other times, a lyrical beauty sings through the passages, such as those where he describes the effects that earthly characters feel when in the presence of the eldil or angels.

Even the plot itself, filled with most fantastic twists and turns and bizarre occurrences, will not only delight but also shock the reader into wanting to read until the consummation of events in the final chapter.

Finally, I find Lewis' injection of not only Merlin but also Arthurian mythology to be not only out of place but also a positive distraction from the Christian meaning and symbolism of the rest of the novel. It's almost as if Lewis, being the classical and medieval scholar he was, couldn't help himself. It makes for fascinating reading, but it's not entirely favorable in its effect.

In spite of a few odd things I didn't care for, "That Hideous Strength" remains a wonder and delight that I highly recommend to serious readers, especially those who are Christian.

While this book had all the elements that I loved in the previous two books (satire, allegory, poetic description), it was really lacking the cohesion of the other two and was generally a disappointing end to the Space Trilogy 3 Book Set Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra & That Hideous Strength C.S. Lewis. Lewis seems very caught up in the politics of academia for the first third of the book, and then suddenly remembers the fantasy genre. The last third of the book features a rather anti-climactic battle that seemed to be a pastiche of several different mythologies.

All that said, there is still a lot of value in the book. There are some deftly drawn characters unlike anything I've read in other literature of the 1940s. Lewis' investigation of the complexities of marriage, while it does not go far enough, asks important questions that blend faith and sociology in provocative ways.

If you have read Out of the Silent Planet (Space Trilogy, Book One) and Perelandra (Space Trilogy, Book 2) I would recommend that you finish the trilogy, if for no other reason than plot continuity. I will say that this book does not stand alone as one of Lewis' better works.

The conclusion to Lewis' splendid Space Trilogy (also sometimes called the "Ransom Trilogy" after its principle hero), this book also stands on its own pretty solidly. I've been a fan of these books since childhood and I've seen three or four covers for them, from quasi-SF surrealism to a plain unillustrated print, and I must say that the art for this Kindle edition beats all of them I've yet seen, hands down.

'Out of the Silent Planet' was set on Mars, 'Perelandra' on Venus, so it is almost inevitable that 'That Hideous Strength' is set on Earth. Having journeyed through the Heavens, Ransom is now involved with a group of people, most of them Christians, in dealing with a demonically influenced organisation which has plans to eridicate the human race. Although Ransom is no longer the main character in this story, the others who take centre stage, notably the Studdocks, more than make up for this. The storyline is pacy with the occasional twist, and the characters, whilst some may not be three dimensional, certainly grab your attention. Definetly worth reading

This "fairy tale" starts out describing a young married couple - Mark and Jane. Mark is the type that always has to belong to whatever he deems is the exclusive group to be in, and in belonging to such a group at the university he sorely neglects Jane, who becomes more and more disturbed by troubling dreams. She is advised by friends to consult with a woman regarding the dreams, and she enters into a circle of people who are headed up by Dr. Ransom.

Ironically, Dr. Ransom's circle is fighting the evil deeds of another exclusive group that Mark has found himself coerced into. As always, Lewis' storytelling is great - full of vivid detail and the allegorical elements abounding, though the story is a little wild in its conclusion which can be expected in a sci-fi story.

C. S. Lewis - THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH

THS is the third installment in his Space Trilogy. For those who have read the previous two novels (though this is self-contained enough to read as a stand-alone work), they will find themselves introduced to a whole new series of characters, some devilish, some not.

The first time I've heard of the trilogy, it was from a pastor's wife. I was only then reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS (this was back in 1994), and I decided I would try it. Being a fan of Narnia (although I do not like Lion nearly as much as the others), I figured this would be good also.

THAT HIDEOUS STRENGHT, which is longer than the other two books combined, is a book like no other I've read. Everytime I read it I get something new, and, even though I don't much care for the Arthurian element in the story, this is probably my favorite of all of Lewis's fiction, even though he has better (TILL WE HAVE FACES). The novel is reach in characters and ideas (sometimes too much), and I've never read anything else that gives me the same feeling or experience that I get when I read this novel. This is among my top three that I most often return too of Lewis's fiction. Anyway, on to the review.

Lewis, in finishing up this Space Trilogy, presents us with the most complex novel in the series. Lewis reaches for and touches on so many different themes and social concerns throughout the course of the novel, it is impressive on the range of his thought. This book can be the most difficult of the three (although its still highly readable), because so much is going on, and it has been harshly criticized for the amount of material Lewis tried (unsuccessfully, some would argue) to cover in voicing his own social concerns.

Another interesting element of the novel is its relationship to Middle-earth. Lewis makes it quite clear in the novel when he brings in element's of Tolkien's mythology that he is setting his universe in the same imagined space that Tolkien's occurs in. Lewis specifically mentions Middle-earth several times in the novel, and brings in Numenor (a misspelling of Numenor). A careful reading shows THS may be the very first case of fanfiction ever for Tolkien, a full eight years before LOTR was published (though Lewis knew the at that time unfinished work quite well when he was writing THS).

Before we get started you should now more about the novel's genre, as the Space Trilogy is commonly classified as SF. As far as science fiction goes, there are some elements of SF present in THS, but Lewis calls it a fairy tale for a reason - this isn't really science fiction, not the kind you'd find Asimov or Heinline or Clarke. This more mythic than anything, much like PERELANDRA (read my review for my thoughts on that novel), and not really SF-based at all.

The novel is about the corruption of men and women, and how two sides, one good, one evil, are trying to capture Britain. The novel focuses primarily on two journeys taken by a husband and wife.

The main characters are Mark and Jane Studdock, a modern couple who are lost to God and to each other. Jane begins having dreams that are visions of events that are really happening, and ultimately goes to meet with Elwin Ransom about the issue. Meanwhile Mark, a fellow at a college, gets a new employment opportunity with the N. I. C. E. (National Institute for Coordinator Experiments), and so starts his journey into their hellish world. The NICE is ultimately a satanic organization, and appears very much an Orwellian creation. They are trying to take over the government, have their own police force, and control the presses. The N. I. C. E. would be something Orwell would write if he were Christian. Ultimately we find out they are trying have taken the head of a dead criminal, imbibed it with life, and have given themselves over to satanic forces. The Head is demonically possessed. It is through this demonic possession that Satan gives orders to the heads of the NICE. This strength that the NICE as is what the title refers to. The title is drawn from a medival poem about Babel, which also fits in quite nicely as at the novel's climax God confuses men's speech.

The opposing forces, lead by Ransom, is the perfect counter picture to the NICE. There is a love for all things that grow and give life. They are a small group of people waiting for directions from Ransom's superiors (God and angels) to begin combat with the NICE. There are several charming and endearing characters on Ransom's side, including Dr. Dimble (a old don who is married but has no children), and MacPhee, a non-Christian whose function is to be the Skeptic.

The main action of the novel follows Jane and Mark moving about in their new circles. Ultimately we find out both have been trying to get to Jane, which is why the NICE wants Mark in the first place. She is a dreamer, and so she may be able to find Merlin, who has been swept out of time for the last fifteen hundred years. Both sides assume Merlin will be on their side. When Ransom's group finally finds Merlin first, turns out Merlin is Christian.

Once Merlin arrives, the waiting that Ransom's group has been doing for most of the novel is at long last completed. The time for action has come. Ultimately Merlin himself descends upon the NICE, and in one of the most bloody and gruesome scenes in modern literature Merlin eradicates NICE. Animals that were being experimented on by the Institute also escape and join in the carnage.

At the end of the novel, Mark and Jane are reunited, and the gods descend upon St. Anne's (the house Ransom's group are at) and carry Ransom away. The ending is very much a celebration of sacred Christian sexuality, and the novel closes as Mark and Jane are together in a bridal chamber they have been preparing. Lewis's intention for the two characters is they obviously make love, and in all likelihood get pregnant that night.

The third book, THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, is longer that the first two combined. In Sayer's biography (I think it's Sayer - if not its in the Green-Hooper biography) a statement is made that THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH is a Charles Williams novel written by C. S. Lewis, and having reading some Williams I now see why they say that. Tolkien felt William's influence spoiled it, with too much Arthurian mythology incorporated into it. I'm personally not a big fan of King Arthur stories, but this does give me a broader appreciation for them. Many readers may wonder why both sides have such an intense desire to obtain Merlin. Lewis assumes too much knowledge of the reader here. According to legend Merlin is an incubus, a child without a father.

THS may very well be the best of the trilogy, but there are several weaknesses in it.

1. For one, much of the novel is spent in realistic settings. Though we are naturally horrified by the NICE, we don't want them so brutally killed as they are at the end of this book. Its main weakness is it jumps from modern to mythical too soon. It is a novel of ideas, and then at the climax the story becomes mythical, with a violent ending.

2. Another topic that concerns critics is Lewis's use of violence in THS. Lewis was invoking Dante throughout, but the real problem, as Downing says in PLANETS IN PERIL, that the transition between the modern satirical novel and that of mythology occurs too quickly here. Another fault THS has is the flat villains who can only be bad, and on the good side some of the characters have the same fault.

3. Lewis assumes to much of the readers on the matter of Merlin. Unless your familiar with Merlin, you will not know why both sides are so keen to obtain him. Merlin was an incubus, and had no father. That being the case, both sides thing Merlin is something similar to an eldil, or angel, and for both sides he would be a powerful addition to their forces. Ransom is also concerned if the other side captures him they will never find Merlin, and if Merlin is not Christian, Merlin doesn't know how to contend with him, but knows he must

4. In the OSP and PERELANDRA, Ransom is an engaging, though flawed, human, a person the average reader can really relate too. In THS though, he is much more distant. He's never as accessibly human in THS as he was in the other installments. Ransom never seems fully realised as a character as he did in the previous two novels. Ransom becomes much more idealised, whereas in the two previous books Ransom was just like the average sincere Christian man, with struggles and faults. Now, he is the leader and seems to be beyond reproach.

After citing these faults, please do not come to the conclusion I do not like THS; far from that actually. This is my personal favorite of the three, despite the perceived faults.

This is highly recommended. It's notable this is one of Lewis's best selling works - despite the previously cited criticisms, this is Lewis at the top of his game. And what a game it is!

Lewis brings his space trilogy back to the planet Earth for this final installment. Since Ransom is back on earth, the tone of the book loses the "fantastic" nature of the previous two novels. However, Lewis's main theme is still the same: good in its battle against evil. Here evil initially takes more recognizable forms before growing into more extreme forms (I don't want to give anything away). He warns against many forms of evil that were then just beginning to appear but have now reached fruition. Though Lewis obviously has a passionate agenda (what great writer doesn't?), he doesn't lose the narrative. It is again an original novel and a horrifying vision of what evil is capable of and how good must find the courage to oppose evil.

I have been a life-long C.S. Lewis fan, and first tackled this book when I was probably about 12, returning to it often throughout the years (I am now 32). One of my favorite passages concerns the descent of the Eldila (especially Jupiter) into St. Anne's, although I thoroughly enjoyed the work as a whole. It can be a bit slow-going in parts, and definitely is "British" in numerous of its references, but all in all it's a great end to the series and a very instructive and entertaining story. Two quick comments here: an earlier reviewer wondered why Merlin was necessary and couldn't anyone have taken his role upon themselves. Lewis writes in the book how Merlin was needed because in life he had opened himself to the influence of spiritual powers in a way others hadn't, and that "opening" was what made him uniquely suited to the needs of the situation in the novel. As to the other reviewer's comments about Lewis not knowing a thing about women, and his views on contraception, it would seem that a fairer statement would be that Lewis' views did not correspond to the reviewer's, rather than a condemning statement about his views. I say this especially since I know many women who have absolutely no problem whatsoever with the views Lewis articulates in the book. Happy reading to all!

Don't want to start out by criticizing another book, but if you are looking for a theological, eschatological work that also manages to be literature, then pick this over LB series. This book is the third in Lewis' Space Trilogy, and the only one that takes place on our own fallen world. As he does in "The Last Battle" in the Chronicles of Narnia; he tackles the question of how will this whole thing end? Our protagonist to answer this question is a somewhat lightweight "modern" academe, whose main goal in life seems to be to achieve recognition in continually less desirable circles. It is one of the many valuable life insights that Lewis works into his stories. Slow starting, the book picks up the pace as the sides begin to take shape, and as the inevitable collision between good and evil, with some highly unusual twists takes place. The last fifty pages or so are among the best that I've read in my reading life. Ten stars would hardly be enough to rate this book. One of my all time favorites.

That Hideous Strength. That power of evil that desires to bring everything into submission to it. That draws men in to it, until they will have nothing else.

In this fantastic close to C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, we continue to follow the activities of Ransom, as he and his friends fight a spiritual battle against the forces of evil. This time, the battle is on Earth, were a new organization, the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E), consults with demons through a terrible creature, and snakes its tentacles of influence into every aspect of England --- politics, religion, history, education, justice, and science --- all in the name of a better world. It also follows the struggles of a recently married couple, Mark and Jane Studdock, as Mark goes into the employ of N.I.C.E., and Jane joins the resistance.
This climactic book follows in the tradition of its predecessors(Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra), as it describes everyday occasions and phenomenal events with perfect imagery and cunning wit. You will be left wishing for more, and yet at the same time find yourself grateful that C.S. Lewis chose to give us a concise, refined, and matchless series in the Space Trilogy.

Ryan Robledo
Author of the Aelnathan:

This was my favorite of the three books in the sci-fi series by CS Lewis. I think it was my favorite because it was the one of the three I felt was most applicable to my walk as a Christian. It is very different from the previous two as it takes place on earth and sometime in the distant future. The atmosphere reminded me a lot of "1984," but with an ending I felt was more consistent with my beliefs as a Christian and a bit more uplifting. There are a few lines and the stories of the main characters that have stuck with me for a long time. I strongly recommend this book to Christians or non-Christians - whether you are seeking something a bit deeper your walk with the Lord or simply an everlasting peace in this life filled with fear and uncertainty.

Lewis, like his friend and fellow philologist Tolkien, dealt in the creation of realistic myth. This well paced novel culminates his Space Trilogy, commencing with Out of the Silent Planet and continuing with Perelandra, based on the theme of natural and beneficial order versus the illusion of unchecked, destructive "human progress."

While one may take objection to many of Lewis's ideas on religion - I myself do - the unseen world of the eldils, or angels - both good and bad - that he constructs is so grandiose and fascinating that I for one forgive him all offences.

The story opens quietly in a small English town, where a modern young woman - modern for 1945 that is - endures the frustrations of marriage to an underpaid fellow of a minor university. From this innocent beginning, the pair become entrapped by the machinery of a satanic group bent on world domination.

Step by step they are enticed into a satanic plan for world domination, yet, while the plot snares them with all the devilish menace that a reader could wish for, its grasp on their lives is achieved by everyday, believable manipulations: the threatened loss of employment, the flattery of recognition, the temptation of money, power and fame. Eventually the Satanists overreach themselves, and the novel culminates in an imaginative battle of good and evil, with both spiritual and brute physical forces on either side.

The writer George Orwell argues that the inevitable triumph of good over evil weakens the novel, but I don't agree. To me, its charm lies not in its ending but in the skill with which the story is told. It says much for this story, that though science has overtaken it during passage of half a century and more, its lives as though written today.

I particularly enjoy Lewis's construction of opposed hierarchies, and the subtlety with which both good and bad characters are drawn. But how remarkable it is that we are often drawn more to the bad characters! My favourite amongst these is Wither, an ancient villain, whose massive but crumbling intellect hides behind a façade of amiable vagueness as he schemes his way towards ultimate power.

Ending on this note, is it not strange and intriguing that a strong Christian apologist like professor Lewis should need to spice his calm beliefs with garnishes of magic, naturism and warlike demigods?

This work deserves to be understood in the context of works like "1984" and "Brave New World." More than strictly "science fiction," it is a dystopia written during World War II with a profound grasp of Totalitarianism and Communism. The book is packed with social and spiritual insight ranging from marriage, academic life, moral education, Humanism, human frailty, to the dangers of political power gone too far.

Many C.S. Lewis fans will read this with Narnia or the first two science fiction works in mind, and this reviewer encourages them to not do so. As other reviewers have noted, it is a confusion if not a disappointment if read with the wrong expectations. Though some of the characters and themes are carried over from the first two science fiction books, it stands by itself.

It is my opinion that there is a great deal to learn from the good dystoipas and that they are neglected to our own detriment. This is one of the great ones and is something to be soaked in and learned from.

All right, there are problems with this book. Lewis' NICE conquers not only England, but the entire world, while the world hardly seems to notice or care. Lewis never has been able to describe any organization that included more than a pub-full of members convincingly. His "international conspiracy" comes off a bit like Spectre without the pirhanhas or pretty girls. He tries McPhee out in the role of house skeptic and house clown, but he doesn't really work in either. And Lewis can't seem to make up his mind if he wants his good guys to practice Christian miracles or pagan magic; where in the Bible do angels possess people? (Comes of hanging around Charles Williams, I guess.)
So why do I keep on reading the book? Partly because, like a stew, I can push the ingrediants I don't like to the side. And partly because the book contains some tasty little stylistic and conceptual tidbits, like the proper names, which Lewis fills out with some classic parody, the fun of bringing Merlin back to modern England, and the contrast between the tramp and the magician in the climactic scene.
But as Lewis said of Macdonald, the preaching, which would be a defect in other books, is what really saves this one, in my opinion. That Hideous Strength shows a remarkable understanding of the mechanisms of human depravity and redemption. The book is far better on this score than George orwell's antiutopian classic, 1984. Moreover, there are some wonderfully prophetic and insightful passages. The book has, in my opinion, aged extremely well, as technology and the New Age movement have taken the old dream of man as God to new levels in recent years. Was NICE a prophecy of what computer and biotech geniuses are going to do with the human mind in the 21st Century? We'll wait and see.

Lewis' book is the modern story of *sacred England*, which is, apparently, called "Logres"..of the legacy of King Arthur, in Service to the Christ-Consciousness.(And every nation, he tells us, has its "sacred" and "profane" traditions, and its own Story.) Lewis "wakes up" Merlin the Magician and brings him into the 20th century, and enables the reader to accept, as well as know, him. And the same is true for the novelist's wonderful characterization of a *bear* who plays a very big part in the story. And many other beautifully drawn human ("all TOO human", in some cases) characters.
This book is one of the greatest visionary novels I have ever read (or, in this case, listened to on tape.) The last cassette is almost inexpressively, *impossibly* beautiful. It expresses a vision of Harmony among all the Kingdoms of Evolution, and a Harmony of a Sacred Chain of Being that leads through all these Kingdoms and Beyond, into realms one might call "the realms of the gods", of "Cosmic Astrology" with the planets as living beings, all within One Living God. Hearing it is in a way an entering of Paradise. A Sacrament.
I thought I would select a few passages to share:
from the 11th cassette: "She comes more near the Earth than she was wont to, to make Earth sane. Peralandra (note: the goddess Venus) is all about us, and Man is no longer isolated. We are now as we ought to be: between the angels, who are our elder brothers, and the beasts, who are our jesters, servants, and playfellows."
from the 9th cassette: In this heighth, and depth, and breadth, the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called "me", dropped down and vanished, unfluttering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in space, without air. The name "me" was the name of a being whose existence she had never suspected: a being that! did not yet fully exist, but whose existence was demanded. It was a person--not the person she had thought--yet also a thing: a *made* thing. Made to please Another, and in Him, to please all others..a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of.
from the 11th: "Go, in obedience, and you will find love."
ps: I just found the tapes to OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, the *1st* volume of this trilogy. _______

The masterful culmination of the Space Trilogy, "That Hideous Strength" will certainly raise the ire of feminists and moral relativists alike. They should read it anyway.

Other reviewers have complained that "That Hideous Strength" doesn't seem to fit with the first two books of the trilogy. It's true that the plot of the third book is more complex, with far more characters, than the first two. Ransom, the hero of "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra," does play a smaller role in this book. But the trilogy isn't about Ransom. It's about good vs. evil, humility vs. pride, obedience, rebellion, and a whole host of other light-dark juxtapositions. For this reason, readers who enjoyed the first two books from a purely science fiction standpoint, may be disappointed that they don't get to see more of Ransom.

The real reason to read "That Hideous Strength" is for the seed of Christian philosophy embedded in it. The apparently "anti-womyn" theme so distasteful to zealous feminists is not degrading or insulting to women at all. Though one of the female protagonists, Jane, is instructed to "go [to her husband] in obedience, and you will find love," there is nothing misogynistic or sexist about the plot. The theme of obedience (both the good kind and the bad kind) runs strong through this book, and is applied to both male and female characters. One of the more interesting ideas to chew on is the difference between the good obedience, and the bad obedience. Members of Ransom's household obey him, and he in turn obeys Maleldil. The exercise of free will is made clear in these relationships, which are good. But the obedience of Professor Frost and Deputy Director Wither of the New-World-Order-esque N.I.C.E. to dark spirits, and the obedience of other N.I.C.E. employees to them, is clearly obedience gone bad.

This book is the stuff of many high school and college English theme papers. But that's not to say it can't be enjoyed for simply being a good fantasy tale. It's that, too.

This is a review of the entire trilogy, not just "That Hideous Strength". ***This review includes some spoilers***

"Out of the Silent Planet" - I read this book several years ago, and absolutely loved it. It was short, fast-paced, adventurous, etc. The allegory was minimal and tolerable.

"Perelandra" - I read this one about a month ago, after deciding to finish the trilogy. I felt that the first half of this book was great: in the same vain as the first book, with the same kind of mysticism and intrigue that comes with being introduced to a new world. However, the second half of this book was not so great. The major conflict was literally ~60 pages of two people arguing and talking to the 'Queen/Mother' of the planet Perelandra (Venus)...and the climax took place when the "good" character decided to bludgeon the "bad" character to death to make him stop talking to the 'Queen/Mother'. Then there's the chapter where EVERY paragraph praises "God" by ending with "Blessed is He", or some other phrase like that. Ultimately, I just felt that this book droned on and on a bit too long, and the entire second half felt more like prosthelytizing than allegory.
One persistent message that kind of made me mad was that women need to be subservient to men: that the King will guide the Queen in making her decisions.

"That Hideous Strength" - This one was entirely different from the other two, and it was honestly really difficult for me to get through this book. All of the characters were one-dimensional: the "bad guys" were cold intellectual "brutes" that would kill, torture, or arrest anyone that got in their way; the "good guys" were Christian fundamentalists that literally did nothing: they honestly sat in hiding for the whole book, relying on God to come in at the end and quite literally slaughter the "bad guys". This book also toted the misogynistic ideas that women are subservient to men, that women belong in the kitchen and it is their duty to clean (at one point, Lewis actually broke from the story to inform the reader that he, being male, could not explain how the women cleaned the home because it was not in a man's nature to know how to clean), and on more than one occasion when all of the "good guys" were present together, he would name each man individually and then clump the rest as just "the women" (i.e. all were present, including man, man, man, man, and "the women"; man, man, man, man, and "the women" sat down around the table; etc).

And then there was the issue of the evil Eldil's that had "taken over" Earth.....what happened to them? When Merlin's animals brutally rampaged the banquet at Belbury, the Eldil's just kinda disappeared for the rest of the book. That supposedly hideously evil force that was overpowering all of Earth and humanity dissolved into nothing........at the hands of nothing??

Oh, and there's a part where one of the characters (Jane) says something like, "nobody ever said anything about religion, they just said to believe in 'God'"....yet on just about every other page, they discuss how Christian they are, and how in order to be saved one has to be Christian, and how the other world religions are wrong because they don't believe in Christianity, etc. It just bothered me that Lewis had the nerve to say that his philosophy has nothing to do with religion, but then goes and makes everything in the book about religion.

Blah. I could go on with my critique, but won't bother. I enjoy Lewis's use of language: I think he's a very fine writer. And if one could take out the prosthelytizing allegory and the blatant sexism, I probably would have liked this trilogy a lot more. I think it would work as a fairy tale for adults if you can look past those issues. Just avoid the whole trilogy if you are an atheist that doesn't like being preached at..... :/

The masterful culmination of the Space Trilogy, "That Hideous Strength" will certainly raise the ire of feminists and moral relativists alike. They should read it anyway.

Other reviewers have complained that "That Hideous Strength" doesn't seem to fit with the first two books of the trilogy. It's true that the plot of the third book is more complex, with far more characters, than the first two. Ransom, the hero of "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra," does play a smaller role in this book. But the trilogy isn't about Ransom. It's about good vs. evil, humility vs. pride, obedience, rebellion, and a whole host of other light-dark juxtapositions. For this reason, readers who enjoyed the first two books from a purely science fiction standpoint, may be disappointed that they don't get to see more of Ransom.

The real reason to read "That Hideous Strength" is for the seed of Christian philosophy embedded in it. The apparently "anti-womyn" theme so distasteful to zealous feminists is not degrading or insulting to women at all. Though one of the female protagonists, Jane, is instructed to "go [to her husband] in obedience, and you will find love," there is nothing misogynistic or sexist about the plot. The theme of obedience (both the good kind and the bad kind) runs strong through this book, and is applied to both male and female characters. One of the more interesting ideas to chew on is the difference between the good obedience, and the bad obedience. Members of Ransom's household obey him, and he in turn obeys Maleldil. The exercise of free will is made clear in these relationships, which are good. But the obedience of Professor Frost and Deputy Director Wither of the New-World-Order-esque N.I.C.E. to dark spirits, and the obedience of other N.I.C.E. employees to them, is clearly obedience gone bad.

This book is the stuff of many high school and college English theme papers. But that's not to say it can't be enjoyed for simply being a good fantasy tale. It's that, too.

This is a review of the entire trilogy, not just "That Hideous Strength". ***This review includes some spoilers***

"Out of the Silent Planet" - I read this book several years ago, and absolutely loved it. It was short, fast-paced, adventurous, etc. The allegory was minimal and tolerable.

"Perelandra" - I read this one about a month ago, after deciding to finish the trilogy. I felt that the first half of this book was great: in the same vain as the first book, with the same kind of mysticism and intrigue that comes with being introduced to a new world. However, the second half of this book was not so great. The major conflict was literally ~60 pages of two people arguing and talking to the 'Queen/Mother' of the planet Perelandra (Venus)...and the climax took place when the "good" character decided to bludgeon the "bad" character to death to make him stop talking to the 'Queen/Mother'. Then there's the chapter where EVERY paragraph praises "God" by ending with "Blessed is He", or some other phrase like that. Ultimately, I just felt that this book droned on and on a bit too long, and the entire second half felt more like prosthelytizing than allegory.
One persistent message that kind of made me mad was that women need to be subservient to men: that the King will guide the Queen in making her decisions.

"That Hideous Strength" - This one was entirely different from the other two, and it was honestly really difficult for me to get through this book. All of the characters were one-dimensional: the "bad guys" were cold intellectual "brutes" that would kill, torture, or arrest anyone that got in their way; the "good guys" were Christian fundamentalists that literally did nothing: they honestly sat in hiding for the whole book, relying on God to come in at the end and quite literally slaughter the "bad guys". This book also toted the misogynistic ideas that women are subservient to men, that women belong in the kitchen and it is their duty to clean (at one point, Lewis actually broke from the story to inform the reader that he, being male, could not explain how the women cleaned the home because it was not in a man's nature to know how to clean), and on more than one occasion when all of the "good guys" were present together, he would name each man individually and then clump the rest as just "the women" (i.e. all were present, including man, man, man, man, and "the women"; man, man, man, man, and "the women" sat down around the table; etc).

And then there was the issue of the evil Eldil's that had "taken over" Earth.....what happened to them? When Merlin's animals brutally rampaged the banquet at Belbury, the Eldil's just kinda disappeared for the rest of the book. That supposedly hideously evil force that was overpowering all of Earth and humanity dissolved into nothing........at the hands of nothing??

Oh, and there's a part where one of the characters (Jane) says something like, "nobody ever said anything about religion, they just said to believe in 'God'"....yet on just about every other page, they discuss how Christian they are, and how in order to be saved one has to be Christian, and how the other world religions are wrong because they don't believe in Christianity, etc. It just bothered me that Lewis had the nerve to say that his philosophy has nothing to do with religion, but then goes and makes everything in the book about religion.

Blah. I could go on with my critique, but won't bother. I enjoy Lewis's use of language: I think he's a very fine writer. And if one could take out the prosthelytizing allegory and the blatant sexism, I probably would have liked this trilogy a lot more. I think it would work as a fairy tale for adults if you can look past those issues. Just avoid the whole trilogy if you are an atheist that doesn't like being preached at..... :/

All three books are outstanding! It did start slow, but is worth sticking to. As in all his fictional books he gives us a glimpse of ourselves and characters we know in struggles and battles between good evil. I think we get a look at strengths and flaws in even those we would consider strong at heart. It helps to give perspective on what it truly means to be Christian.

This is the end of the trilogy, for the first time entirely on earth. It is a fun story of earthy corruption, with lots of Christian details, and some surprise figures like Merlin. But ultimately, it is a good story that does not do much really new. So if you are a fan of Lewis, which I am, it is a pleasure to reach the end. What really distinguishes this is the elegant writing. Lewis was a master of prose and theme. But I did enjoy the first two much much more as path-breaking if amateur scifi.

Recommended for fans. They will not be disappointed. But readers in search of hard and origianl sci fi will not find much to love.

Well, this was very disappointing. In the final chapter of C.S. Lewis' space trilogy, he completely abandons almost everything that made the first two novels interesting. First, Dr. Ransom, the main character from the last books, is no longer the main character. Rather, two new characters, Mark and Jane, are the ones the reader sees most of the story through. Also, Lewis abandons most of the space theme as the characters stay Earthbound, losing much of the awe and wonder that characterized the settings of the first two novels. He also is way too analytical in this book as he is trying to refute some of the themes that make up the modern sci-fi movement of his time, as characterized by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Really, this book is nearly 400 pages of debate, petty academic squabbles, and refutations, most of which hardly advances the story at all. And lastly, and perhaps the greatest tragedy of all, the entire story is anti-climatic. Not only do none of the characters really do anything to shape the story, but even Lewis admits, through the character of Dr. Ransom, that everyone was just observers and not movers. BORING! Still, some of the arguments that Lewis kicks around are interesting carry overs from the previous two novels, but this book completely failed as a story. Such a shame too. After "Perelandra," this one had so much promise.

As in many of C.S. Lewis' other non-fiction works, he astutely articulates in That Hideous Strength the dangers of the "progressive" movement. On a side note, I find it amusing, at least, that the term Progressive should be utilized. It seems that in order to progress towards something, there needs be a stated goal. What is it for a "progressive"? If it turns out to be an apocalyptic, utopian vision wherein all are (voluntarily or involuntarily) made to hold hands and sing Kumbaya, or worse, an ode to the all powerful nanny state, then I most vociferously must object. I would not go in for totalitarianism, whether from the left or right (politically), secular or religious. If they want a revolution, like the Beatles, they can count me out! After all, the only genuine revolutionary is the God of Love, Jesus the Christ. Love, of course, meaning to desire the objective good of the other. I suspect that all leftist and "progressive" thought is merely trying to escape God and His Love. If one succeeds in this attempted escape, Hell is where they land...eternally. What is most puzzling is that they have the audacity, when this is suggested, to blame a "cruel, vindictive god". Notice I have neglected to capitalize the G in God. Even if they don't understand, those who reject God eternally, will still have a "god" and it is the "god of this world" and Satan certainly can be a cruel task master.

As to the book, I highly recommend it. It is, in my opinion, (outside of The Screwtape Letters) C.S. Lewis' best fiction. I know some may reject my claim and make an opposing claim for the Chronicles of Narnia. However, in my opinion, the allegory is a tad to thick for my tastes. That Hideous Strength is a masterpiece for fiction from a Theistic reference point. C.S. Lewis was able integrate his non-fiction philosophy along with a compelling storyline and likeable (or detestable) characters. It must be said that Mr. Lewis is not a master of verbal caricature (like Dickens), symbolism (like Hawthorne), or even fantastical descriptions (like Tolkien). That being said, That Hideous Strength is a fast-moving (even more so if one has read the other two novels in this trilogy), enjoyable fantasy/scientific novel that could not be more relevant for our times.

Finally, I suspect leftists, atheists, and "progressives" hate this novel due to the fact that it exposes them.

Silly heading, but nobody reads them anyway. I think. The third and last book in the trilogy (you did read the others, right?) and about as far from science fiction as you can possibly get . . . there's a definite shift, Lewis seems to be bringing in more fantasy and religious allegorical elements as the series continued, with the end result here. The tale is subtitled "A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups" and that's what it boils down to. If you're like me, you'll have read this right after reading the other two books (which were great, by the way) and you'll be immediately confused. Instead of focusing on the nifty Dr Ransom, you get a young couple Mark and Jane. Jane's having weird dreams that keep coming true and Mark isn't really paying attention because he's trying to get into the political "circles" as the local university where he works. However, little does he know that evil is lurking there and the folks are plotting some very dark things. Herein comes the good guys and after being introduced to lots o' supporting characters, some of which are interesting, some less so, you finally meet the man himself: Ransom. The problem I have, and this has been said elsewhere, is that he's apparently the "Pendragon" (but also the Fisher King . . . weren't they two different people?) but there's absolutely no explanation as to how that happened. Lewis probably figured it wasn't important and not relevant to the story itself, heck, Ransom's discussion of how he inherited the mantle of the Pendragon is basically tossed off in one sentence. The first half of the book mostly focuses on the college and the dread blokes there, but when Ransom and company shows up finally, things get very trippy indeed. Perelandra was a strange novel because of setting but I could deal with that, Lewis piles so much allegory on the plot that it gets almost ridiculous. And then Merlin shows up. That's right. Merlin. He's kinda fun actually but much like Ransom becomes, he's little more than a voice, you don't get any indication of his motivations. All that said though, this is a nifty way to end the series, the climax left me a little flat, especially after the buildup in the first two books (Merlin makes some stuff happen and the gods blow some stuff up) but Lewis' mastery of the English language saves this completely, this guy was passionate about this novel and you can tell, it crackles from every page and you can really feel it toward the end in almost every word. There's a nice "Britishness" about the book as well, a sense of the sheer age of Britain and its history. The ending is kind and gentle and you're left with a good feeling when you finish the book. If you don't like Lewis for his "preachiness" then stay far away if you don't like thinking, because he's using this more to illustrate a point more than anything else, but it's fine writing and a fine cap to an interesting series. And for those of you who started reading this series because it was science fictional, don't stop now, y'all could stand to read something different every once in a while. It won't hurt. Really.

For the first half, at least, it is an absorbing look at the lure of power and the ever-unfolding "Inner Ring" (see that essay in the Weight of Glory compilation). Wither in particular is a chilling entity, one of the great characterizations. The novel lost me later on when it explained too much about Belbury, and then simultaneously confused me with the (far) less interesting goings on at St. Anne's. Here is a novel crying out to be excised and adapted into a great film, but alas, who is out there to film it? Speaking generally, Hollywood is unqualified to do anything but make a mess of it.

Taken by itself - which can be done without much issue - this is a good book. However, when positioned as the third installment of the Space Trilogy, it is a square peg being placed in a round hole. There are a number of things about this book that break the harmony with Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.

1. Dr. Ransom is not the central figure of the story. There are vague references to him earlier in the book, but it is at almost the halfway point that we see Ransom interact with the rest of the characters. Some may find this similar to the way The Two Towers is written, but the big difference between the two is that all but one of the characters in The Hideous Strength are brand new. Even Devine is going by a different name. At least in The Two Towers, you were reading about familiar characters for the first half.

2. The number of characters in this story is significantly large in comparison to the other two books in the trilogy. You meet as many characters in Bracton alone as you see in the entire length of Perelandra. That doesn't even take into consideration the characters at Logres and the N.I.C.E. This seems to take away from the cohesiveness of the Trilogy and almost detaches it from the other two stories.

3. The role of the Oyarsa is quite different. Given that the story is set on Earth, this is somewhat expected. However, never having them speak just doesn't seem fair after their involvement in the other two stories. Lewis should have let the Oyarsa from Mercury and Saturn impart wisdom as Mars and Venus did.

Again, this *is* a good book if you take it by itself. There are even some things related about the differences between men and women that are quite funny but true. Look for MacPhee's comparison of how the two sexes use nouns. Married people will get a chuckle. However, given that this is supposed to conclude a trilogy, it really fails in that regard. If you are expecting something that performs like Return of the King, you will be quite disappointed.

I advanced as you're supposed to through this trilogy of works, and found as I read them they became more compelling and each better than the one before it. Currently my favourite fictional work is 'Perelandra,' which is the second book in the trilogy.

This work does start out slowly but upon re-reading it one can see that it is indeed compelling from the get go and rife with the themes and turmoil which become widely apparent later in the novel. One should try to not be so intellectually inept as to not see what is going on until after the character in the book you're reading does, try in the beginning and realise that this work is a critique on various social events and systems which have arisen in modern history; Multiculturalism/Immigration, Feminism, Materialism, Intellectual slavery/Censorship, and Fascism as well as Statist points of view in general.

This work shows the importance of family, proper social order and personal liberty and intellectual freedom. It is a darker genre than you may be used to, but as we live in dark times so why should this novel of a prophet who only saw what was being sown has not lived truly through what we're reaping be any different? Truly this is compelling and really engaged me as a person to question the question of gender relations (although this is not the defining work on such an issue). This work also I found to really touch on the collective unconsciousness of my heritage and has many mythos and folkish aspects which I loved. Truly it is a culmination of the trilogy albeit a break from the pace of the rest as the old favourite - Dr. Ransom is not the main character he's just a supplementary one. The fact is that it really did anger me that he wasn't the major character in the book but it's nice to see how one as advanced as Ransom can influence for the sake of their spirit the lost around him. So there is a lot to say for this book, and truly it is an intellectual, spiritual, and fantastic experience to say the least.

C. S. Lewis' THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH is nominally the third book in what is described as his "space trilogy," but such a description does not accurately portray the nature of this prophetic work. Lewis himself calls it "a modern fairy-tale for grown-ups," but that also falls short of adequate description. Since science fiction it is not, and a fairy tale it is not, let us see if we can determine what it may be.

It is, of course, allegorical and suggests strongly the same sort of allegory that underlies the Ring series by Tolkien (despite the latter's statements to the contrary). As the scientific research organization N.I.C.E. steadily gains public acceptance, then public support, and then assumption of governmental authority, even as the nefarious nature of its goals becomes more and more evident, the reader struggles to scream a warning to the citizens being caught and enslaved in its encroaching web. Why do they not see through the façade of scientific progress and recognize the dehumanizing goals of this soulless entity? Why do they support this encroaching social cancer? Why do they turn against and attack those few who try to sound a warning? The reader, who has the advantage of an external vantage point, sees the growing evil, the destruction of that which is good, but is powerless to open the eyes of those who are being irretrievably deceived.

Lewis' allegory is, unfortunately, timeless and is as applicable today as it was when it was first published in 1945. It is no stretch of the imagination to equate N.I.C.E. with the spreading multi-national corporations of the 21st century. As president of the United States from 1953 to 1961, Dwight Eisenhower warned of the social and economic dangers inherent in the growing military-industrial complex, but his prescience has been disregarded, or, more sinisterly, has been overwhelmed by the strength of industrialists whose wealth and power seem to place them above control by the people. Yet, had Lewis' warning been heeded in 1945, Eisenhower's would have been unneeded ten years later. Both are still applicable today.

Is there a solution to the encroachment of evil into human affairs? If there is, Lewis did not know of it. True, by the end of THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, the tools of evil are dead and the N.I.C.E. organization is destroyed, but Lewis warns that this has been only a battle and that the war will continue in other places and in other ways.

Lewis' message is, as I hope I have now shown, as uncomfortably real, urgent, and contemporary as it was when he wrote it. As to the manner in which he wrote it, this book is surely the strongest and most readable of the trilogy, which includes OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET and PERELANDRA. In fact, even though reading the trilogy in order will give the reader a better understanding of Ransom and how he came to be the "Director" of the "good guys," this final book can easily stand alone and, if only one of the trilogy is to be read, would be my choice of the one to read. The other two, while worthy of being read, are, at times, plodding in contrast to this one, which is guaranteed to raise the reader's inner tension and to urge him ever forward in the saga.

If there is a weakness in the plot of this third book, it comes in the means of bringing down N.I.C.E., its minions, and its masters. Readers familiar with Greek drama and its use of a "deus ex machina" to rescue hapless humans from their own foibles will see that Lewis has relied on a similar technique. Literally, several intermediate gods (inspired by medieval concepts of hierarchical levels in the universe) as well as a reawakened Merlin and a biblical "Tower of Babel" solution are necessary to defeat the enemy in this battle, and I'm not at all certain that any of these weapons are available to us in the "real world." Despite this, however, the novel is as gripping as any conspiracy suspense thriller, a comparison I have borrowed from another reviewer because I can think of no better way of putting it. In short, buy the book, read it, and, most importantly, learn from it. I have.

This book is a must read for all C.S. Lewis fans, or even fiction or sci-fi fans. Lewis does a better job of potraying a battle of angels and devils then Frank Paretti did in This Present Darkness. This book lets the reader see the eternal conflict between good and evil. Satan and God.
Lewis does a remarkable job in this extraordinary book! For all Christians (and sci-fi or fiction fans), this is a must read!!

As author of Project 314, I have a deep appreciation for the way that Lewis pits good vs. evil. In his space trilogy, Lewis ranks with Stephen King (The Stand), and Tolkien's ring series in the way that he reaches deeply into his imagination to allegorize the moral dilemma of man. From a scientific standpoint he is ahead of his time. Imagine Lewis' amazement at the way we keep bodies alive today!

C.S. Lewis was one of the best Christian authors of the last hundred years and this book is one of his best. Beautifully written, it can actually stand alone and be read without the other two books in the series (although they do enhance it). The image of the "crooked" room will stay with me as long as I live.

I write from Wisconsin of Feb. 2012. The madness of NICE is all but happening, with mind bending lies and mob violence. However, under and around the nuts from every other state and some other nations I see the edges of the True Nation in the shadows. C.S.Lewis was always a fan of Plato's forms and shadows, and the part about the "true form" of a nation is among the most hopeful things I've ever read. That alone is worth getting the book in whatever form you can.

C.S. Lewis's book "That Hideous Strength" has good lines, lots of good lines. It deftly analyzes many of the problems of modern secular relationships and the secular state. But the ending is a complete deus ex machina. The killing off of all the various "evil" characters also feels a bit sadistic at times. There's never much suspense about how it will end. This might have been less of a problem if I was reading it as the conclusion of the trilogy, but Lewis says in the introduction that this can be read on it's own, if less profitably. The emphasis should probably be on "less profitably".

When I first read That Hideous Strength, I was too young to understand many of the themes presented, and in trying to enjoy it as simply a story, I finished it feeling confused. When I returned to it a couple years later, I found it incredibly in-depth and rich with wonderful themes, tying in earlier references from Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra as it built up to one grand conclusion.
This is NOT a light read, but if you have the patience to read slowly and savor each nuance, it is well worth it. It requires the same reading style that true fans of Tolkien's LOTR trilogy develop in order to absorb the masterful work properly.
I would not recommend this book to anyone younger than late teenage years or older, as many youth are not prepared to deal with the themes (that Lewis presents) in a matter-of-fact way, and are more likely to react strongly to dated attitudes towards women (sadly, many readers do remain that way even as they chronologically age). More mature readers are able to look past those as typical of the times in which Lewis lived, and learn from his full story, which is an excellent lesson for us all.

Having enjoyed this novel again and again for a generation, I believe that it is prophetic and even more relevant today than when it was written. Now that recent filmings of Lord of the Ring and the first Narnia book have delighted critics and the public alike, is it too much to hope for a high-quality cinematic version someday of _That Hideous Strength_? Lewis would be most pleased, I daresay, if any such adaptation were set in our own time, because we need its messsage now.

By the time Mark Studdock arrives at Belbury, he is a confirmed brown-nose with considerable experience in pursuing his life's ambition: joining the esoteric Inner Circle of whatever. It is striking, then, how much difficulty he has in the NICE even determining who is in this group. Feverstone, Filostrato, Hardcastle, and Straik, for instance, all confide to him that their own respective purviews are of the institute's essence, while various other departments are peripheral or merely for public consumption. By the end of the book, the chaos proclaims that none of these figures, nor anyone else, is effectively in charge.

In this respect, Lewis brilliantly anticipated insights that the late William Stringfellow would articulate in the 1960s and 70s: that institutions are among the contemporary world's most characteristic manifestations of the demonic "powers and principalities" mentioned in the Bible. They inevitably take on lives of their own and go off the rails. Eventually they justify any and all means towards the end of their own survival and hegemony. They enslave and "deplete the personhood of" every human being involved with them-- even (and perhaps especially) those who imagine that they are in control.

Of course, the church as an institution being hardly exempt from these problems, clergy would react to Stringfellow's analysis with hostility proportionate to their power. Ironically, the works of this theologian long lay in unread obscurity in seminary: while students in, of all places, law school continued to turn to them when they wanted to learn how corporate structures really operate. As we 21st-century Americans find ourselves steeped in the waking nightmare of an unfolding vindication of Stringfellow's prophetic thought, it is heartening at least to see a growing interest in it-- books lately republished and his ideas taken up and further developed e.g. by Walter Wink. For an illustrative novel, however, _That Hideous Strength_, written by C.S. Lewis some 25 years earlier, may yet be unsurpasssed.

Some commentators have incomprehensibly indicated that the NICE people were materialists. Pas du tout. They are probably ex-materialists, but by the time we meet them are devotees of the occult. The reader grasps the inevitability of this progression. As Muggeridge (and perhaps Chesterton earlier) observed, those who cease to believe in God don't believe in nothing. Rather, before long they'll believe in anything. Lewis must have been aware of the occult dabbling practiced by high-level Nazi figures. While there are always atheistic individuals, it is unlikely, despite their best efforts, that their grandchildren will inherit a trait that requires so much mental assiduity to maintain. There have been no viable large atheistic societies. The Belburians, however, present themselves as materialists and are not prepared, and would probably never be prepared, to publicize their real allegiance: it is esoteric, elite, and exclusive by its very nature, not to be shared by the likes of you and me.

Sitting in the garden, one of them exclaims, "Bloody racket those birds make!" Such a sentiment is revealing and chacteristic of one who, as the novel describes in detail, far from being a materialist, has cultivated a disgust for all things physical and who dreams of transcending it. Add this trait to a quest for esoteric knowledge and we have the two most classic marks of the gnostic.

I have no doubt that Lewis intended the book partly as a warning against this mode of thought, which Christian orthodoxy has found profoundly and decisively incompatible. He illustrates what kind of people are tempted to take it up, why they do so, and to what bad ends it will lead. Since Lewis's death, it has become fashionable among post-modernists and certain feminists to express their pique and scorn for Christianity by affecting a sympathetic reconsideration of gnosticism, suggesting that its eclipse was only an historical accident or the effect of a political power play. We could do with this book as an antidote.

RECEIVED FREE COPY FROM LIBRARY

A smart writer, Lewis saved the best for last in his space and time triology. He ties ancient Celt and Roman legend into a modern day state acting as God on earth.

I only recently discovered the Trilogy, never having been much of a Lewis fan, and read them in order. Each book has its charms, but I especially enjoyed the way That Hideous Strength built on the "circles" of the Bad Guys, both at Bracton college and later at Belbury. Mark Studdock, a person possessing neither distinction, character, nor a talent for evil, has lived his life - and ruined it thereby - in a search for admission to 'the inner circle,' and any circle will do. He learns that each concentric circle, in addition to being more exclusive as he supposed, is also more evil and more banal.
The characterization of Stoddock is superb. Likewise the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Dimble and a few other minor characters. The book is almost worth reading just to gain the acquaintance of Mr. Bultitude.
Others are far less engaging. MacPhee - one of the most unidimensional characters I have ever read - is a continual annoyance. The whole build-up with Merlin, only to have him turn out completely powerless until "possessed" by the eldils, makes no sense to me at all. And then he - what? Explodes? Couldn't anyone have done that? And why do God and the angels need an Arthurian wizard, anyway?
But the biggest disappointment was Ransom himself. He went from being a lifelike, engaging fellow, in the first two books, to an idealized shadow. We never really learn how he goes from being a Cambridge don to a wealthy landowner and "the Pendragon." Who are these people who bequeath St. Anne's to him on the condition that he take the name "Fisher-King?" How did he become the Pendragon? No explanation.
This was hard to accept from such a brilliant writer. But that's not to say the book is unworthy of attention. I expect to read it again, probably soon, and will probably get more insights from it the second time through.
I believe much of the problem the Trilogy has with readers of my generation is that it is always classed as Science Fiction, which it certainly is not. People read it expecting familiar formulas, and don't know how to react when it turns out to be religious allegory. They should read more carefully. As with most of what he wrote, Lewis intended to illuminate more than to entertain.

If you don't have time to read the other two, this one is well worth your time. This book is profound, exciting, fantastic, and intellectually stimulating! If you have read all of Lewis' other works this one will be wonderfully different, but still the great Lewis you know.

The conclusion to the trilogy, "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra". It can be read on its own, but there are moments when it was helpful to have read the previous two. "Perelandra" is by far the best of the three. I was disappointed there was no closure to the story. Lewis makes mincemeat of our feeble minds. His insights are amazing and his concept of the world beyond is exquisite. The English dialect can be slightly aggravating.

The novel is centered around a university now owned and run by a group of intellectuals set out to change the world by the creation of a "new man". They created this new world order front to rid the world of undesirables, evoke a revolution upon the earth, and enforce a police state. The "worldly" Ransom is back, but not as one of the main characters. Instead, chosen is a man that is hired on by the university and his wife (who has dreams that are actually real), will together (though conditions separate them) create this "new man".

Wish you well
Scott

I find it astounding to read that someone thought this was the weakest of the Space Trilogy, it was the only one of the books I could even get through. And I loved it, I re-read it every couple of years. As much as I loved the Narnia books this one is grown-up fun

Very well written. As this book was my second foray into C.S Lewis, (the first being the fantastic "'Till We Have Faces", I never understood where people get the idea that this work has heavy Christian overtones. If anything, it delves into paganism, and what appears to be precursors to Scientology and other UFO cults. If Christianity is a major facet in CS's works, then he may be exploring the underlying knowledge that manifests itself into the various, usually bloated religions, an effort that would otherwise result in his excommunication, or worse.

This book paints a vivid picture that reminds me of Mike Rose's "intelectual community". This picture only last a few chapters until we see the pompous old fools taken in by the NICE quite interesting. All in all a very good book!!!!

I read the entire trilogy decades ago and picked this book up for reading on a trip. What a difference a few decades of experience makes! Though Lewis no doubt has international Communism in mind when describing the depredations and manipulations of the fictitious N.I.C.E., the techniques of character assasination, media manipulation, and shameless deception are very much in vogue today. An absolute must-read for any Christian who wants to avoid being maninipulated by those with a non-Biblical worldview. The book stands alone, and does not require the other companion volumes to be fully enjoyed (though you won't be disappointed if you purchase the set).

Hidden in this excellent science-fiction novel is a startling look at our own society. I found myself discovering parallels to my own experience with "N.I.C.E." institutions such as major American universities and the like. A fascinating and frightening read. You'll want a good chair for this one -- let it sink in and experience it fully.

This trilogy may have been good if I read and spoke the King's English. I don't and it made for a very difficult read. I didn't make it through the first book. For me, it was a waste of my money. I cannot recommend it.

With integrity such a rare commodity these days, it is always a pleasure to read the works of C.S. Lewis. This is truly pleasant instrucion in honesty and reality, two subjects avoided by so many. Do read the three of these stories more than once. Like all good literature, you will find something new and valuable each time. I just bought my second set, having completely worn out the last one. I intend to wear these out as well.

C. S. Lewis wraps up his "Space Trilogy" right back on planet Earth where it is up to a cadre of ordinary folks, mythical beings, and brute beasts to thwart the forces of supreme wickedness. With the assistance of the Director--a man familiar to readers of the previous two books in the trilogy--this strange collection of characters is pitted against a vaguely-familiar, propaganda-driven totalitarian regime ironically called by the acronym NICE.
This book is Lewis at his satirical best--an uppercut landed to the jaw of secular, anti-family, "post-christian" society.
What is particularly striking about this book is who Lewis fingers as the advance-guard for the evil that sadly dominates on Earth, ever trying to extend its power: a bunch of place-seeking, ethics-free, jive-talking academics who have long left any pretense to reason and science behind. Instead, they are driven by a misguided altruism that manifests itself, ultimately, as complete misanthropy.
In this regard, Lewis must be regarded as prescient. Anyone who has spent any time in American academia will immediately sympathize with the plight of the characters in the book who *dare* to stand up to the censorial, elitist, marxist/leninist, anti-religion, pro-death agenda so prevalent among the "progressive" leadership of the university. Lewis had these people's number fifty years ago.
In short, this book is a fun read and though couched in humorous terms, is deadly serious at its core.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I have read a number of the negative reviews, and I can see how someone who doesn't share the religious views of Lewis might be put off. If a reader is not at all open to the possibility of the supernatural then this book might be tough going. But for anyone who has wondered, "How might a political conspiracy actually take place?", this is a must read. Whatever religious or political views one holds, to think that the main stream media is not even the least bit managed from "up top" is naive.

The first two books were above average and I enjoyed them.

That Hideous Strength: The first 8 chapters should have been distilled into 1-2. By the time I got to Chapter 9, I had really lost interest.. It was a chore to finish. Not much originality like the first 2. Disappionted.

I truly loved That Hideous Strength. I have read both of it's prequels and I was not diasapointed by the final book. The plot kept me reading, the characters kept me interested, and the ending left me with a smile.

I adore C.S. Lewis so much... so it pains me to say that I really, really disliked this book. The first time I attempted reading it, I got 90-something pages in, and then stopped. On my second attempt, I made it all the way through the 382 pages in about three weeks' time (that is a LONG time for me). For one, it was just boring. All of the fantastic imagination and vivid imagery from the first two books was non-existent in That Hideous Strength. It was like watching black-and-white TV. Secondly, I cared nothing for any of the characters. Not even Ransom. They were all dull and very wordy without saying much of anything at all. It was also quite a bit darker than the other two books, and many of the antagonists met gruesome ends. The allegory/theology/philosophy was also very difficult to follow. Of course I got the picture of the battle of good and evil, but as to the specifics, I don't have a clue.

I love anything to do with space so naturally when I found out C.S.Lewis had written a trilogy I bought and read all three. I recently wrote a song with my band Red Umbrella loosely based on the first book 'Out of the Silent Planet'. The song begins as our hero Ransom has been drugged and stowed on a spacecraft to who knows where... [...]

This is the worst (and final) book of Lewis' space trilogy. Here, his apparent lack of forethought and organization culminate in "That Hideous Strength" where Lewis seems to drift aimlessly among topics of space travel and other worlds, to British monarchistic nationalism, Arthurian legends, angelology, human psychology, reincarnation, mad scientists, and marriage life.

In short, while I enjoyed "Out of the Silent Planet" and gained some pleasure from Perelandra, this final book was a horrible amalgamation of aimless themes, lacked a concise plot, and left the reader (at least this reader) disappointed.

Don't waste your time on this unmittigatedly boring tripe. If you truly want to have your mind and soul stimulated, read something more challenging, like Glenn Kleier's THE LAST DAY. Now that novel will keep you up biting your nails and hanging on for the stunning conclusion. LAST DAY has substance where STRENGTH has none.

I have read Lewis's "Space Trilogy" several times. The first book, 'Malacandra' or 'Out of the Silent Planet', is quite entertaining, although suspiciously derivative of 'A Martian Odyssey' by S. Weinberg. The second book, 'Perelandra', is somewhat amusing if you like laughing at Christian nonsense. This third book, 'That Hideous Strength', is awful beyond awful, hideous beyond hideous. Spend your time in another manner.

C. S. Lewis' THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH is nominally the third book in what is described as his "space trilogy," but such a description does not accurately portray the nature of this prophetic work. Lewis himself calls it "a modern fairy-tale for grown-ups," but that also falls short of adequate description. Since science fiction it is not, and a fairy tale it is not, let us see if we can determine what it may be.

It is, of course, allegorical and suggests strongly the same sort of allegory that underlies the Ring series by Tolkien (despite the latter's statements to the contrary). As the scientific research organization N.I.C.E. steadily gains public acceptance, then public support, and then assumption of governmental authority, even as the nefarious nature of its goals becomes more and more evident, the reader struggles to scream a warning to the citizens being caught and enslaved in its encroaching web. Why do they not see through the façade of scientific progress and recognize the dehumanizing goals of this soulless entity? Why do they support this encroaching social cancer? Why do they turn against and attack those few who try to sound a warning? The reader, who has the advantage of an external vantage point, sees the growing evil, the destruction of that which is good, but is powerless to open the eyes of those who are being irretrievably deceived.

Lewis' allegory is, unfortunately, timeless and is as applicable today as it was when it was first published in 1945. It is no stretch of the imagination to equate N.I.C.E. with the spreading multi-national corporations of the 21st century. As president of the United States from 1953 to 1961, Dwight Eisenhower warned of the social and economic dangers inherent in the growing military-industrial complex, but his prescience has been disregarded, or, more sinisterly, has been overwhelmed by the strength of industrialists whose wealth and power seem to place them above control by the people. Yet, had Lewis' warning been heeded in 1945, Eisenhower's would have been unneeded ten years later. Both are still applicable today.

Is there a solution to the encroachment of evil into human affairs? If there is, Lewis did not know of it. True, by the end of THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, the tools of evil are dead and the N.I.C.E. organization is destroyed, but Lewis warns that this has been only a battle and that the war will continue in other places and in other ways.

Lewis' message is, as I hope I have now shown, as uncomfortably real, urgent, and contemporary as it was when he wrote it. As to the manner in which he wrote it, this book is surely the strongest and most readable of the trilogy, which includes OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET and PERELANDRA. In fact, even though reading the trilogy in order will give the reader a better understanding of Ransom and how he came to be the "Director" of the "good guys," this final book can easily stand alone and, if only one of the trilogy is to be read, would be my choice of the one to read. The other two, while worthy of being read, are, at times, plodding in contrast to this one, which is guaranteed to raise the reader's inner tension and to urge him ever forward in the saga.

If there is a weakness in the plot of this third book, it comes in the means of bringing down N.I.C.E., its minions, and its masters. Readers familiar with Greek drama and its use of a "deus ex machina" to rescue hapless humans from their own foibles will see that Lewis has relied on a similar technique. Literally, several intermediate gods (inspired by medieval concepts of hierarchical levels in the universe) as well as a reawakened Merlin and a biblical "Tower of Babel" solution are necessary to defeat the enemy in this battle, and I'm not at all certain that any of these weapons are available to us in the "real world." Despite this, however, the novel is as gripping as any conspiracy suspense thriller, a comparison I have borrowed from another reviewer because I can think of no better way of putting it. In short, buy the book, read it, and, most importantly, learn from it. I have.

to long a time lapsed from ordering the book to when i actully recd it, on january 8th 2008. checked online, and this product was sent to phoenix arizona, where it sat for at least a week. poor quality control as far as tracking the shipping.

The good: a dark, non-children's book, quite down-to-Tellus (if you'll forgive the pun), the philosophical/theological point was intellectually stimulating, and there were a few descriptions of ethereal experience and being that might not hold a candle flame to the light in Dante's Paradiso, but which was still beautiful (see "Descent of the Gods"). The bad and the ugly: Lewis' writing style is haphazard at best--names changed sporadically without reason, numerous misspellings, random pieces of linguistic bravado which would be quite unintelligible to most readers, there was even a chapter, told in the first person, which so lost me that I still have no clue of the speaker's identity. There is nothing likable or interesting about most characters. Following the plot for the first half of the book is like slamming your head into a wall over and over and over and over... Instead of characters or a compelling storyline driving the narrative, this contains lengthy chapters of bone-numbing dialog, hopeless exposition, deus ex machina, and spontaneous, overly-complex descriptions. The conclusion was drawn out, confused, and hardly satisfying except for the fact that the good guys won (which we knew would happen anyway). The worst part is that one could catch glimpses of so many fabulous and compelling stories and characters just under the surface that would have made this an incredible novel had they been told and focused on instead. It was sheer force of will alone that I finished this book.

The literary disaster that ends Lewis' 'Space Trilogy'.

Unlikeable or unconvincing good guys, cardboard villains, and a wandering plot could not be spruced up into anything interesting, either by a surprise visit from an historical Merlin, reanimated human body parts, or even a grown bear thrown in as a full-fleged party member.

Lewis over-reached himself in this one. Be a big Lewis fan and brew a big pot of coffee if you plan on finishing it.

Better to read Til We Have Faces, if you're looking for some readable and thoughtful adult fiction by Lewis.

Try and do a Jules Verne type story. Take the fun and adventure out. Make it boring and unappealing. Voila. You have C.S. Lewis's planet trilogy. This is a textbook case of how to not do a planetary romance type tale, but rather than philosophical mouthpieces rambling on, crying out for you to close the book.

Firstly let me say I'm an atheist; I find all religious beliefs to be rather silly.

However this book (even more than its predecessors) is awful. It's not so much about Lewis's religious beliefs as about his politics and personal life; the whole thing is a huge compendium of Blimpish Tory ranting against anything vaguely liberal in Britain post-1945. Far and away Lewis's worst and most infuriating book. It is also embarrassingly, offensively, sexist ("Write no more books, have children instead").
There is quite a lot of messed up sexism in the whole trilogy, even more so than Lewis's work in general. It seems to (mainly) boil down to a lot of the "essentialist male = closer to God" nonsense and monarchy-worship (Lewis was an ardent monarchist and distrusted democracy, as shown in this and other books).
It seems to me that Lewis (to paraphrase Patricia Schroder) was scared by the whole notion of a woman who has a brain and a uterus.

Lewis must have been going through a pretty bad time personally during and right after the war, to write such a bizarre, mean-spirited, book. Perhaps it's more about Lewis's own doubts, and his reaction to the general loss of religious faith caused by the war, as the book seems to be written to bolster his *own* faith.

Also the book is downright illogical in it's perception of god (e.g. the Merlin character's pronouncements against Jane for using birth control; obviously Lewis's god couldn't cope with a diaphragm.......). If this is God's will, that we be governed by the apparent mentality of a sulky child, then indeed it is a toss-up which side is good and which evil

If you like C. S. Lewis you will LOVE these books. This is the last of three science fiction stories written by C. S. Lewis. Not so geared towards children. But still great story telling from an amazing author.